Three teachers are scheduled to embark on a unique mission June 14. They are among the newest class of 11 astronauts recruited by NASA, who will begin training this summer for a future trip into space. The trio of educators intend to use their experience with the nation's space program to extend the boundaries of the traditional classroom to the cosmos and beyond.

The teachers were selected from a field of more than 1,000 applicants and will live, work, and train with a corps of more than 100 astronauts at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. If all goes according to plan, the teachers and the others in the astronaut Class of 2004 could be scheduled for a space flight by 2009.

No teacher has flown into space since Christa McAuliffe, who died in the 1986 Challenger explosion. The teacher who served as McAuliffe's alternate on that flight, Barbara Morgan, has been training in Houston since 1998 and is scheduled for a space flight in 2006.

"These are the astronauts who will lead us through the next steps in the new exploration vision," said NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe. "The class is made up of pilots and engineers who will help us develop the next-generation vehicle, scientists who will do research to help humans live and travel in space, and three new 'educator astronauts' to help ensure that a new generation is ready for the challenges of [space science] exploration."

Despite the possibility of a protracted wait for the opportunity to join a flight, the new astronauts, who were introduced May 6 at the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum annex in Chantilly, Va., said the chance was one they couldn't pass up.

"I'm standing in the right line, at least," said Richard Arnold of Berlin, Md., who most recently had been teaching at the American International School in Bucharest.

Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, 28, of Vancouver, Wash., first learned of NASA's Educator Astronaut Program (EAP) as she searched the internet seeking an answer to a student's question: "How do you go to the bathroom in space?"

"Today I say goodbye to one chapter of my life and start another," the teacher of five years said earlier this month during a school assembly attended by about 2,000 people, including Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson.

Metcalf-Lindenburger said she has enjoyed her job teaching science at Hudson's Bay High School, but is "looking forward to teaching in a different way" through EAP.

The program was developed by NASA to recruit K-12 teachers with the experience and expertise necessary to engage in space travel. During training and upon their return, educator astronauts are charged with helping the agency develop new ways to connect space exploration with the classroom and to inspire the next generation of scientists and explorers.

"When I saw the announcement, I felt that everything I had done to this point was in preparation for this job," said the third educator-astronaut candidate, Joe Acaba. A journeyman and former Marine reservist, Acaba worked as a Peace Corps volunteer and as a hydrogeologist for an environmental consulting firm in Los Angeles before settling in Florida, where he taught ninth and 10th graders at Melbourne High School in Brevard County.