Ultimate Field Trip

In August 1985, Christa McAuliffe memorably told an audience, "I touch the future. I teach." In the fullness of time, she would touch many hearts as well. Having been selected for NASA’s “Teacher in Space” program, McAuliffe planned to lead a global classroom while floating in zero-gravity aboard the Challenger Space Shuttle. Praised by Time as a “startlingly normal American,” she was one of us.

Although hazard is the handmaiden of space travel, the risk didn’t faze the plucky history teacher. McAuliffe whimsically noted that she routinely put her “life on the line” when driving through certain, notorious street intersections back home in Concord, NH. “The shuttle can't be much worse than that," she joked. But just in case, McAuliffe would take aloft a stuffed toy frog for luck.

Calling her first lesson "The Ultimate Field Trip," McAuliffe planned to explore daily life in space. It was also an apt metaphor for her journey. But the trek ended 73 seconds after it began on January 28, 1986. "We have a major malfunction. The vehicle has exploded," said a NASA announcer, stunning the nation.

"Imagine a history teacher making history!" McAuliffe remarked excitedly during an interview weeks before the launch. She did so, and made us all proud.