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BY MELANIE CSEPIGA
Times Correspondent | Saturday, November 22, 2008 | (1 comment(s))
Astronaut Jerry Ross can still recall the wide-eyed wonder he felt as a youngster growing up in rural Crown Point at a time when outer space had become the newest frontier to explore.
"I can remember many nights lying on bales of hay and looking out at the stars with my best friend Dr. Jim Gentleman," Ross, 60, said from the Johnson Space Center in Houston where he is Vehicle Integration Test Office Chief.
Like much of the nation, Ross said, "From the beginning, it captivated me." His head was in the stars before the first satellite was launched by Russia in 1957.
"My mother helped me make scrapbooks. All my aunts and uncles knew and saved me their Look and Life magazines," he said, adding that he was in fourth grade when he knew he wanted to go to Purdue University, the school that had graduated the scientists and engineers he admired.
"I played hooky from school to watch John Glenn," Ross said, then told of his senior trip to Daytona Beach with a couple of friends that ended up with a side trip to Cape Canaveral (Kennedy Space Center now) to watch the launch of a target vehicle.
Ross would go on to make history as the first human ever to be launched into space seven times.
In October, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration celebrated its 50th birthday. Ross said he is living his dream, and today's youngsters can do the same. He said NASA has many varied programs aimed at nurturing an interest in space exploration.
"You never know what will light one kid's fire," he said. "They're definitely going back to the moon," Ross said of the next generation of astronauts.
"In the next eight to 10 years, we'll be going back to stay for weeks or months. We'll be building habitats up there."
Science teacher Linda Hogan, 60, hopes she can inspire some of her sixth-grade students at Lake Ridge Middle School in Gary to become the astronauts of tomorrow.
As an impressionable 9-year-old, Hogan remembers the palpable excitement of the 1957 October night when the Russian Sputnik was visible, and everyone gathered outside to witness the light in the sky.
"Everybody, my mom, my dad, me, my brother, all stood out on the porch ... We were excited, and we were afraid," she said, adding that the Cold War tensions of the time left them wondering if it would be used to spy on the United States.
That night signalled the beginning of the race to space and the birth of NASA.
Hogan celebrated NASA's birthday in October by experiencing zero gravity ("Very exciting!") with the Northrop Grumman Flights of Discovery Program in Chicago.
Last year, she attended space camp in Huntsville, Ala.
"I'm trying for advanced space camp next," she said.
"My students get so excited when I tell them that when you look up at the sky and see the stars, each one is a sun and could have its own solar system. The sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders are the ones targeted to be on the shuttle to the moon. The moon will be a jumping-off point."
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand the value of space exploration goes far beyond Tang, Teflon and Velcro, Hogan said, referring to products that were used during or developed for space exploration.
"Exploring where we haven't been explains our past," she said.
Perhaps Ross said it best last spring: "We're doing some very important things that feed the economy of the future of the United States. That's one thing that I always try to point out to people, that the money we're spending on the space program isn't shot into space and distributed to the stars. That money is spent here on the Earth, and it's spent on high-technology development and use," he said.
"You look at the kind of things that are driving our economy right now, and many of them are things that have been either developed from the space program -- or advanced by the space program -- in telecommunications, computers and high technology."
BREAKOUTS
We have lift-off!
The space shuttle Endeavour was supposed to be launched last Friday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for its STS-126 mission at the International Space Station. (The Times' Lifestyles section is printed on Thursdays.)
The 15-day mission includes four spacewalks and the transfer and set-up of more than seven tons of equipment and supplies.
Endeavour's main payload is a space-age moving van called Leonardo filled with new quarters and equipment to enlarge the station's resident crew to six members. It also contains a filtering system designed to make wastewater potable.
The seven Endeavour crew members are Robert Kimbrough, pilot Eric Boe, flight engineer Stephen Bowen, Sandra Magnus, Christopher Ferguson, Donald Pettit and lead spacewalker Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper.
Looking for an earthshaking experience?
The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, celebrating its own 75th anniversary this year, is now offering up an exhibit featuring data gathered by NASA in its "Earth Revealed" exhibit, which gives a "real-time" view of our planet as it lives.
Six feet in diameter, the solid carbon fiber globe is suspended dramatically amid computers and video projectors filled to the brim with information from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Visitors can pick from many "play lists" to experience shows on such topics as geophysics, Earth as a habitat for life, climate and currents.
The "Earth Revealed" exhibit is suitable for students in grades four to 12 and adults. It is located on the museum's main floor.
Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry is at 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive. Its hours are 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays.
FYI: msichicago.org.
Astronauts Inc.
Learn more about the men and women, past and present, who are called astronauts, including homegrown hero Jerry Ross, by visiting the Johnson Space Center in Houston online at jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/astrobio.html.
From the pioneers to those who waged the space race to the current space explorers, the site provides biographical information and details on their NASA tenures.
The friendly skies ...
Are you a sky watcher? Would you like to know when certain shooting stars will be coming to a sky near you? If so, head into cyberspace at skymaps.com where dates and times of expected meteor showers and more are provided.
