Funded in part by the Colorado Space Education Initiative through the Aerospace States Association, this full-day program impacted 570 students. It was coordinated by Donna Meakins, a teacher at Southeast Elementary, and featured fourteen presenters who provided the students with hands-on space education activities and demonstration lectures. Some of the highlights of the day included an appearance by astronaut Bruce McCandless, a portable planetarium from the Denver Museum of Natural History, and a light and laser show conducted by the Science Department of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Finally, after much deliberation, she jumped in. Building confidence in new situations is just one of the products of a week at Space Camp.
Students learn about science by doing.
The evening that Indiana Lt. Governor Joe Kernan visited Space Camp, he talked about the adventure of learning. Few of the students knew that he had studied celestial navigation, as they were doing, under far different circumstances. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, Kernan was a U.S. Navy flight officer aboard the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War. He was shot down by the enemy while on a reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam and was held as a prisoner of war for 11 months.