World Space Week 2010 - My trip to Nigeria, Africa

Getting ready for my trip

World Space Week 2010 - The Largest Public Space Event on Earth. I celebrated it in Nigeria, Africa and visited the St. Louis Grammar School in Ekiti. High School students here had their first experience with Space Science education and research and they loved the educational material I brought from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Stanford University.

In the picture below I am with the students and teachers from St. Louis Grammar School, Ekiti. As you can see, we were learning about our Solar System. The white balloon was used as the Sun. We had other sized balls to represent the various planets and then we talked about Space Weather and the impact it has on life on Earth (and in Space). And of course we showed lots of Little SDO images of the Sun.

The hosts organized an African Space Basketball Competition with teams from different "planets" added more color to WSW 2010.

The teams were Pluto Rockets, Jupiter Sparks and Mars Warriors all trade tackled with one another. Jupiter Sparks won the tournament. All the students were excited about the program as they learned more about Space through basketball.

Reaching across the Earth is an important part of my mission. The sun and space weather impacts us all and sharing our science and findings with other countries is very important. My new friends in Nigeria are very happy to be part of our project and they are proud to learn more about our mission.