NASA Career
In January 1998, 12 years after McAuliffe's death, Morgan was selected by NASA as a Mission Specialist and reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1998, making her a full-time astronaut. Following the completion of two years of training and evaluation, she was assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Space Station Operations Branch. She served in the Astronaut Office CAPCOM Branch, working in Mission Control as prime communicator with on-orbit crews.
Like many other astronauts and cosmonauts, Morgan is a licensed amateur radio operator, having passed the technician class license exam in 2003. On March 2, 2003, she was issued an amateur radio license by the FCC. This qualifies her to use the facilities of the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) project.
Morgan's duties as a Mission Specialist were no different than those of other crew members. While NASA press releases and media briefings often refer to her as a "Mission Specialist Educator" or "Educator Astronaut", Morgan did not train in the Educator Astronaut Project. NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin clarified at a press conference after STS-118 that Morgan was not considered a Mission Specialist Educator, but rather was a standard Mission Specialist, who had been a teacher.
Prior to her flight on STS-118, NASA seemed to limit Morgan's exposure to the press, but Morgan did a series of interviews shortly before the start of the mission about what the crew of STS-118 would be doing to help build the International Space Station, commenting, "You know, there's a great sense of pride to be able to be involved in a human endeavor that takes us all a little bit farther. When you look down and see our Earth, and you realize what we are trying to do as a human race, it's pretty profound.
Three weeks after Morgan's mission ended, she conducted her first space education assignment at Walt Disney World in Florida, telling those in attendance to "Reach for your dreams ... the sky is no limit." Morgan's words were etched into a plaque on a wall of Mission: Space. The "Wall of Honor" contains quotes from notable people, such as Neil Armstrong, John F. Kennedy, Charles Lindbergh, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Galileo, and Christa McAuliffe. Morgan's plaque is placed beside McAuliffe's, which says: "Space is for everybody ... That's our new frontier out there." This event was one of a series of lectures Morgan would complete.
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