Countdown to tomorrow: Partnerships for the 21st century

by Jason Papadopoulos - News Editor

On Wednesday, April 10, at 11:30, the USML-2 crew of astronauts that were visiting WPI gave a presentation called "Countdown to Tomorrow: Building Partnerships for the 21st Century" to the WPI community and invited guests. The presentation was also attended by M. Howard Jacobsen, a member of the Board of Trustees of WPI, Reverend Daniel P. Reilley, Bishop of Worcester, Edward A. Parrish, President of WPI and Robert V. Antonucci, Commissioner, Massachusetts Department of Education. Edward M. Kennedy, US Senator, Mass., was also expected to come but had to cancel at the last minute, to attend the funeral of the late Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown. Grace Corrigan, mother of Christa McAuliffe, one of the astronauts aboard the ill-fated space shuttle Challenger in 1984 and Raymond Mariano, the city's mayor, were invited but could not make it due to the snow storm.

At the conference the seven astronauts, Cdr. Kenneth D. Bowersox,Commander; Kathryn C. Thornton, Payload Commander; Cdr. Michael E. Lopez-Alegria, Flight Engineer/ Mission Specialist; Capt. Catherine, Mission Specialist; Albert Sacco Jr., Payload Specialist (Crystal Growth); Fred W. Leslie, Payload Specialist (Fluid Dynamics); David H. Matthiesen, Alternate Payload Specialist (Crystal Growth) and R. Glynn Holt, Alternate Payload Specialist (Fluid Dynamics) and gave a brief personal introduction of themselves, and described their lives aboard the space shuttle, their findings, and feelings about their trip. They then showed some slides of photos they had taken both of the earth, and themselves while aboard the space shuttle

One of the main topics at the presentation was the educational advances that this mission had achieved. One of the innovations of this mission in comparison to others was the use of downlinking into schools around the US as an educational innovation. Four interactive science lessons were conducted during the mission, while in space the crew conducted the experiments with the students of four high schools in the U.S., one of which was Worcester's South High School. These lessons were then downlinked to 40,000 class-rooms across the US.

An important goal for NASA is to ensure the US has a talented, technically sophisticated and globaly aware youth that will lead the work force into the next millenia. NASA has been trying to achieve this by building partnerships with higher educational institutions, precollege educators, the government and industry to stimulate the interest of the youth, in fields such as science, mathematics, and engineering.

WPI has been an example of the achivement of these goals. A team of undergraduate and graduate students, a visiting professor, and WPI's professors designed and constructed the Zeolite Crystal Growth (ZCG) furnace used on both USML ZCG experiments conducted in space.