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NASA Chooses 11 New Astronauts

Posted on: Monday, 10 May 2004, 06:00 CDT

May 10--CHANTILLY, Va. -- NASA named 11 new astronauts Thursday, including three educators who will get the chance to teach from space.

The class, which will begin training at Johnson Space Center in Houston this summer, includes two men with Florida ties: Joe Acaba, a middle-school teacher from Dunnellon, and Army Maj. R. Shane Kimbrough.

During a ceremony at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, agency chief Sean O'Keefe said the new astronauts are the first link to a future the National Aeronautics and Space Administration hopes will include sending people back to the moon and on to Mars.

"Our next generation of explorers will help blaze a cosmic trail through the solar system," O'Keefe said.

Though the nine men and two women introduced Thursday will be trained for both the space shuttle and international space station, their chance to fly probably won't come until the proposed crew exploration vehicle is ready.

That spacecraft, which will be designed to carry astronauts to the moon and beyond, won't be ready for even a test flight until about 2008. The first flight with a crew on board is tentatively scheduled for 2014.

Unlike teacher Christa McAuliffe, who perished alongside her six crewmates when the shuttle Challenger exploded during launch in 1986, Acaba and the other two "educator astronauts" will undergo the same training as their peers.

The class joins an already crowded astronaut corps. NASA's own inspector general noted last summer that, even before the February 2003 loss of the shuttle Columbia grounded the fleet, new astronauts were facing an average 105-month wait before their first flight.

With the shuttle not scheduled to fly again until at least next spring, that wait will be even longer. Though the class of 2004 is smaller than the past several groups selected, the wait will still probably be a decade or more.

One of those waiting is Barbara Morgan, an Idaho teacher who was designated as McAuliffe's backup.

Morgan joined the astronaut corps in 1998 and is scheduled to fly to the space station about a year after the next shuttle is launched.

Astronaut salaries average about $115,000. Many in the corps are assigned to jobs within the shuttle and station program at JSC while they wait for an assignment.

Kimbrough, whose parents live in Florida and who grew up watching launches from his grandparents' house in Brevard County, said the class is looking forward to being involved in the development of the crew exploration vehicle.

"We are all excited about doing that," said Kimbrough, who for the past three years has been a flight-simulation engineer at JSC. "We're excited about the whole vision."

For Acaba, a math and science teacher at Dunnellon Middle School, there is a thrill in everything that has happened since April 12, the day he found out he had made the cut.

Dressed in his royal-blue flight suit, he grinned at his parents, who flew from Southern California to watch their son's debut as an astronaut.

"I feel proud to have this suit on," he said.

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(c) 2004. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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