The Day I Met an Astronaut
I would have to count two events that I experienced today among my life’s highlights so far. Our local space museum hosted NASA’s traveling “Driven to Explore” exhibit today. Though the wind speeds forced them to close most of the outdoor display, they did have the “touch a moon rock” trailer open. So, today, I got to touch a rock brought back from the moon by the crew of Apollo 17! It was highly polished, possibly from lots of use, and felt very much like hematite.
The primary highlight of the day, however, was meeting NASA astronaut Steven G. Bowen who flew to the ISS as part of the STS-126 crew last fall. He gave a very informative talk about his mission and took several interesting questions from the audience. Afterwards, he very generously signed autographs for those in attendance. They had pre-printed lithographs available for him to sign, but anticipating the possibility of autographs, I had printed out a nice picture of him on a spacewalk for him to sign. He said that it was “one of his favorites” and wrote a very nice note.
Thanks Captain Bowen!
Saturday, April 4th, 2009
