The loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia will not stop NASA from putting teachers in space the way a similar disaster did 17 years ago.
Astronaut Barbara Morgan, the first of the space agency's educator astronauts, will still complete the mission she was assigned, NASA officials said Monday. But the date of her launch, initially slated for November 2003, will most likely be pushed back along with every other shuttle mission pending the investigation into the Columbia crash that killed seven Earthbound astronauts.
"NASA has no plans of canceling or otherwise dramatically cutting this program," said NASA spokeswoman Nora Normandy in an interview Monday. "It's going to be a matter of waiting to see how things unfold."
The Educator Astronaut program is an updated version of the space agency's Teacher in Space plan in the 1980s. That program, which culminated with New Hampshire teacher Sharon Christa McAuliffe's ill-fated trip aboard the Space Shuttle
ChallengerThe Challenger accident dealt a critical blow to the NASA and its Teacher in Space program. Morgan served as back-up to McAuliffe in 1986 and returned to her Idaho classroom following the accident. In 1998, however, she began training as a full-time astronaut in the revamped program. Last month, NASA announced a national call for applications to add up to six more educator astronauts into its spacefaring fold. Thousands of teachers have already been nominated for the handful of slots.
"This is not a one-shot opportunity, where you go home after one mission," Normandy said. "Educator astronauts are professional astronauts. They move to Houston and train for missions."
Space educators offered their support to Morgan and the entire educator astronaut program.
"The whole idea of educator astronauts is a new enterprise for NASA," said Mary Liscombe, director of education for the Christa Corrigan McAuliffe Challenger Center at Framingham State College in Massachusetts. The center is one of 46 across the country that teaches schoolchildren the merits of science through experiments in mock-ups of space labs and mission control. "It's more about education in space, instead of about one teacher."
Promoting education, she added, is crucial to relating the importance of space science to children - adults too - and is a long-term commitment.
Liscombe is a former classmate of McAuliffe's and also knows Morgan. "This has to be a huge blow for Barbara, with the loss of her colleagues," Liscombe said. "I'm just hoping that we can do our part to remind the public and children that any time we go into a new area of exploration, we're going to encounter risk."
In addition to the obvious rescheduling of Morgan's mission, which was to deliver the final truss segment to the International Space Station, the Columbia inquiry may also push back the final application deadline for the next round of educator astronauts. But any changes to the April 30th deadline will be listed on NASA's
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