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March's program was one of our best ever--a talk on NASA's Teacher Astronaut Program by FWAS member Larry Smith, shown at right. Larry is an eighth-grade Science teacher at Smithfield Middle School in the Birdville ISD. Larry was selected to attend last summer's session in Houston based on a competitive application process that included a paper on how he would use the information in his classroom. This is a 2-week course that takes middle school teachers through a compressed full astronaut training program, where they intermingle with actual astronauts! Shown at right from top to bottom are Larry pal-ing around with a space suit, Larry in the shuttle cargo bay mock-up, the group in the neutral buoyancy tank getting ready to work on the ISS mock-up, the team checking out real moon rocks, and an artist conception of a Mars exploration vehicle. Larry says those wacky rocket scientists plan to get a human to Mars by 2011! It "just takes money". Join Larry at Palo Duro Canyon this summer where he will be giving astronomy talks to the park visitors.
Next month Mike Jones will return to give a program on Mirror Testing. The highlight of the show will be a live video demonstration of the "Foucault" test performed on a mirror, and a PowerPoint presentation showing just how the test works. If you have a tester of your own, please bring it to be part of the display, as that's also a goal, to show how such a simple machine as a Foucault tester can yield such astonishing results.
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