Thousands of Virgin Islands students got the chance to see a real astronaut, not on television, but live - at the University of the Virgin Islands NASA Awareness Days. The three-day event ran from Nov. 17 to 20 on UVI's St. Thomas and St. Croix campuses. It was designed to bring an awareness of space administration to the community, featured astronaut Stephanie Wilson and Astrophysicist Dr. Beth Brown.
Wilson and Dr. Brown are both African-American women who have set records in their fields.
Dr. Wilson was the first woman and first African-American at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to be selected for mission specialist training. Dr. Brown was the first African-American woman to obtain a doctorate in astronomy from the University of Michigan department of astronomy.
Wilson is a mission specialist at the Johnson Space Center in Texas. As a mission specialist Wilson, an astronaut who has qualified for flight assignment, is in charge of operating experiments, deploying satellites and handling many other aspects of Space Shuttle missions.
Dr. Brown is the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) principal astrophysics acquisition scientist. She works at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland where she conducts research on the hot interstellar medium in elliptical galaxies and mechanisms for X-ray emission from faint elliptical galaxies.
The women were shining examples to students of what they can accomplish through education and determination.
NASA Awareness Days also celebrated UVI’s partnership with NASA and the United Negro College Fund’s Office of Special Programs. It included exhibits, panel discussions, workshops and speeches by Wilson and Dr. Brown and other NASA scientists and administrators.
On display were NASA exhibits from the Ames Research Center, Kennedy Space Flight Center, Glenn Research Center, Goddard Space Flight Center, and the Langley Research Center. UVI student research posters and science fair projects were on display.
NASA Awareness Days are held at institutions around the world where NASA supports programs. NASA has supported UVI's Science and Math Division for many years, with the most recent being a $150,000 grant to support the Saturday and Summer Science Academies on both campuses. It was the first time NASA Awareness Days were held in the Virgin Islands.
For more information call Dr. Hernandez-Badia at 693-1383 or Kichma Nieves at 692-4150.
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