Word: morgans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Think Americans stuck in airports have to wait a long time for a flight? Try 22 years. That's how long astronaut Barbara Morgan, 55 - who blasted off Wednesday aboard the shuttle Endeavour for a planned 11-day mission - had to cool her heels before she got her first chance...
Chosen as the backup to the original teacher-in-space, Christa McAuliffe, in 1985, Morgan was on site at Cape Canaveral the following year when McAuliffe and her six crewmates perished in the explosion of the shuttle Challenger. The fact that she's now in space is a tribute to her tenacity - to say nothing of her courage - as well as to NASA's often artful ability to include a compelling storyline in what would otherwise be a routine space flight. What it says less about - as is so often the case with the NASA of the last generation...
...Morgan nonetheless stayed with the agency, serving as a roving ambassador for space flight and remaining, in name at least, a Teacher in Space designee. Under NASA's newer, stricter flight eligibility rules, however, the only way she could ever get her chance to fly would be to quit the teaching profession and become a professional astronaut, relegating kids' education from space to a much more incidental part of her responsibilities. She applied for a slot and in 1998 was selected; she is now flying as a mission specialist, responsible for operating the robotic arm of both the shuttle...
...been promising big payoffs from the ISS - advances in biomedical research, for example, and in materials manufacturing - since President Ronald Reagan first proposed it in 1984, and has never been able to deliver. Meanwhile, the shuttle Columbia claimed the lives of another seven astronauts in 2003, a disaster Morgan was once again on hand to witness, this time as capsule communicator, in Mission Control...
...Morgan, meantime, will fulfill McAuliffe's legacy, if in a slightly new capacity. No longer a Teacher in Space, but now an "Educator Astronaut," she will teach at least one live lesson from orbit, and up to two more if the mission is extended from 11 to 14 days, as it might be. She is also carrying a cargo of 10 million cinnamon basil seeds (a figure she playfully rounds up to "a kazillion,"), which will be distributed to schoolchildren to grow post-flight, so that they can observe any anomalies that might be attributable to the stint in weightlessness...