Last shuttle launch sparks excitement

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Some of the kids attending an Indianapolis-area summer science camp witnessed their first - and last - shuttle launch Friday. 

“5, 4, 3, 2, 1” two dozen kids taking part in Park Tudor’s week-long Blast Off summer science camp shouted as they watched a live feed of the shuttle Atlantis launch, projected onto a screen at the front of their classroom.

The program teaches children ages 5, 6 and 7 about NASA’s space shuttle program, which is now officially coming to an end with this last shuttle mission. The week was filled with all kinds of space-related learning.

"We learned how to build rockets, we learned how the solar system aligned and we painted the solar system," 5-year-old Walker Lasbury said.

The week’s activities culminated with the viewing of Friday’s shuttle launch - the ultimate experience for kids aspiring to excel in science.

“The most interesting thing for them is just to see this happening live,” said Blast Off instructor Chris Anderson. “Multiple times today they've asked us, ‘Is this a movie?’ And we tell them, ‘No, this is happening live. We can't pause this.’"

Atlantis' landing will come seven and a half years after President George W. Bush, responding to the 2003 Columbia disaster, ordered NASA to complete the International Space Station and retire the space shuttle fleet by the end of the decade.

The Bush administration's plan was to eliminate the costly shuttle program - and the thousands of contractor jobs that made it so expensive - and use the savings to help pay for a new program building safer, lower-cost rockets.

One team from Purdue University is working to make that possible. The school launched a rocket last year as part of a four-year project to design, build, test and launch a hybrid rocket technology demonstrator for development of vehicles capable of delivering small payloads into space.

John Tsohas, a doctoral student in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, is leading the project, just one in a long line of ties between NASA and Purdue. Over the past 10 years, Purdue's School of Aeronautics and Astronautics has awarded more aerospace engineering degrees than any other institution in the country, issuing 6 percent of all undergraduate degrees and 7 percent of all Ph.D. degrees.

Twenty-two Purdue alumni have been selected as astronauts, and more than one third of all of NASA's manned space missions have had at least one Purdue graduate as a crew member, including the first and last men to step foot on the moon, Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan, respectively.

Purdue professor Steve Collicott said Atlantis' liftoff Friday morning may have been NASA's final launch, but Purdue already has spent a long time working on what's next.

"The research we do at Purdue, we are always trying to look forward," he said. "That is the purpose. The shuttle has been great. It's an amazing vehicle.”

So where does the program go from here? President Barack Obama was quoted recently as saying: “By 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the moon into deep space. We'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it.”

By then, some of the excited kids who watched the launch Friday at Park Tudor just might be among the crew members.