Barbara Morgan, the teacher-astronaut tapped to fly in space in 2004, said Tuesday she will be carrying on Christa McAuliffe's mission and dream.
Morgan was McAuliffe's backup for NASA's 1986 Challenger mission that ended tragically 73 seconds after liftoff. McAuliffe was one of seven astronauts killed in the explosion.
"It's not that I'll be fulfilling Christa's mission but helping carry it on," Morgan told reporters from Houston before heading over to Mission Control to help coordinate the spacewalk outside the international space station.
Morgan said she often is asked whether she will be fulfilling McAuliffe's classroom-in-space mission, "and I have to disagree with that because the job of education is never fulfilled."
"Every year you have a new group of students. You have a new generation coming. So there's no end point to education, just like there's no end point to the universe and the kinds of things that NASA is doing to try to explore that universe," she said.
She added: "I just see this, for me personally, as one very lucky step in what I hope will be going on forever and ever and ever and growing and growing and growing."
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe announced Friday that Morgan will fly to the international space station sometime in 2004.