Close to 4,000 students in fourth, sixth and ninth grades in Wise, Lee, Scott, Dickenson and Russell counties and Norton, as well as Wise County Christian School, UVa-Wise and Mountain Empire Community College have been invited to attend. Seventeen students will have an opportunity to ask questions to astronauts on the space station during the live.
GOV. BOB MCDONNELL will also appear via Skype and US SENATOR MARK R. WARNER is sending a video message to the students. Two former astronauts, ANOUSHEH ANSARI AND LELAND MELVIN, will also attend and talk about their own space flight experiences. DR. BILLE REED will talk about the launches being planned this year to the ISS from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, VA.
Exhibits will include a moon rock from the Apollo 14 mission and a FULL-SCALE MODEL OF ROBONAUT 2 (R2), a humanoid robot sent to the space station last year. Adam Sanders, a graduate of Powell Valley High School and the University of Virginia, was the lead software engineer on THE R2 PROJECT. PC Magazine has recently rated R2 as among the TOP 10 RESEARCH PROJECTS TO WATCH in 2012.
There will also be a lunar globe, lunar space suit and full-scale model of the Mars Science Laboratory rover "Curiosity", which will arrive on Mars this coming August. The rover was launched late last year to determine whether the planet has ever been able to support life and whether it could in the future.
If the reader is within a two-to-three hour drive from this event in Wise, Virginia (near Eastern Kentucky, East Tennessee and Western North Carolina), it is one not to miss as a human space flight, robotics, or lunar exploration enthusiast. Call 276.328.6111 for more information today.
Meanwhile, the Russians are preparing for the launch of Progress-46 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station Wednesday, January 25 to dock at the ISS on January 27, 2012 with additional cargo and supplies.
Source: lights-in-sky.blogspot.com
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