NASA astronaut Barbara Morgan to grace Weiser Library April 29


Barbara Morgan, pictured above, is one of Idaho’s most famed residents, having served as a NASA astronaut for 10 years, which included work on the International Space Station. The ISS is still in use to this day and can be tracked using various apps that can be downloaded to your mobile phone. Known as the first teacher in space, Morgan will be visiting Weiser on Saturday, April 29 at the Weiser Library. Librarian Timbra Long said she is hoping the community will show in force to take this rare opportunity to visit with a real astronaut. Morgan will giving her talk at 11 a.m. Photo courtesy from the NASA Johnson Space Center
By: 
Philip A. Janquart
America’s first teacher in space will give talk at 11 a.m.
 
 In 1985, she participated in NASA’s Teacher in Space Program and later served as a NASA astronaut for 10 years.
 In August 2007, she flew on the space shuttle “Endeavor” to help construct the International Space Station, becoming the first teacher in space.
 Today, Barbara Morgan is a Distinguished Educator in Residence, Emeritus, at Boise State University. 
 She will be appearing at the Weiser Public Library on Saturday, April 29 to share the story of her career and answer questions from what is sure to be a wide-eyed and captivated crowd of science and space enthusiasts. She will begin her talk at 11 a.m.
 Morgan is part of the Weiser Library’s “Real People, with Real Stories” lecture series.
 Weiser Librarian Timbra Long confirmed the visit via email on March 10, declaring, “Ok, it’s set!”
 “This is an amazing opportunity for the folks in Weiser to meet an astronaut, someone who has not only made an impact for Idaho, but the space program and for education,” she told the Signal American on April 10. “She is a great teacher and has worked around the world.”
 Long said that it wasn’t easy arranging Morgan’s visit.
 “It was tough finding a date that she was not busy, but I know a friend of a friend who knows her; my lecture people have always been somebody who knows another person, or someone who works with somebody. That’s kind of how we roll sometimes,” Long said, chuckling. “I don’t always know somebody, but I always know somebody who knows somebody else.”
 She said that she hopes a good crowd will be in attendance to welcome the history-making educator to Weiser.
 “Honestly, I don’t know how many people will show up, but I hope to have at least 50 or 60 people here,” said Long, who recently returned from Washington, D.C. where, among other things, she and her son visited the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
 “It was awesome; right now, half of it is closed because they are remodeling, but the half that is open is fantastic and the information they have is just outstanding, and their exhibits are very well done,” she said.
Background:
 Morgan, 71, was born in Fresno, Calif. in 1951. She graduated from Herbert Hoover High School in 1969 and went on to Stanford University where she graduated with distinction in 1973 with a bacholor’s in Human Biology. 
 She began her teaching career in 1974 on the Flathead Indian Reservation at Arlee Elementary in Montana where she taught remedial reading and math before moving on to McCall-Donnelly Elementary School in Idaho. 
 From there, she taught English and science to third graders in Ecuador before returning to McCall-Donnelly Elementary School where she taught second, third, and fourth grades from 1979 to 1998.
 In 1985, Morgan was selected as the backup candidate for the NASA Teacher in Space Project announced by Ronald Reagan in 1984. The initiative aimed to bring teachers into space, an experience intended to be brought back to the classroom and shared with students.
 Teachers Christa McAuliffe and Morgan were selected from a pool of about 11,000 applicants to participate in the program. McAuliffe was trained to become the first teacher in space, with Morgan training alongside her as her backup in the event McAuliffe was unable to go through with the mission.
 In a sad and tragic event that left many Americans traumatized, McAuliffe, from Concord, N.H., was killed alongside six other crewmembers aboard the space shuttle “Challenger” on mission STS-51-L, which disintegrated 73 seconds after takeoff as tens of thousands of people, many of them school children, watched in horror on live television.
 Morgan returned to teaching in Idaho and continued working for NASA part-time. She was selected to join the 1998 astronaut class and in 2007 flew 5.3 million miles in space on STS-118 to help build the International Space Station.
 Her duties included operating the space shuttle and space station robotic arms, serving as loadmaster, assisting the pilots with re-entry and landing, and teaching lessons from orbit to schoolchildren on Earth. In addition to spaceflight, Morgan worked in Mission Control as prime communicator (“Capcom”) with on-orbit crews, and she served in the Space Station Operations Branch and Robotics Branch of the Astronaut Office.
 She retired from NASA in 2008 to become Distinguished Educator in Residence at BSU and has provided vision and leadership to the State of Idaho, primarily in STEM Education, according to her online biography.
 

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