Space flight has local connection
By PAT FRIDGEN Echo Pilot

Student council officers Pamela Thompson, Allie Sullivan and Mary Ward get a close-up look at the poster that flew around the world, courtesy of a NASA program promoting the study of space.

The eighth-grade students at Greencastle-Antrim Middle School were astronauts vicariously last summer, as something that their hands touched went into space.

A poster with their signatures was aboard the space shuttle Atlantis on Mission STS-117.

The entire student body saw that poster at an assembly in December. It was returned to the school district and is now framed and hanging in Principal Mark Herman's office.

As sixth-graders, the students visited Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. They participated in hands-on activities, watched presentations and signed the poster. It was part of the payload of the Atlantis in an educational program sponsored by technology company Lockheed Martin. The mission was the first scheduled to occur during a school year since the loss of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, which disintegrated upon re-entry over Texas, resulting in the death of the seven crew members.

The March flight was delayed until June 8. It then became the 250th human orbital flight. Science teacher Tony Waggoner told the students the shuttle flew at speeds up to 17,500 miles per hour over 5.6 million miles. It circled the earth 219 times between its launch from Florida and its June 22 landing in California.

Astronauts Rick Sturckow, Lee Archambault, Patrick Forrester, Steven Swanson, John Olivas, Jim Reilly and Clayon Anderson traveled to the International Space Station to continue construction on various segments of the craft.

"You can now say that your names have been among stars, a claim few others around the world can make," Waggoner said. "May you also continue to reach for the stars because a part of you has already been there."

The middle school continues to educate students on space studies in the seventh grade sci-