COURTESY NASA Air Force Lt. Col. Mike Fincke juggles oranges in the International Space Station. The NASA astronaut spent 187 days on board the station with a Russian cosmonaut last year.

Astronauts launch
dreams on tour of
Hawaii schools

NASA astronauts and educators wound up a tour of several Hawaii public schools last week as the agency prepares to launch a new college scholarship program for future space scientists and mission specialists.

The ROTC-style initiative, to be formally announced around March 1, will pay for college for students who agree to put in time with NASA after graduation.

The details still are being worked out, but the basic plan was touted by NASA's chief education officer, Adena Loston, during a visit to Waimea Middle School on the Big Island.

NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown, also part of the delegation, said, "It will be a very unique program that will provide scholarships, and as a requirement, selected participants will need to work for NASA."

The dollar amounts and years of work commitment are still being hammered out, he said.

The space agency has intensified its focus on students in elementary and middle schools in concert with President Bush's 2004 Vision for Space Exploration, which calls for a return to the moon by 2020 and eventual exploration of Mars.

Loston's office has calculated that the person who will first set foot on Mars is most likely in intermediate school right now.

And the NASA visitors unabashedly encouraged 2,500 young Hawaii students to think it just might be one of them.

"We definitely have had our fair share of astronauts from Hawaii," said NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, who spoke Thursday at Barbers Point Elementary School and Kapolei Middle School. "Kids from Hawaii can and have become astronauts."

COURTESY NASA NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, 37, takes part in the fourth and final spacewalk by the Expedition 9 crew outside the International Space Station during their six-month mission. Fincke and cosmonaut Gennady Padalka spent more than five hours doing maintenance work and installing antennas.

Fincke, 37, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on an ROTC scholarship, noted that he followed the same career path as Hawaii's Ellison Onizuka.

UH graduate wins top NASA award A former Hawaii resident has received a prestigious NASA award for his work on preparing the space shuttle for a return to service after the Columbia disaster. Chris Davis, a senior project manager in the Spaceport Engineering and Technology directorate at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., recently received the space shuttle program's highest recognition, the Space Flight Awareness Award. He was honored for two projects, one involving the orbiters' thermal protection system and another involving foam inspection on the external fuel tanks. Davis' team developed a state-of-the-art technique called shearography to ensure that foam will not come off the external tank during launch and ascent. Shearography uses a laser to detect defects. Davis, who has worked at the space center since 1990, is a graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a degree in mechanical engineering. He also is a graduate of Saint Anthony's Elementary school and Damien Memorial High School. The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003, killing all seven aboard. NASA hopes to resume shuttle flights this year. Star-Bulletin staff

Onizuka died aboard the shuttle Challenger in 1986, but his legacy endures at the Challenger Center Hawaii, at Barbers Point Elementary, and at other NASA educational facilities.

"One of our missions is to inspire the next generation of explorers," said Fincke. "We need kids to study hard in science and math so that we can explore the rest of the solar system. But this country also needs people who know that dreams can come true. If these kids don't become astronauts but become adults with a broader outlook, we still win as a country."

Fincke, who spent six months aboard the International Space Station last year, drew rave reviews for his video and photo presentation at Barbers Point.

"It was really great," said Principal Claudia Nakachi. "He was able to engage the students, reaching them with humor and the importance of his mission. He showed how liquids behave in space, and how they ate and how they flew and how he was able to sleep, the gravity kinds of things. The kids really enjoyed it."

In an interview, Fincke said Hawaii kids show great potential as astronauts because of their strong sense of community and environment.

"Living on an island, you really have to understand how you affect your natural environment," he said. "Living in a tin can" -- the space station -- "we have to think about how we recycle and have an appreciation for nature, for sure."

The NASA team visited Waimea Middle School last Monday and Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School in Lihue on Tuesday. Both are so-called NASA Explorer Schools, among 50 chosen nationwide in 2003 to participate in NASA activities, a downlink from the space station and teacher workshops to encourage careers in science, math and technology.

Fincke completed 187 days aboard the space station last October with Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka. He participated in four spacewalks, logging more than 15 hours outside the craft.

Fincke told the Hawaii students he and Padalka are proud of their cooperative efforts. "It shows what human beings can do when we work together constructively -- and that seemed to resonate especially with the middle-school kids," he said. "They agreed that people should be working on great things like flying in space instead of fighting each other."