ASTRONAUT LANDS AT
DR. CROSBY COPELAND E.S.
On Tuesday, December 10, 2024, Dr. Greg Olsen landed at Dr. Crosby Copeland E.S.! Mr. Edward Bullock, President of the Trenton Literacy Movement, and a Copeland Faculty member, introduced Dr. Olsen. Astronaut Olsen met with over 30 student representatives of Copeland’s 2nd and 3rd Grades, and enthusiastically discussed his voyage and experiences to the international space station in 2005 more than 250 miles in outer space. His presentation was videoed to all the Copeland classes with the support of Ms. Vondalyn Fannin, Copeland’s Teaching Technology Leader, and coordinated by Mrs. LaToya Wiley, 3rd Grade teacher.
Dr. Olsen was the third private citizen to orbit the earth on the International Space Station (ISS). After training for five months (900 hours) at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow, he was launched on a Russian Soyuz rocket TMA-7 on October 1, 2005 with Cosmonaut Valeri Tokarev and Astronaut Bill McArthur (Expedition 12). The spaceship then docked to the ISS on October 3, and returned to earth on Soyuz TMA-6 on October 11 with Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev and Astronaut John Phillips (Expedition 11). He performed more than 150 orbits of the earth and logged almost 4 million miles of weightless travel during my 10 days in space. Dr. Olsen took questions from the students, encouraged them to think about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and told them to “NEVER GIVE UP” on their studies. In addition Dr. Olsen stated, “I was impressed with their questions, their curiosity, and enthusiasm”. I look forward to making this a yearly event!
Michael D. Rosenberg