|
In August 2009 Perth was lucky enough to have a visit from a NASA Astronaut when Megan McArthur came to the city as part of National Science Week activities held by the University of Western Australia and Scitech.
I have never been particularly fascinated by "famous" individuals (movie stars, musicians, astronauts, etc) but I have to admit that seeing in real life a person who has been up in to space and back down again was a real buz, and so hearing Megan talk and briefly saying hello to her will probably be one of those things I remember for some time to come.
Megan gave a 30 minute presentation of her trip to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) onboard the shuttle Atlantis for the final servicing mission to the HST. Her primary task for the mission was operating the robotic arm - used for capturing and releasing the telescope, and manoeuvring astronauts and equipment around the shuttle area. It was fascinating to listen to a real-life account of how this all worked, and the human experiences of the trip.
Of course after the 30 minute presentation was 20 minutes of questions from the audience followed by another 20 minutes of people meeting Megan and asking her questions individually.
For Perth (little old isolated Perth) to have a visit from someone such as Megan was a real surprise and an excellent opportunity for those who had the chance to go along to one of her talks/workshops. I think it was a shame not more people came, as the lecture theatre was not completely full, but hopefully that was a result of poor advertising rather than lack of interest.
Below are some pictures from the event. Click the thumbnails to view larger images.
|
