Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
McAuliffe continues to serve as a founding director for the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. He has two children, Scott and Caroline, with his first wife, Christa; they were nine and six, respectively, when she died, as a result of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In early 1992, he married Kathleen E. Thomas, a reading teacher for the Concord School District, and mother of two children.