The day began in the NASA Now exhibit with 22-year-old Boeing engineer Tiera Fletcher, who discussed Aerospace Engineering and the impact it has on launching rockets. She later opened up the forum for a brief Q&A.
After the talk, guests ate lunch in the Orbit Cafe and then set out on a two-hour tour of the Complex, which included a Space Shuttle Atlantis video and a walk and talk down the orbiter with Tiera and Kennedy Space Center Communicator, Paul Regencia. The students crawled through a scale model of the International Space Station and then “landed” their tour of the Space Shuttle Atlantis by taking a slide to the first floor (this slide is situated at a 22-degree angle – the same angle in which the space shuttle returns to Earth when landing).
Next they went to the Astronaut Training Experience, where they met five-time space shuttle astronaut Scott Parazynski (two of his space shuttle flights were aboard the Atlantis). At Astronaut Training Experience, the students tested their skills in the “Land and Drive on Mars” simulator, the Walk on Mars virtual reality and the Microgravity.
The day closed with Tiera speaking to the group about the importance of coding, after which the Kennedy Space Center gifted everyone with goodie bags and Disney treated the students to Lando Calrissian dice and a pair of Fandango passes to see SOLO: A Star Wars Story.