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Teacher to visit space station in 2003
From Melissa Motichek
(CNN) -- NASA has set a date to try once again to send a teacher into orbit. Barbara Morgan has been assigned as a crewmember on a space shuttle flight set to launch in November 2003, NASA announced Thursday. Morgan, 51, was first selected for the astronaut program in 1985 as the alternate to Christa McAuliffe, who died with six other astronauts when the shuttle Challenger exploded in January 1986. On the upcoming shuttle flight, which will deliver a giant girder to the station, Morgan is to participate in a number of educational activities, often communicating with students on the ground. "NASA has a responsibility to cultivate a new generation of scientists and engineers," administrator Sean O'Keefe told a group of Maryland high school students on Thursday. "So mark your calendars. Eleven months from now we will see an opportunity of a lifetime," he said. Morgan returned to teaching after the Challenger accident, but she continued to work with the space agency on educational programs. NASA revived the Teacher in Space program in 1998, sending Morgan to complete her astronaut training. For the past year she has been working at Johnson Space Center in Houston, helping to provide the voice link between shuttle crews and mission control. "NASA and teachers have the same mission, to explore, to lean and to share," Morgan told a group of high school students in Maryland. Like other crewmembers, Morgan will have conventional astronaut duties, such as directing three spacewalks from inside the shuttle. "I have the same expectations [of Morgan] that I do of myself and other crewmembers," said Scott Kelly, commander of the shuttle Columbia flight. "From my perspective, we have a mission specialist who happens to be a teacher."
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