Science

The 8 'lost lessons' Challenger astronaut Christa McAuliffe was supposed to teach in space

Kelly Dickerson

2016-01-28T17:17:00Z

challenger crew — Christa McAuliffe is on the left, followed by Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Ronald E. McNair, Mike J. Smith, and Ellison S. Onizuka. NASA

Thirty years ago on January 28, seven astronauts were killed when the Challenger space shuttle exploded just 73 seconds after launch.

One of those seven astronauts was Christa McAuliffe. Set to become the first teacher in space, McAuliffe had a whole lesson plan ready to teach the world in 1986.

Millions of kids would have tuned in for the live and taped lessons from space, but they never had the chance.

NASA released McAuliffe's lesson notes and practice videos several years after the shuttle disaster. Her lost lessons are now available on the Challenger Center website.

Here are the eight science lessons McAuliffe planned on teaching during her trip on the Challenger shuttle.

1. How do plants grow in microgravity?

McAuliffe was planning to test if plants could grow in space without soil. The idea was to spray beans with coats of nutrient water and see if they sprouted.

The more weight a rocket has to carry into space, the more expensive the launch is. So if plants didn't need soil in space, NASA could lighten its payload on future missions and save some money.

The video below shows McAuliffe practicing the lesson aboard NASA's zero-gravity Vomit Comet:

2. Does magnetism still work in microgravity?

Magnets are already pretty cool, but they're even in cooler in space.

McAuliffe was planning to demonstrate magnetism with two bar magnets suspended in midair. She also planned to see how microgravity would influence magnetic field lines by using a magnet and a box of iron filings.

Here she is practicing the experiment on the Vomit Comet:

3. How do Newton's laws of motion apply to weightlessness?

Astronauts floating through the air has captured kids' imaginations for years, so McAuliffe came up with a brilliant way to turn weightlessness in space into a science lesson.

The first step would have been to suspend an object on a spring and show that the spring wasn't stretched at all, since the object had no apparent weight.

The second part involved launching a billiard ball and a ball bearing of half the mass at the same force and seeing which one accelerated faster in microgravity.

4. How do bubbles behave in space?

The idea here was to drop an Alka-Seltzer tablet in water in space and compare it to one dropped in water on Earth.

Antacids fizz and bubble much more violently in space than on the ground, as astronaut Scott Kelly recently demonstrated with a floating ball of fizz. Taking one of these in space would probably do more harm than good.

Here's McAuliffe practicing again:

5. Does chromatography work in space?

Thanks to a phenomenon called capillary action, water creeps up plant roots and stems. It can also climb up filter paper, and McAuliffe was going to demonstrate that in space.

She planned to send a drop of water climbing up a piece of filter paper toward an ink drop. Ink appears jet black, but it is actually composed of many different colors. When water mixes with ink those different colors start to emerge. Separating a mixture like that is called chromatography.

Here she is practicing:

6. Do simple machines function the same way in microgravity?

iss repairs — Astronauts often use machines and tools on the International Space Station to repair things. NASA

Many machines on Earth are designed to overcome the pull of gravity, but those same machines have uses in space too.

McAuliffe planned to demonstrate an inclined plane, a wheeled cart, a screw, and a pulley system in space. There's no practice video for this lesson, so we can't see exactly how McAuliffe would have executed it, but NASA's archival Teacher In Space project document offers some clues.

7. "The Ultimate Field Trip" lesson.

space shuttle challenger — The Space Shuttle Challenger. NASA

McAuliffe also planned on giving two live, 15-minute lectures in space. The first, called "The Ultimate Field Trip," was meant to be a tour of the Challenger Space Shuttle.

8. The “Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going” lesson.

The second lecture was designed to help kids understand why we explore space.

McAuliffe was planning to talk about things like how experiments in space have led to new technology on Earth, the Hubble Space Telescope — which would launch a few years later — and how the Voyager space probe had almost made it to Uranus.

You can explore McAuliffe's lessons further at the Challenger Center's website. NASA also has a PDF of "Challenger's Lost Lessons," which chronologizes the Teacher In Space project.

NASA Space