DATE=04/16/02
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=TEACHER IN SPACE
NUMBER=5-51437
BYLINE=DAVID McALARY
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
CONTENT=
INTERNET=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: The U-S space agency NASA is taking a second chance at sending a schoolteacher into orbit. The last attempt ended in disaster when the shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, killing a young teacher from New Hampshire, Christa McAuliffe, and six other astronauts. Now, as David McAlary reports, NASA is assigning another educator to a mission.
TEXT: Barbara Morgan has been waiting a long time for this assignment - 17 years. It was back in 1985 when NASA originally selected her to train as an understudy to Christa McAuliffe for the ill-fated Challenger mission the following year. When the shuttle blew up on its way to orbit, Ms. Morgan's dream was set back, but apparently not her determination.
/// MORGAN ACT 1 ///
Teachers are patient and persistent. That is how we do our job so well in our classroom. You get asked about, "what about waiting so long?" Well, I have never felt I have ever waited. I have worked.
/// END ACT ///
Now, her chance has come. NASA has announced that Barbara Morgan will be a crewmember on a flight in 2004. The assignment was no surprise, for she has been NASA's first choice as teacher in space since the Challenger disaster.
Although Ms. Morgan resigned from NASA six months after the accident to resume her teaching career, in one sense she never really left the space agency. She continued getting annual flight physicals and performed educational activities for it.
Still, no flight assignment came for many years. Then, four years ago, NASA finally accepted her for training again at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, as a shuttle mission specialist.
/// MORGAN ACT 2 ///
When I first got here in 1998, one of my now colleague astronauts, a couple of them, stopped me by the elevator and said, "it is different, isn't it? It is really different from teaching." Before I could say anything, they said, "It is a lot harder, isn't it?" I laughed to myself and thought, "they will never understand." Yes, it did get hard, it got very hard, but it is not harder than teaching.
/// END ACT ///
Ms. Morgan -- a Fresno, California native has taught science, mathematics, English, and reading to children on an American Indian reservation in Idaho; to youth in Quito, Equador; and then back in Idaho again.
The head of NASA, Sean O'Keefe, says she is the ideal candidate to be a teacher in space, and is just the first of many more to be identified jointly with the U-S Department of Education. He calls the revived Teacher in Space program important to his agency's core mission of helping motivate a new generation of Americans to become scientists and explorers.
/// O'KEEFE ACT ///
That's one of the dimensions, I think, that is going to be so exciting about having an educator mission specialist series. How can you take that set of experiences and translate it to a group of kids and excite them to want to do things differently and think about things differently?
/// END ACT ///
Barbara Morgan says she has no idea how she will impart her astronaut experiences to youth. She points out that it depends on the particular mission to which she is assigned, and NASA has not decided yet whether it will be on the shuttle or space station. She says she is eager for any mission.
But is she fearful of the risk, given what she witnessed of the Challenger loss?
/// MORGAN ACT 3 ///
My personal feeling about risk is, as teachers we encourage our students to take risks in our classroom. If you do not risk a little bit, you are not going anywhere. You do not dwell on risks. You train for it, you prepare for it, but you do not dwell on it.
/// END ACT ///
Instead, Barbara Morgan says she is focused on carrying on Christa McAuliffe's educational mission, cut short 16 years ago.
/// MORGAN ACT 4 ///
I just see this for me personally as one very lucky step in what I hope will be going on forever and ever and ever and growing and growing and growing.
/// END ACT ///(SIGNED)
NEB/DEM/SAB