4/2/2013 Written by Susan Mumm
Written by Written by Susan Mumm
About 220 high school and junior high students from the area surrounding Urbana-Champaign attended Illinois Space Day recently on the University of Illinois campus.
Hosted by the Illinois Space Society (ISS) student organization on April 14, Illinois Space Day promotes space exploration, technology, and advancement, and focuses on the importance of space, its effects on day-to-day lives, and all of the achievements possible in space-related fields. ISS hopes to inspire the next generation of astronauts, engineers, physicists, astronomers, scientists, and space enthusiasts.
The guests were guided through exhibits ranging from astronomy to telescopes to liquid nitrogen and space shuttle tiles. Graduate and undergraduate students gave tours of the wind tunnel, cubesat, and AR.Drone laboratories.
Elizabeth Jordan, a Mechanical Science and Engineering Department alumnus who now works at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, presented a keynote talk on the Mars Science Laboratory.