I have the LIFE magazine of the men walking on the moon.

I told them how excited I would be to go into space and how thrilled I was when Alan Shepard made his historic flight, and when John Kennedy announced on the news that the men had landed safely on the moon, and how jealous I was of those men.

I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies.

My job in space will be to observe and write a journal. I am also going to be teaching a class for students on earth about life in space and on the space shuttle and conducting experiments.

Sometimes when things get kind of frantic, it helps to call my husband Steve, because I think he's got a real good sense of where everything's gonna be in a few years.

If I can get some student interested in science, if I can show members of the general public what's going on up there in the space program, then my job's been done.