In 1984, U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced that the first citizen in space would be a teacher. He was speaking at a ceremony for winners in the Secondary School Recognition Program. Towards the end, he stated: “It’s long been a goal of our space shuttle, the program, to some day carry citizen passengers into space. Until now, we hadn’t decided who the first citizen passenger would be. But today I'm directing NASA to begin a search in all of our elementary and secondary schools and to choose as the first citizen passenger in the history of our space program one of America’s finest—a teacher.” On 19 Jul 1985, the selection of Christa McAuliffe was reported by the vice-president.«