NASA’s New Educator Astronauts Face Long Wait for Their Shuttle Missions
When the U.S. space agency pinned badges on the 11 newest members of its astronaut corps this winter, it also increased by three its cadre of educator astronauts.
Three former teachers—Dorothy M. Metcalf-Lindenburger, Richard R. Arnold II, and Joseph M. Acaba—graduated from NASA’s grueling training program. The gauntlet of fitness tests, survival and technical training, and dawn-to-dark studies began shortly after their selection out of thousands of other K-12 educators who had applied to the space program in 2004.
They join Barbara R. Morgan, the first educator-mission specialist, who passed the same training in 2000. Unlike them, Ms. Morgan, 54, has been designated for a space-shuttle mission—an assembly mission for the orbiting International Space Station. NASA says the mission will be the fifth upcoming flight for the often-delayed shuttle program; the official estimate is for the flight to happen later this...
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