[9급 국가직 영어 2013년 15번]

The space shuttle Challenger had just taken off for its tenth flight in January 1986 when it exploded in the air and killed all seven people inside. Millions of people around the world were watching the liftoff because schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe was on board. McAuliffe, who had been chosen to be the first teacher in space, was planning to broadcast lessons directly to schools from the shuttle's orbit around Earth. This Challenger disaster led NASA to stop all space shuttle missions for nearly three years while they looked for the cause of the explosion and fixed the problem. They soon discovered that the shuttle had a faulty seal on one of the rocket boosters. Unfortunately, the teacher-in-space program was indefinitely put on hold. So were NASA's plans to send musicians, journalists, and artists to space.