Teacher Christa McAuliffe (1948-1986) was the first private citizen to be included in a space mission. She died in a fiery explosion mere seconds after the launch of the space shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986.

Christa McAuliffe was a teacher, an "ordinary" person by her own estimation, and it was a paradigm of ordinary people that she impressed on her students; she taught that history is a result of ordinary people living their lives in their own times. In her eagerness to be the first civilian in outer space she resolved to keep a record of her journey for posterity, the journal of an "everyday teacher" in space. The Challenger spacecraft on which McAuliffe was to ride was a well-maintained member of the U.S. shuttle fleet, having made several previous trips into orbit around the earth. In 120 days of training and preparation for her flight, McAuliffe learned to...