She has finally made it..

Our second teacher in space has finally made it. At of 5:45 pm CST, Endeavour has seperated from the fuel tank meaning that the Astronauts are safely in space. This is a bittersweet moment for the NASA community and those who were alive when the first attempt to put a teacher in space faced a great tragedy with the loss of the Challenger and her 7 person crew, including Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space. Our teacher now, Barbara Morgan, was Christa's backup for the Challenger mission.

Barbara and Christa were chosen for the Teacher In Space Program by NASA in the 1980's. This was a program initiated by NASA to get America's attention back to space exploration and to excite young students to go into the fields of study that relate to Space travel, including math and science.

As I stated earlier, it is bittersweet. It is happy in the fact that the Teacher In Space program can now get off the ground and students can now interact with a teacher in space. This is something that will excite many science students around the country. It is sad though to think about the program as it was 20 years ago and those that were lost inthe Challenger disaster. The tragedy was not in vein however because NASA learned a lot from that incident and made policy changes to prevent something like that happening again in the future.

Many people across the country will be watching this event and remembering that fateful day in 1986 and looking forward to the reports from Barbara Morgan and her fellow crew on STS-118.