A Long-Awaited Lesson From Space

A long last, Barbara Morgan got to do something she’s been looking forward to for more than two decades: talk to students from space.

She and three astronauts fielded questions from children gathered at the Discovery Center of Idaho, Barbara’s home state. They kept the kids laughing with orbital demonstrations of drinking in space, chasing a slow-moving baseball and microgravity juggling.

Ever the teacher, Barbara managed to squeeze in a quick science lecture when one student asked her about operating the shuttle’s robot arm.

“A really big challenge is trying to keep yourself steady, because as you probably know from Newton’s law, ‘Every action has an equal and opposite reaction,’ she said, demonstrating how her body floats up when she pivoted a control stick. “You’ve got to learn to really restrain yourself and hold yourself down with foot loops,” Barbara said.

Nine years of training in the astronaut corps couldn’t prepare her for the way she felt in space, especially during the first few days of the mission. “It was pretty much a big surprise for me the very first day when the whole day I felt like I was upside-down. There’s just no preparing for that. It’s just something you experience and enjoy and get used to,” she said.

Even though Barbara had to give up classroom teaching to become an astronaut, she said there really wasn’t much difference between the two jobs. “Astronauts and teachers actually do the same thing,” she said. “We explore, we discover and we share. The great thing about being a teacher is that you get to do that with students. And the great thing about being an astronaut is that you get to do it in space. Those are absolutely wonderful jobs.”