Hickey, who is now a junior high physical education teacher at a school in Bradenton, Florida, noted that McAuliffe had been selected from more than 11,000 teachers who had applied for NASA’s space mission.
Advertisement
“We saw it in the restaurants and the clubs and the organizations”, Brathwaite says, “the schools weren’t as busy, we didn’t have as many kids in school as we did, a lot of homes were empty”.
“I remember being annoyed by their attitude that the best candidates would be science teachers”, Hoagland recalled Thursday, the 30th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, when the space shuttle exploded just 73 seconds into its flight. She had nearly reached her dream and mission to go into space and furthermore, to teach from outer space. The Columbia shuttle would also explode during mission 17 years later, in 2003.
Live television broadcast of the January 28, 1986 launch of the space shuttle Challenger, which exploded after lift off. Fulgham, not Rodgers, will be on the speaker platform for the ceremony on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016.
So what was it about Christa McAuliffe?
McAuliffe said he’s pleased “Christa’s goals have been largely accomplished in that she has inspired generations of classroom teachers and students”.
Steven McAuliffe, a federal judge in Concord, New Hampshire, still declines interviews about his late wife Christa. The McAuliffes normally do not take part in these NASA memorials, so Scott’s presence is especially noteworthy.
Advertisement
The shuttle program went on a 32-month hiatus following the Challenger disaster. A leak in the right booster doomed the ship; unusually cold weather that morning left Challenger’s booster rockets with stiff O-ring seals. “They’re actually lessons learned”, said Scobee Rodgers, an educator who lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
