3352 McAuliffe planet was named in memory of Christa McAuliffe (1948–1986), teacher, civilian astronaut and one of the seven crew members who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on 28 January 1986. The minor planets , , , , , and were named for the other crew members of the ill-fated STS-51-L mission. The approved naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 26 March 1986 (). 3352 McAuliffe 3352 McAuliffe (), provisional designation , is a rare-type asteroid and suspected binary system, classified as near-Earth object of the Amor group, approximately 2 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered
3352 McAuliffe a SQ-type, a transitional type between the common stony and Q-type asteroids, indicating the presence of pyroxene minerals. The "Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link" assumes an albedo of 0.18 and derives a diameter of 1.99 kilometers, based on an absolute magnitude of 16.068, a figure previously obtained by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, and later revised by Czech astronomer Petr Pravec. Between 1998 and 2016, a several rotational lightcurves of "McAuliffe" have been obtained from photometric observations taken by astronomers Petr Pravec at Ondřejov Observatory, Czech Republic, by Andreas Howell at Willowcroft Observatory, Florida, as well