Arab Advenutrers

SULTAN SALMAN ABDULAZIZ AL-SAUD
PAYLOAD SPECIALIST
PERSONAL DATA: Born June 27, 1956, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Married. Recreational interests include snow skiing, scuba diving, horseback riding, jogging, racquetball, and swimming.
EDUCATION: Completed his elementary and secondary education in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He later went on to study communications and aviation in the United States.
EXPERIENCE: In 1982 he was appointed to the position of researcher in the Department of International Communications at the Ministry of Information in Saudi Arabia.
In 1984 he served as Deputy Director for the Saudi Arabian Olympic Information Committee at the Olympics in Los Angeles, California. Later that year, when the Department of Advertising was created at the Ministry of Information, he was appointed its Acting Director.
In 1985 he flew as a Payload Specialist on STS-51G Discovery (June 17-24, 1985). As one of a seven member international crew, which also included American and French astronauts, he represented the Arab Satellite Communications Organization (ARABSAT) in deploying their satellite, ARABSAT-1B.
Upon conclusion of his space flight, he helped in founding the Association of Space Explorers, an international organization comprising all astronauts and cosmonauts who have been in space, and served on its Board of Directors for several years.
In 1985 he was commissioned as an officer into the Royal Saudi Air Force. He holds the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and is qualified in several military and civilian aircraft.
For several years he headed the Advisory Committee for the Science Oasis Project to be built in Riyadh.
In 1989 and then again in 1992 he was elected to the position of Chairman of the Saudi Benevolent Association for Handicapped Children; where he also served as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Prince Salman Center for Handicapped Research.
In 1991 he accepted an invitation from the Board of Directors of the Saudi Computer Society to become Honorary Chairman, and in 1993 due to his special interest in architecture he agreed to serve as Honorary President of the Al-Umran Saudi Association (a society of specialists in the fields of the built environment).
DECEMBER 1993
This is the only version available from NASA. Updates must be sought direct from the above named individual.

Christa McAuliffe


Sharon Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher to fly in space. Selected from among more than 11,000 applicants from the education profession for entrance into the astronaut ranks, McAuliffe had been born on September 2, 1948, the oldest child of Edward and Grace Corrigan. Her father was at that time completing his sophomore year at Boston College, but not long thereafter he took a job as an assistant comptroller in a Boston department store and the family moved to the Boston suburb of Framingham. As a youth she registered excitement over the Apollo moon landing program, and wrote years later on her astronaut application form that "I watched the Space Age being born and I would like to participate."
McAuliffe attended Framingham State College in her hometown, graduating in 1970. A few weeks later she married her longstanding boyfriend, Steven McAuliffe, and they moved to the Washington, DC, metropolitan area so Steven could attend Georgetown Law School. She took a job teaching in the secondary schools, specializing in American history and social studies. They stayed in the Washington area for the next eight years, she teaching and completing an M.A. from Bowie State University, in Maryland. They moved to Concord, New Hampshire, in 1978 when Steven accepted a job as an assistant to the state attorney general. Christa took a teaching post at Concord High School in 1982, and in 1984 learned about NASA's efforts to locate an educator to fly on the Shuttle. The intent was to find a gifted teacher who could communicate with students from space.
NASA selected McAuliffe for this position in the summer of 1984 and in the fall she took a year-long leave of absence from teaching, during which time NASA would pay her salary, and trained for an early 1986 Shuttle mission. She had an immediate rapport with the media, and the teacher in space program received tremendous popular attention as a result. It is in part because of the excitement over McAuliffe's presence on the Challenger that the accident had such a significant impact on the nation.