The Christa McAuliffe Prize The Christa McAuliffe Prize The Nebraska Christa McAuliffe Prize For Courage and Excellence in Education is an award given annually to recognize a teacher in Nebraska for showing courage in education. Founded in 1987 this award was founded in memorial to Christa McAuliffe, the teacher/astronaut who lost her life in the Challenger space shuttle accident in January, 1986. This fund provides a way to recognize these teachers, and at the same time honor the memory of Ms. McAuliffe's courage. Among the recipients of the Mcauliffe Prize over the past 20 years have been teachers who exemplified courage in many ways,
Christa McAuliffe to investigate the disaster. It determined that the accident was due to a failure of rubber O-rings made by Morton-Thiokol that provided a pressure seal in the aft field joint of the shuttle's right Solid Rocket Booster. The failure of the O-rings was attributed to a design flaw, as their performance could be too easily compromised by factors that included the low temperature on the day of launch. The Commission found that O-ring resiliency is directly related to temperature and due to the low temperature at launch—36 degrees Fahrenheit or 15 degrees lower than the next coldest previous launch—it was