Over one hundred students from Redwood Shores and Sandpiper Elementary Schools participated in the golden anniversary celebration of first human space flight at NASA Ames on April 8, 2011. The unique learning opportunity commemorated cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s orbit around Earth on April 12, 1961. Students spent four hours to see over fifty exhibits about aerodynamics, aquaponics, astrobiology, cryogenics, fluorescent spectroscopy, gyroscopes, hyper velocity aircraft design, inflatable planetarium, microbial ecosystems, lunar exploration, nanotechnology, robots, search for life on other planets, search for transiting planets in the Milky Way, rocketry, seismology, space walk, STEM (science, technology, engineering, math), superconductivity, etc.

Many students also earned posters of STS 133 the 133rd space shuttle flight and the final flight of Discovery that launched on February 24, 2011 and landed on March 9, 2011 (less than 30 days prior to their visit to NASA Ames). Now that Discovery is retired from service, someday those posters may become a collectors’ item. “Maybe some of these third and fourth graders will become the engineers to design the replacement of the space shuttle or the astronauts on future missions into space,” said Andrew Young, who has been responsible for the initiation of this program.

— Andrew Young, Redwood Shores resident