Space Shuttle Launch (STS-125)

Since my school is so close to Johnson Space Center, I've had the pleasure of teaching the kids of many astronauts and other NASA employees. I've been able to get private tours of the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, the vehicle mockup facility, and the meteorite lab, and been invited to participate in some pretty cool experiences. These are some of my favorites:

1.) I helped coordinate a school-wide assembly so that an astronaut on the ISS could talk via HAM radio directly with his daughter (one of my students) and answer questions from others at the school. This was filmed for an IMAX movie about the Space Station and featured several minutes of my students at the microphone, and at one point the camera pans out across the audience and you can clearly see the rest of my students, with me standing behind them!

2.) I was invited to go to JSC's Mission Control to watch a liftoff with friends and family of an astronaut! It was very cool watching all of the mission controllers working hard to make sure everything went smoothly. I had a lot to talk about with my students the next day!

3.) Another astronaut's family invited me to go to Kennedy Space Center to watch an actual shuttle launch (STS-125) in person!

This is a photo of where they prepare the cargo (in the giant silver cylinders) for flight.

This is the enormous Vehicle Assembly Building, where they put everything together before moving it out to the launch pad.

This is one of NASA's officially published photos of that mission on the launch pad the night before, ready to go.

And here's another official NASA photo, taken moments after the launch! We were watching from a position just a little further away, but even so the sound and vibrations were just incredible! Something I'll never forget!