Space
teacher Barbara Morgan, NASA's first professional educator astronaut, will hang
up her spaceflight wings in August after a two-decade trek to orbit that
culminated with a shuttle launch last year.
Morgan, 56,
first joined NASA in 1985 when she was selected as the backup civilian educator
for the agency's Teacher
in Space program. She left NASA and returned to teaching after the
ill-fated launch of the space shuttle Challenger, which exploded
and broke apart just after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986 with seven astronauts
aboard, including the first Teacher in Space Christa McAuliffe.
But Morgan
returned in 1998, when she was selected as NASA's first professional educator
astronaut. She was named to NASA's STS-118 shuttle crew in 2002, but her flight
was delayed by a second shuttle tragedy, the 2003 loss of the shuttle Columbia
and its crew of seven astronauts.
Morgan launched
to the International Space Station (ISS) in August 2007, when she and six
crewmates flew a successful 13-day
mission to continue construction on the orbiting laboratory before
returning home aboard their shuttle Endeavour.
"It is
really tough to leave NASA," Morgan said in a NASA statement. "It is a
great organization with great people doing great things. We're going back to
the moon and on to Mars."
Morgan, a
former McCall, Idaho, elementary school teacher, is leaving NASA for a position
as Distinguished Educator in Residence at Boise State University, where she'll work
with the state of Idaho on science and math education.
"We live in
a time when our state needs a strong voice to advocate for the importance of
science, technology, engineering and math education to benefit our children,
our economy, and our nation," said Boise State President Bob Kustra in a
statement. "As a respected teacher, mission specialist and astronaut, Barbara
is uniquely qualified to provide this voice and this leadership."
A native of
Fresno, Calif., Morgan spent more than 305 hours in space during the STS-118
mission. While working in orbit, she wielded robotic arms aboard the shuttle
Endeavour and station, as well a spoke
to schoolchildren on Earth to describe life in space. She is married and
has two sons, and said before her STS-118 mission that she ultimately hoped to
return to education after flying in space.
"Barbara
has served NASA and the Astronaut Office with distinction over the course of
her career," said NASA's chief astronaut Steve Lindsey in a statement.
"From the Teacher in Space Program to her current position as a fully
qualified astronaut, she has set a superb example and been a consistent role
model for both teachers and students. She will be missed."
Morgan is
leaving NASA with three remaining educator astronauts in the agency's
spaceflying ranks: mission specialists Richard Arnold, Joseph Acaba and Dottie
Metcalf-Lindenburger. The teacher-astronauts were recruited in 2004, with Arnold
and Acaba slated to launch in 2009 during NASA's STS-119 shuttle mission to the
space station.
"I'm especially proud that we have three other teachers who
are astronauts, and there will be others in the future," Morgan said. "I'm very
excited to go to work for Boise State University. I like everything about it,
and it's going to be wonderful helping exploration by working full time for
education."
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