Space Camp Was A BLAST!

My trip to Advanced Space Academy in June 2006 took me to Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida for 4 days and then to Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama for 5 more days.  This trip was the second all-expense paid scholarship awarded to me by Honeywell.

I was on an elite team comprised of 15 other middle school teachers from Arizona, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Maryland, Canada, South Africa, Belgium, China and Ireland.  We named our team "New Horizons" and made lasting friendships in an amazingly short amount of time.  We spent four hours on pre-training missions, alpha, beta & charlie, in preparation for our Extended Duration Mission in which we took a payload to the International Space Station.   It was a similar mission to what was accomplished by NASA's recent launch of the STS-121.  During the mission, I served as Flight Engineer on the way up and Commander on the way down.  It was a successful mission and being commander and landing the shuttle without crashing was one thing I got to check off my list of 101 Things to Do.

Other highlights were: Robotics Training & Engineering, SCUBA diving in a UAT (underwater astronaut training) facility, Blue Angels flight simulation, building engine rockets, foxhunt using amateur radio transmitters, satelitte tracking and presenting to 1st year educators at space camp.Last year my students participated in the Honeywell Aerospace Challenge and studied space related themes.  I hope to once again participate in the Honeywell Aerospace Challenge this year and include some fun NASA/Space stuff into my teaching this year. 

Being able to attend Advanced Space Academy was a once in a lifetime experience.  I will always encourage my students to look for, apply and accomplish wonderful, life changing opportunities like these!

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