Morgan, Barbara

Barbara Morgan, in full Barbara Radding Morgan, (born Nov. 28, 1951, Fresno, Calif., U.S.), American teacher and astronaut, the first teacher to travel into space.

Morgan earned a B.A. in human biology from Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., in 1973. She received her teaching credentials from the College of Notre Dame (now Notre Dame de Namur University) in Belmont, Calif., in 1974, and taught remedial courses and elementary school on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Arlee, Mont., and in McCall, Idaho, between 1974 and 1978. After teaching English and science in Quito, Ecua., for one year, Morgan returned to McCall, Idaho, where she taught second through fourth grades until 1998.

Morgan’s astronaut career began on July 19, 1985, when she was selected as the backup candidate for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) Teacher in Space program. As the backup to American teacher Christa McAuliffe, Morgan attended training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston from September 1985 to January 1986. When McAuliffe perished in the Challenger disaster, Morgan replaced her as the Teacher in Space designee and continued to work with NASA’s education division.

Morgan was selected as a mission specialist in 1998 and underwent two years of training and evaluation at the Johnson Space Center. In 2002 she was assigned as a mission specialist to the crew of STS-118, which was originally scheduled for launch in November 2003 but was delayed for several years after the Columbia disaster on Feb. 1, 2003. Morgan finally flew into space on the space shuttle Endeavour on Aug. 8, 2007, on STS-118. The mission was an assembly-and-repair trip to the International Space Station (ISS). Morgan operated the shuttle’s and station’s robotic arms to install hardware on the ISS and to support spacewalks. In addition, schoolchildren enjoyed the lessons she conducted while in space. STS-118 returned to Earth on Aug. 21, 2007.

Even though Morgan did not participate in the Educator Astronaut Project (the successor to the Teacher in Space program) and flew on STS-118 as a standard mission specialist, NASA often referred to her as an “educator astronaut” and a “mission specialist educator” in its press releases and media briefings. Hence, she is widely considered to be NASA’s first educator astronaut.

Morgan left NASA in 2008 to join Boise State University in Idaho as the distinguished educator in residence, a faculty position created specifically for her that entailed a dual appointment to the colleges of engineering and education.