McCall Idaho Headline News

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida
For the second time in her life, Idaho school teacher Barbara Morgan on Thursday was scheduled to climb aboard a space shuttle poised for launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

She is due to settle into the middle seat on the lower level of the crew cabin, the same position where 21 years ago another teacher, Christa McAuliffe, sat during the short and tragic flight of Challenger.

Morgan, who is now a full-fledged astronaut, and her six crewmates were set to take part in a routine dress rehearsal for launch, one of the final major training exercises before the shuttle Endeavour, the ship built to replace Challenger, lifts off on a construction mission to the International Space Station.

NASA managers plan to meet next week to set a firm date for Endeavour's liftoff, now targeted for Aug. 7.

Deja Vu to 1985
Morgan's first foray into the crew cabin was in 1985 when she was training as McAuliffe's backup. She had hoped to fly after McAuliffe's safe return as NASA looked to use the high-profile shuttle missions to interest children in math, science and engineering by flying teachers.

McAuliffe, a New Hampshire high school teacher, planned to conduct interactive lessons while in orbit.

Space shuttle mission specialist Barbara Morgan shows a bag that will grow basil seeds in space to a group of students that participated in an educational event last week at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Holding the bag is STS-118 Commander Scott Kelly.

School children instead learned of the dangers of spaceflight. McAuliffe and six astronauts were killed on Jan. 28,1986 when one of Challenger's booster rockets leaked fuel, triggering an explosion 73 seconds after liftoff.

NASA had known of problems with joints on the boosters before the flight but did not believe it posed a serious threat to the ship or the safety of the crew.

Similar thinking led to the 2003 Columbia disaster, which was tied to a piece of foam debris falling off the fuel tank during launch and damaging the ship's heat shield. As Columbia descended through the atmosphere for landing, the heat shield failed, triggering the ship's destruction and the deaths of another seven astronauts.

"We mourn the loss of our fellow astronauts, yet we understand it's worth it. We want to continue with manned spaceflight," said Endeavour pilot Charles Hobaugh, who as Columbia's communications liaison at Mission-Control was the last person to speak to the crew. "We respect all those that are left behind, yet we still press on."

No one embodies the sentiment more than Morgan, now 55, and the mother of a college sophomore and a high school senior. The science and math classes NASA wanted to teach from space have taken a back seat to what Morgan considers a higher priority lesson in fortitude.

"What happened with Challenger was wrong but what the crew and what NASA was trying to do was absolutely right," Morgan said during an informal briefing with reporters at the base of the launch pad on Wednesday. "I'm grateful that we're continuing on."
Commitment Important

Morgan agreed to stay on as NASA’s designated Teacher-in Space after Challenger's demise because she felt it was important to show children to stick with a commitment even - and especially - in the face of failure.

"We had school kids all over the world looking at adults and watching what adults do in a bad situation, and I felt it was really important to show them that adults do the right thing," Morgan said. "I've carried that with me ever since. I'm personally very excited about going into space,
but that's not my motivation. I'm here because of that and because I'm a schoolteacher."

Morgan doesn't need to look far to find someone who absorbed her lesson. Her crewmate, Tracy Caldwell, was a teen-ager when the Challenger was getting ready to launch, and it inspired her to become an astronaut.

"I'm standing here and it's quite an awesome feeling to know that it was that motivation I felt watching the nation get excited over Christa McAuliffe and their mission that propelled me to do as well as I did in school and to try as hard as I did," Caldwell said.

Morgan's main job is to operate the shuttle's robot arm and oversee the transfer of cargo to and from the station. She won't have much time for lessons from space, such as what McAuliffe planned to conduct. But the crew is flying 10 million basil seeds which will be distributed to students and two prototype plant growth chambers that will be left on the space station to test how plants grow in space.

Education Will Happen After the Mission
NASA has organized several educational programs in conjunction with Morgan's flight, but most will be developed after she has returned and when schools resume from summer vacations.

The projects include an engineering design challenge for students to develop plant growth chambers suitable for space. The project aims to interest kids in technologies needed for people to colonize the moon, Mars and other bodies in the solar system.

Another project encourages healthy eating and regular exercise, a lifestyle practiced by astronauts that NASA would like to spread to the general public as well.
But the most important lesson Morgan and her crewmates would like to impart is the importance of discipline and self-fulfillment.

"Flying in space is an incredible privilege, but the best part about it for me personally is working in a program that is incredibly complex, incredibly difficult, and working hard at it and being successful," said Endeavour's commander, Scott Kelly.

"That is something that kids can experience themselves," he added. "They can work hard at something, be successful at it, and then be proud of themselves for it."