STS-51-L was the twenty-fifth flight of the American Space Shuttle program, using Space Shuttle Challenger, which lifted off from the Launch Complex 39-B on January 28, 1986 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This flight marked the first time a non-government civilian, schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, had flown aboard the Space Shuttle. The mission ended in disaster with the destruction of Challenger 73 seconds after lift-off and the death of all seven crewmembers. The Rogers Commission determined the cause was due to the failure of an O-ring seal on one of the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs).

The tenth mission for Challenger, STS-51-L was scheduled to deploy the second in a series of Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, carry out the first flight of the Shuttle-Pointed Tool for Astronomy (SPARTAN-203)/Halley's Comet Experiment Deployable in order to observe Halley's Comet, and carry out several lessons from space as part of the Teacher in Space Project and Shuttle Student Involvement Program (SSIP). The flight marked the first American orbital mission to involve in-flight fatalities. It was also the first American human spaceflight mission to launch and fail to reach space; the first such mission in the world had been the Soviet Soyuz 18a mission, in which the two crew members had survived. Gregory Jarvis was originally scheduled to fly on the previous shuttle flight (STS-61-C), but was re-assigned to this flight and replaced by Congressman Bill Nelson.

Barbara Radding Morgan (born November 28, 1951) is an American teacher and a former NASA astronaut. She participated in the Teacher in Space program as the backup to Christa McAuliffe for the ill-fated STS-51L mission of Space Shuttle Challenger. She then trained as a Mission Specialist, and flew on STS-118 in August 2007. Leading up to STS-118, Morgan joined Sally Ride and Shannon Lucid as female astronauts widely covered by the media.

Morgan was born to Dr. and Mrs. Jerry Radding in 1951 and raised in Fresno, California, where she attended Hoover High School. Following graduation in 1969, she was accepted to Stanford University in Palo Alto, where she graduated with distinction in 1973 with a B.A. in Human Biology. She obtained her teaching credential from Notre Dame de Namur University in nearby Belmont in 1974.

Morgan began her teaching career in 1974 on the Flathead Indian Reservation at Arlee Elementary School in Arlee, Montana, where she taught remedial reading and math. From 1975 to 1978, she taught remedial reading/math and second grade at McCall-Donnelly Elementary School in McCall, Idaho. From 1978 to 1979, Morgan taught English and science to third graders at Colegio Americano de Quito in Quito, Ecuador for a year. From 1979 to 1998, Morgan taught second, third, and fourth grades at McCall-Donnelly Elementary School.

Nik Turner (born Nicholas Turner, 26 August 1940, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England) is a British musician, best known as a founding member of space rock pioneers Hawkwind. Turner plays saxophones, flute, sings and is a composer. While with Hawkwind, Turner was known for his experimental free jazz stylisations and outrageous stage presence, often donning full makeup and Ancient Egypt-inspired costumes.

Turner was born in Oxford in August 1940 to a theatrical family, although his father was working in a munitions factory. At the age of 13 his family moved to the Kent seaside resort of Margate where he would work at the local funfair during the summer holiday season, befriending another seasonal worker Robert Calvert. His first influences were Rock and Roll and the films of James Dean.

He went on to complete an engineering course and then undertook one voyage in the Merchant Navy. He then set about travelling around Europe picking up menial jobs, and it was during a stint as a roustabout in a travelling music circus in 1967 that he made the acquaintance of Dave Brock in Haarlem, Netherlands.