Zero-gravity inspiration
Since 2006, the North Grumman Foundation Weightless Flights of Discovery have taken teachers on a wild, zero-gravity ride every year as a way to inspire students to pursue science by inspiring their teachers first. Northrop Grumman is the third-largest defense contractor in the United States.
Linda Hogan, a Lake Ridge Middle School science teacher in Gary, was the only Indiana teacher to be selected for October's event in Chicago.
FYI: northropgrumman.com
Here's a snapshot of NASA's 50 years:
* Oct. 1, 1958. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) begins operation.
* Oct. 11, 1958. The first NASA launch, Pioneer 1, is successful.
* April 9, 1959. NASA unveils the Mercury astronaut corps of John Glenn, Walter Schirra Jr., Alan Shepard Jr., Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, and Donald "Deke" Slayton.
* April 1, 1960. The first successful meteorological satellite, TIROS 1, to observe Earth's weather is launched.
* May 5, 1961. Alan Shepard Jr., aboard Mercury's Freedom 7, completed the first American space flight involving human beings.
* May 25, 1961. President John F. Kennedy announced the commitment to Project Apollo, landing a man safely on the moon and returning him to Earth.
* Feb. 20, 1962. John Glenn became the first American to circle the Earth, making three orbits in his Friendship 7 Mercury spacecraft.
* July 20, 1962. Telstar 1, the first privately built, communications satellite was launched providing telephone and television signals via satellite.
* June 3-7, 1965. Edward White II becomes the first American to walk in space as part of the Gemini IV mission, critical to the eventual landing on the moon.
* May 30, 1966. The Surveyor 1 becomes the first American spacecraft to "soft land" on the moon, and on June 2, 1966, transmits 10,000-plus photographs of the surface.
* Jan. 27, 1967. Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chafee die during a simulation aboard the Apollo-Saturn on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center when a flash fire breaks out.
* Dec. 21-27, 1968. Astronauts Frank Borman (from Indiana), James Lovell Jr. and William Anders, on board Apollo 8, gave humanity its first look at Earth from afar on a special Christmas Eve.
* July 16-24, 1969. The first lunar landing mission, Apollo 11, with Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins. Armstrong was first, resulting in his historic remark, "One small step for man -- one giant leap for mankind."
* April 11-17, 1970. Apollo 13 becomes a near disaster for the Apollo program when the service module's oxygen tank ruptures.
* July 26-Aug. 7, 1971. Apollo 15 becomes the first expedition-style lunar landing mission and the first to include the lunar rover.
* Jan. 7, 1972. The commitment to what eventually becomes the Space Shuttle, first flown in 1981, is made by President Richard Nixon.
* July 23, 1972. Landsat 1 was launched and changed the way Americans look at the planet. It provided invaluable information on vegetation, insect infestations, crop growth and more.
* July 15-24, 1975. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project is the first international human space flight.
* Oct. 24, 1978. Nimbus 7, an environmental research satellite is launched and provides global evidence of Antarctic ozone depletion.
* June 18-24, 1983. Astronauts Robert Crippen and Frederick Hauck pilot Space Shuttle Challenger. Sally Ride, a mission specialist, becomes the first woman astronaut.
* Aug. 30, 1983. Guion Bluford, the first black American astronaut, is a mission specialist on board the Space Shuttle Challenger.
* Jan. 28, 1986. The Space Shuttle Challenger is destroyed and its crew of seven killed during its launch at the Kennedy Space Center. On board were Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis and teacher Christa McAuliffe.
* April 24, 1990. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched from the Space Shuttle following a decade of frugal space exploration funding.
* Feb. 3-11, 1994. Astronauts Charles Bolden and Kenneth Reightler Jr., flew Space Shuttle Discovery carrying Sergei Krikalev, the first Russian cosmonaut to fly on a U.S. mission in space.
* Sept. 16-26, 1996. The Atlantis retrieves astronaut Shannon Lucid from the Russian Mir Space Station where she set a new record for an American living in space with 181 days there.
* July 4, 1997. The Mars Pathfinder lands on Mars following its late 1996 launch.
* Jan. 29, 1998. An International Space Station agreement among 15 countries is established.
* Oct. 19, 1998. John Glenn returns to space, historically noting that more than 200 Americans had flown in space since his historical 1962 orbit around Earth.
* April 29, 2001. Over many objections, Californian Dennis Tito becomes the first "Space-Tourist," paying $20 million for the privilege to travel the Russian Soyuz to the International Space Station.
* Feb. 1, 2003. The Space Shuttle Columbia in its 28th mission, breaks up about 15 minutes before its scheduled landing killing all seven astronauts -- Rick Husband, Willie McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark and Ian Ramon -- on board. It was the first flight in several years not related to the International Space Station.
* Jan. 3, 24, 2004. NASA lands two mobile geology labs on the surface of Mars in a span of three weeks, and rovers Spirit and Opportunity gather valuable data.
* July 26, 2005. The Space Shuttle Discovery launch marks NASA's first return to human space flight since the Columbia accident.
FYI: history.nasa.gov/Defining-chron.htm.
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Babe wrote on Nov 16, 2008 9:37 PM:
Well done....... "