HOUSTON - Barbara Morgan's students have long since grownup, many now with children of their own. Still, there is not a trace of exasperation in her voice, only gratitude that NASA is finally making good on its pledge to send another teacher into space.

The first attempt in 1986 ended in disaster with Christa McAuliffe, of Concord, N.H., and six astronauts dying in a nightmare explosion of the space shuttle Challenger broadcast live worldwide.

On Tuesday, the shuttle Endeavour, the ship built to replace Challenger, was rolled out to its seaside Florida launch pad in preparation for a scheduled Aug. 7 launch and flight to the International Space Station.

Morgan, a McCall elementary school teacher who trained as McAuliffe's backup, will be aboard.

"It has taken a long time, but what I see in that is a lesson in perseverance," said Cindy McArthur, who heads NASA s Teaching From Space project at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

McAuliffe and Morgan were among 10finalists culled from a pool of more than 11,000 teachers vying for the opportunity to fly on the shuttle. NASA intended to follow its Teachers in Space program, which debuted in 1984 -just three years after the shuttle program began - with flight opportunities for journalists, artists and other private citizens.

From teacher to astronaut
The Challenger disaster exposed the shuttle's inherent risks, prompting NASA to dump plans to fly anyone but fully trained astronauts.

Morgan watched the Challenger launch from the roof of a concrete building near the press stands at the, Kennedy Space Center in Florida. She had trained for six months alongside McAuliffe and the two had become fast friends.

"I learned so much from Christa," Morgan, now 55, said during an interview last week. "I learned-and it's a lesson I have to keep reminding myself of - to pay attention to what's important and let the other things go, not to worry so much about things. To Christa, what was most important were people and their dignity, and her students."

After the accident, Morgan returned to teaching second and third-graders at McCall Elementary School. She also agreed to continue on as NASA's designated Teacher in Space, a role that entailed public speaking, educational consulting, curriculum design and serving on a federal task force.

For more than a decade, however, there was barely any discussion, let alone plans, for her to actually fly in space.

Morgan's ticket to ride finally arrived in 1998. The agent of fate was an old-time American hero, former astronaut John Glenn, one of the original seven astronauts selected for the Mercury program. Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, later became a senator and upon his retirement began petitioning NASA to let him fly again.

Couched in a program for geriatrics research that has never been followed up, Glenn's
flight was approved, with NASA positing that Glenn's former astronaut status made him exempt
from the ban on civilian space travel.

For Morgan, whom many thought an equal if not more deserving candidate, there was an invitation to join the astronaut corps for full training as a mission specialist and a chance to fly on the shuttle as the first so-called educator-astronaut.

Morgan and her family returned to Houston so she could begin preparing for her new career as an astronaut. She completed the initial training program in a year and became eligible for flight assignment.

In the meantime, she worked as an astronaut liaison at Mission

Control, handling communications between flight directors and crews aboard the space station.

She also worked in NASA’s robotics office. In December 2002, Morgan was named as a crew member for a station construction mission designated as STS-118.

Two months later, NASA lost its second shuttle, Columbia, and its crew. Managers grounded the fleet for safety upgrades and added two test-flights prior to resuming station assembly to make sure equipment failures and management problems that triggered the accident were corrected.
The loss of Columbia, like Challenger's demise 17 years earlier, strengthened Morgan's resolve to fly in space.

"Both Challenger and Columbia caused me to think about what's really important," Morgan said. "In both situations, we had kids watching adults. Kids learn a lot from watching adults."

"It's not just what we say, but it's what we do. And, kids were watching to see what the adults do in a terrible, terrible situation," she said. "What I thought was really important for kids to see is that we figure out what's wrong, we fix it, and we move on, and we keep the future open for our young people."

Unlike McAuliffe, whose entire flight was devoted to educational events, Morgan will spend most of her time in space helping her six crewmates install a new support beam to the outside of the station, transferring 2.5 tons of equipment and supplies, and operating the shuttle's robot arm in support of three or four spacewalks.

Three interactive educational events are planned, including a question-and-answer session with students at the Discovery Center of Idaho in Boise. Morgan also will spend about six hours taping activities in space that will be incorporated into material for classroom teachers.

"She's an integral part of the crew," said Lead Flight Director Matt Abbott. "One of the things I look forward to the most is hearing her from an educator's perspective. I expect her to have some interesting insights."

Three other teachers get chance to fly after Morgan

HOUSTON - It took more than two decades for NASA to be ready to launch another teacher into space, but the path into orbit should be much shorter for colleagues wishing to follow Barbara Morgan's footsteps.

Three more teachers have been accepted into NASA’s elite astronaut corps following Morgan's unprecedented career switch in 1998. Morgan, a former McCall elementary school teacher, is scheduled to fly aboard space shuttle Endeavour on Aug. 7.

Originally trained as the backup to Teacher-in-Space Christa McAuliffe, Morgan has waited more than 21 years for a chance to fly in space. McAullife and her crewmates were killed in the 1986 Challenger accident.

NASA banned civilians from the shuttle after the accident, but ultimately decided to offer Morgan a chance to train as a full fledged astronaut and become eligible for flight assignment.

In 2004, NASA extended invitations to three more teachers:

• Joe Acaba, a middle school teacher from Dunnellon, Fla.

• Ricky Arnold, a math and science teacher at the American International School in Bucharest, Romania.

• Dottie Metcalf Lindenburger, a high school science teacher and cross country coach from Vancouver, Wash.

All three have completed basic training and are awaiting flight assignments. NASA has just 12 more construction missions to the International Space Station planned before the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.

The agency also would like to fly two re-supply missions to the orbital outpost and make a final servicing call to the Hubble Space Telescope.

There are other flight opportunities, however. Upon completion, the size of the live-aboard space station crew will double from three to six astronauts, with half the slots reserved for the United States. As fully trained astronauts, the teachers should be eligible for those assignments.

"I would hope that there are plans for that," said Cindy McArthur, who heads NASA’s Teaching From Space program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

For more information on the Shuttle Endeavor mission see Nasa's site