COLORADO SPRINGS — The first Friday in May is National Space Day. Today, St. Paul Catholic School welcomed leaders from U.S. Space Command to talk to all the students, and inspire them to pursue a career in science or space-related jobs.
General James Dickinson, the Commander of U.S. Space Command at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, gave a presentation about space to students in pre-k through 8th grade.
“We talked to the kids about what we do in space today, and more importantly, what we're going to do in space in the future,” said General Dickinson. “When we look at the audience of kids in this great school today, we're seeing potentially future engineers, future scientists, and maybe even a few astronauts.”
The goal is to inspire students to pursue a career in science, technology, engineering and math jobs.
Part of the learning was designing and watching a rocket launch from the school parking lot, and learning more about gravity and satellites.
“At this age, they’re all so young and to see the excitement in their eyes as they saw the rocket launch or the gravity when the egg dropped, and the questions they had for General Dickinson. Who would have ever thought these kids are thinking about those things? Their curiosity at this age is so amazing,” said Dr. Carol Walsh, the principal at St. Paul Catholic School
News5 asked some of the students about what they learned.
“I think it's cool how many satellites we have up in space and how they control all those satellites even though they're up there and we're down on earth, said Anna Collins, a 7th grader at the school.
“We learned about space that it really is in our every day life, and it's more than just the sky,” said Bridget Knapik, also a 7th grader at the school.
One of the messages was, there is never a day without space. And as the saying goes, the sky is the limit.
“It was very impressive with their level of understanding about space at such a young age. That just gives me a lot of optimism, that we've got a great generation coming through the pipes and we're going to have great things to do in space,” said General Dickinson.
General Dickinson also said this is part of community outreach that U.S. Space Command is beginning to do and hopes to expand on in the future.
“We hope this will grow over the years and that we'll have more engagements within the Colorado Springs area and across the country, to talk about how important space is to us every day, not only for what we do in our everyday lives, but what we do in the military as well,” said General Dickinson.