Christa McAuliffe, the 37-year-old high school teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, who was killed in the disaster, was to be the first in what NASA envisioned as a series of civilian “payload specialists.” She had won out over 11,000 other applicants to become the first...
Editor's Note: This story originally appeared in the February 2016 issue of Popular Mechanics to mark the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986, when all seven people on board the shuttle were killed. Today marks the 36th anniversary. To hear the voices...