NASA Officials to Share Space Vision With Local Middle School Youth
April 6, 2004
Release: 04-18
NASA representatives will visit two local middle schools this month *to share the agency’s vision for space exploration with the next generation of explorers.
Dryden Flight Research Center Director Kevin Petersen, along with astronaut Pamela Melroy, pilot for the STS-92 and STS-112 space shuttle missions, will visit Edwards Middle School students in the Desert High School auditorium, 1575 Payne Ave., Edwards Air Force Base, this Friday, April 9 at 9:30 a.m.
Tom Luedtke, NASA’s associate administrator for procurement, will visit Gifford C. Cole Middle School, 3126 East Avenue I, Lancaster, Wednesday, April 14 at 9 a.m. Mark Pestana, Dryden’s acting deputy director of management and a research pilot, will also visit Cole.
Cole and Edwards are two of 50 NASA Explorer Schools (NES) selected in 2003 to enter a three-year educational partnership with NASA. The schools will receive grants to support purchase of technology equipment to aid in science and mathematics education. The NES educator teams are receiving sustained professional development and have benefited from a one-week workshop at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards.
“As NASA moves forward to carry out the vision for space exploration, it’s important to excite this next generation about the possibilities,” said Michelle Davis, NASA Dryden’s pre-college officer. “In partnership with our schools, it is essential that we create learning environments that will nurture the first humans who will explore Mars and beyond. We are a nation of explorers who cannot turn this vision into reality without young people.”
Luedtke and Petersen will talk with students about our destiny as explorers, NASA’s stepping- stone approach to exploring Earth, the moon, Mars and beyond. They will also discuss how space impacts our lives, and how people and machines rely on each other in space.
Media interested in interviews with the NASA representatives in conjunction with their visits to Cole and Edwards Middle Schools should contact Beth Hagenauer at (661) 276-7960.
For information about the NASA Explorer Schools Program on the Internet, visit: http://explorerschools.nasa.gov
For more information about the Vision for Space Exploration on the Internet, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/solarsystem/explore_main.html
-NASA-