The End of an Era

Today is a bittersweet day. The Space Shuttle Atlantis came home for the last time. Bravo to everyone at NASA.

Welcome Home Space Shuttle Atlantis!!!


Photo credit(above):Joe Raedle/Getty Images


Photo credit(above): Terry Renna/Associated Press

Reach For The Stars

I’m a couple of days late with this, but I wanted to highlight something great! Many of you may have already heard the interesting news and maybe some of you haven’t. Well, I wanted to highlight the coolness that is going on in space right now :-) There are now four women in orbit at the same time, which is a record number. I think that this is wonderful!


The crew of space shuttle Discovery's STS-131 mission. From left: are Mission Specialists Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger and Stephanie Wilson; Pilot James P. Dutton Jr.; Commander Alan Poindexter; and Mission Specialists Naoko Yamazaki of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Rick Mastracchio and Clayton Anderson. Photo Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett


The Space Shuttle Discovery launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 5th, carrying seven astronauts to the International Space Station. Three of the seven astronauts on this Discovery mission are women. They are: Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson, and Naoko Yamazaki. And to round out the four in space, there is Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who is already living at the International Space Station. This apparently is only the third time in NASA history that three female crewmembers have been aboard and heading out to space at the same time.

I think that this mission sends a powerful message. And I hope that it inspires young women to go for whatever they want in life. The sky is not even a limit, because space can take you even further :-)

To The Moon

Today, as many of you know, is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. I just wanted to take a moment to recognize this great moment in the history of the world. Space travel always has amazed me and I love the idea of exploring in that way. It must have been amazing for these three men to get to the moon and gaze back at our planet. What a view.

I am inspired by the words of President Kennedy as he spoke of going to the moon, roughly a year before he was killed and years before I was born. It helps me remember that you have to just go for it sometimes, even if you don't know all of the details of how you're going to do something, even when it's hard. This is what faith is to me. Here are his words.

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win" ~John F Kennedy - September 12, 1962