School teacher Barbara Morgan, the backup 'Teacher in Space' crew member for the Challenger Shuttle flight in 1986, became the first teacher in space Wednesday when the Space Shuttle* Endeavour *took off on its 11 day mission.
Morgan is about to be (3:21 EST) on board the International Space Station with 7 other Astronauts and 2 Cosmonauts. (This is especially remarkable given that having an *International *Space Station did not seem like a possibility 21 years ago.) "When we first came to orbit, it took a little getting used to," Morgan said. "I felt like I was upside down the whole time."
Morgan trained side by side with Teacher in Space, Christa McAuliffe, before the *Challenger *disaster halted the program. But Morgan wasn't deterred. When the program was "re-invented" in 1998, she moved to Houston to begin training again -- this time as a full fledged Educator Astronaut.
Now, nine years of living in Houston later, she finally is flying high.
In the images, McAuliffe and Morgan train for weightlessness on NASA's KC-135 aircraft.
