NASA has finally set the date that former Idaho grade school teacher Barbara R. Morgan has waited for since 1986.

NASA officials said yesterday that Morgan, 51, will fly and teach aboard the space shuttle Columbia on an 11-day mission to the International Space Station to be launched Nov. 13. Her intensive training for the mission will begin in a few weeks.

Morgan was the understudy for NASA's first "Teacher in Space," Christa McAuliffe, who died aboard the shuttle Challenger almost 17 years ago. McAuliffe and her six crewmates were killed when a seal on the shuttle's solid fuel booster rocket failed, triggering an explosion that destroyed the spacecraft. Investigators blamed cold weather at launch time and flawed launch-safety procedures.

NASA's Teacher in Space program was halted. "But the dream continued," said Maryland Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski. Now, "we're going to once again fulfill the dream of sending a teacher into space."

Morgan, who taught first and third grades, told city school children at the Maryland Science Center yesterday that "NASA and teachers share the same mission - to explore, to learn and to share. I am especially proud to be flying as both an astronaut and a teacher, and to continue Christa McAuliffe's mission."

Morgan, who is married and the mother of two teen-agers, said she has no trepidation about going into orbit.

"What happened with that mission was wrong," she said. "But what [the Challenger crew] and Christa were trying to do was absolutely right. And if it's right to do, you keep on doing it."

After the Challenger accident Morgan went back to teaching in Idaho but continued to do educational work for NASA around the country. In 1998 she was selected to resume her astronaut training and has worked as a spacecraft communicator at Mission Control in Houston, where her family has settled.

The primary goal of her flight next year will be to deliver cargo to the space station and to install another section on the station's backbone, or "truss."

Morgan will have regular duties as a mission specialist. "There's not room for folks to be along for the ride," said NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe. Morgan's job will be to keep watch on the well-being of crewmates as they perform each of three planned spacewalks.

But she will also be kept busy interpreting the experience for students and teachers on the ground, via the Internet and live interactive television. NASA is developing educational materials and curriculum guides for use in the classroom.

"NASA has a responsibility to cultivate a new generation of scientists and engineers," O'Keefe said. "Education has always been a part of NASA's mission, but we have renewed our commitment to get students excited about science and mathematics."

O'Keefe said he was "mystified" when he took the job last year about why it had taken so long for NASA to resume the Teacher in Space program. He promised NASA will soon be recruiting more teachers to follow Morgan into space.

It's not that space flight is no longer dangerous. "It is as risky as it has ever been," O'Keefe said. But, since Challenger, NASA has learned to better manage those risks. "Our safety operations are better than they have ever been."

Edward Brown, 34, a ninth-grade science teacher at Baltimore's Digital Harbor High School, told Morgan yesterday he was thrilled and proud that she was going to fly in space and share the experience with students. "There's been so much bad publicity about teachers, and teachers not being qualified," he said.

Morgan's flight, he said, makes a statement about educators: "It says we are capable, intelligent and competent at what we do."