CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Don’t show up at the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium today expecting a memorial service to mark the 20th anniversary of the Challenger space shuttle disaster.

The planetarium is the state’s official memorial to the teacher-astronaut killed with six crewmembers in 1986, but those who work there say the building and its programs are much more.

“When the state of New Hampshire decided to build the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium, they didn’t decide to make a statue or build a history museum with Christa’s bicycle,” said Jeanne Gerulskis, the executive director. “They decided to create a place where people could come and learn about space that would be very attractive to young people.”

The planetarium’s regular Friday night program, on the eve of the anniversary, highlighted the three American crews lost in the space program – Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia – but the planetarium will have no special events on Jan. 28.

Gerulskis said it does have an answer ready for anyone showing up for a special McAuliffe program.

“We’ll say, “You came on the wrong day. Come back on September 2nd (McAuliffe’s birthday) and we’ll have birthday cake,”‘ Gerulskis said.

Mal Cameron, the education specialist presenting the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia program, will focus on the lives of each crew.

“We’re not here to commemorate how these people died,” Cameron said. “We are here to commemorate how they lived.”

That has been the planetarium’s mission since it opened in 1990. Each year, about 20,000 school children on field trips visit, learning about space travel and the solar system, holding the controls of a space shuttle simulator and having fun.

“I go out there and tie little kids’ shoes when I see them running around,” said Gerulskis. “That’s what Christa is here. She pervades everything. Her spirit and the things she was interested in have become something that kids just walk through and experience.

“They might go on to become, maybe not astronauts, but maybe artists who love drawing Saturn, maybe historians, may social studies teachers,” she said.

Gerulskis said many head straight for the shuttle simulator, where planetarium astronauts hold the controls as a videotape of a landing, seen from a shuttle, shows on small screens in front of them.

“They want to land the shuttle,” she said. “It’s just such magic to know that they’re doing something that is fun for them, but it’s also inspirational and will stay with them.”

The planetarium displays a large portrait of McAuliffe, some letters she wrote, a photo of her in a classroom and patches she carried on Challenger. It also is the official state repository for thousands of letters, poems and pieces of art that flooded in after the tragedy.

The material may be available for researchers when the planetarium expands in the next couple of years, but it won’t be on public display.

“It is not part of our mission, because it revolves around the tragedy, versus the inspiration,” Cameron said.

The planetarium has programs for everyone from 3- to 4-year-olds to parents, covering everything from astronomy to making rockets. It plans more programs with the opening, hopefully in 2007, of a new Alan Shepard Discovery Center to honor the New Hampshire native who was the first American in space.

Education Director David McDonald tries to inspire visitors to learn, just as McAuliffe inspired her students at Concord High School. Even if it means learning that McAuliffe did not single-handedly carry the space program.

Sandt Michener, who produces planetarium programs, said visiting children sometimes have a pretty inflated picture of the former social studies teacher, identifying her as the first person in space or the first to walk on the moon.

“But we also hear Buzz Light Year (of the movie Toy Story) or Lance Armstrong (the champion bicyclist),” Michener said. “They get the Armstrong part.”

Gerulskis said she and her staff know that figuratively, McAuliffe is looking over their shoulders.

“Every now and then I’ll walk by and see the picture of Christa on the wall and think, Oh, I hope you like what we’re doing here. I think you would.”‘

—

On the Net:

http://www.starhop.com/

AP-ES-01-27-06 1301EST