I am still 'spacey'!

Wow, I still am scratching my head and wondering if I imagined my week in Huntsville. I am trying to share my story with anyone who will listen. Even the gentleman at the Y was hearing the story. Before it was said and done, I had a circle of people listening the other day.

I also made the local paper. They did a really nice job with it!


Jul 09, 2009
Teacher 'spaces out' for a week
By SARA ARTHURS

Staff Writer

Heather Hunt couldn't believe she had been selected to participate in Space Camp. Now, she's preparing to use what she learned there to help her students better grasp science concepts.

Hunt, a resident of Findlay, teaches special education classes at Lima North Middle School in Lima.

Hunt attended through the Honeywell Educators at Space Academy, a program in which the Honeywell company provides scholarships for teachers to attend Space Camp at the education department of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Alabama.

Hunt was one of about 400 teachers selected to attend from around the world. She said she enjoyed meeting the teachers from other countries.

Among her tasks were a simulated parachute jump, helicopter crash and space shuttle mission.

"I am afraid of heights and I get carsick, so it was a big challenge for me to do these things," Hunt said.

Hunt particularly liked the shuttle mission.

"It was the coolest thing," she said.

There were 20 people in her group, and each was given a job to do. One person might be mission control, another the commander of a shuttle and a third a payload specialist. The people in mission control talked the others through their tasks. For example, the person flying the shuttle had to flip switches on and off in the correct order, Hunt said.

Hunt's task was to do a space walk and repair a satellite. Once the shuttle got into orbit, she was strapped into a machine that simulates flying in space. The machine moved her around, so she had to be tethered to the satellite she was fixing.

"Otherwise, you would float away from it," she said.

She and her fellow "astronauts" wore blue space suits. Hunt said she had hoped to wear the traditional white space suit, but they were being disinfected because some children who had gone to Space Camp were ill.

In a second shuttle mission, Hunt's job was to do experiments on the space station, testing soil from Mars to find out the acidity and what could grow there.

Hunt also liked the Multi-Axis Trainer.

"It's like a gyroscope, and it spins you so you can feel what it would be like to tumble into the atmosphere," she said.

Another task was doing a simulated space walk, in which Hunt had to go out and fix a telescope. She said it took about 45 minutes.

On her blog, Hunt refers to herself as "Space Cadet Hunt."

Hunt spent a week at Space Camp, and said a highlight was getting to meet astronauts while there.

Hunt never expected to get to go the camp. She received an e-mail at school and was interested but didn't think about it afterward.

"I applied on a whim, and I forgot about it," she said.

She received a letter in the mail saying she had been selected, and said her surprised response made her husband wonder what was going on.

Hunt went to her doctor to get a motion sickness patch and said she did not get sick during the camp.

"I participated in everything, no matter what," she said.

One particularly scary task was jumping off a 42-foot tower in a simulated parachute jump. Hunt also had to go through a simulated helicopter crash.

Hunt said she has always been interested in watching the space shuttle take off, but now she has a better understanding of the science behind it, and hopes to share it with her students.

"I hope it will further their quest for wanting to learn about space... . I hope that my excitement will get the kids excited," she said.

Science studied in space comes back to help scientists on Earth, she said.

Hunt said that while her classes cover several different subjects, science is one of them and she is always looking for new ways to teach it and new training.

She said Space Camp was one of the best such trainings she's had.

"It was just so incredible," she said. "Next to getting married, I think it probably was the coolest experience I've ever had."

The experience will carry over into her classroom, since she can share what she has learned with her students.

Along with the tasks like the shuttle simulation, there was also a lot of classroom instruction in which the Space Camp attendees learned some of the science behind what they were doing.

Hunt learned that the difference in temperature between the surface and the atmosphere of Mars is such that, if a person were to stand there, their feet would be warm enough to wear flip-flops but their head cool enough they'd need a hat.

Hunt said it's important for teachers to know about science so they can pass it on to their students.

"Our next astronauts are now in the fourth to eighth grade," she said. "They want to go back to the moon in 2020 and they want to go to Mars in 2030."

Even for those who can't go into space, that sense of adventure can translate into other areas of life, she said.

"Explore the world around you, because you never know what you're going to find.... If you don't explore, you don't learn anything new," she said.

Arthurs: (419) 427-8494

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