Astronauts in Training Introduced

CHANTILLY, Va. — NASA on Thursday introduced a class of 11 astronauts, a group that includes three teachers who are giving up the classroom for the chance to fly into space.

The teachers, selected from a field of more than 1,000 applicants, will live, work and train with more than 100 other astronauts at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The new astronauts could be scheduled for space flights by 2009.

No teacher has flown on a shuttle since Christa McAuliffe, who died in the 1986 Challenger explosion. The teacher who served as McAuliffe’s alternate on that flight, Barbara Morgan, is scheduled for a 2006 flight.

The introduction of the 11 astronauts comes as the space program is in flux, with shuttle missions grounded since Columbia disintegrated on reentry last year. Flights will not resume until at least 2005, and the fleet will be permanently grounded in 2010 to redirect efforts for a return to the moon by 2020.

Despite the possibility of a protracted wait for the opportunity to join a flight, the new astronauts, who were introduced during a celebration at the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum annex in Chantilly, said they couldn’t pass up the chance.

“I’m standing in the right line at least,” said Richard Arnold of Berlin, Md., who most recently taught at the American International School in Bucharest, Romania.

Another new astronaut, Dr. Robert Satcher, an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, will help NASA research why astronauts suffer bone and muscle degeneration in space.

Marine Corps Maj. Randolph Bresnik of San Diego also is among the new astronaut class.