Planet Preschool

Welcome to Planet Preschool. 

There’s something about outer space that captures the imaginations of young and old alike … that can cause the most dedicated office worker to slip off into daydreams on launch days … and that can inspire even toddlers to upend their matchbox cars and count, “3, 2, 1, blast off!” as they send the cars up into the air like rockets.  Space travel is perhaps the grandest dream of the human race. 

Whether your dream ultimately is to gaze through a telescope on a clear night, to be greeted with new and exciting images when you sit down at your computer in the morning, to travel to the stars in a faster-than-light ship, or simply to enjoy a summer evening outside with your sweetheart, you have probably felt the pull of the night sky at one point or another in your life.

I know I have.

My infatuation with the night sky began at the age of three, when my mother and father took me along on a visit to Johnson Space Center in Texas.  I walked through mission control.  I climbed on (and in!) the Saturn V rocket upended on the grounds.  I wandered through and around the visitor’s center.  I stood stock-still at the Wall of Astronauts, studying their faces, and wondering if mine would ever be featured there. 

I noticed that there were no women astronauts.

My mother says that I asked her why, and she had no answer.  I asked my father, and he had no answer.  But they were good people, and very good parents, and they wrote the question out for me and we put it in the suggestion box together. 

Why are there no women astronauts?

As if NASA had never even considered the question.

Today, there are dozens of women astronauts.  There are hundreds of women astronomers.  There are thousands of women holding NASA grants and doing space research.

I was one of them.

Then, I had a baby.  I gave birth to a hungry, needy infant, and, all at once, I was catapulted into a new challenge, a world of feeding and loving and helping little children’s minds grow so that they too would one day look at me and ask, “Why?” 

I continued to work for many months, but now I am working from home and spending every waking minute with my little boys.  I love my life.  I love my work.  I also love talking about space, space science, engineering, and the challenges that I used to face every day in my work outside the home.  This blog is a place for me to talk about the wonderful new achievements that NASA researchers and others are making and announcing every day.  It likely will not be a breaking news source, but I will strive to make every post timely, relevant, and ultimately, something that you can use to share the excitement of space research with your children.

Because that, I think, is what it’s all about.  Inspiring the next generation of kids, so that they catch the excitement, work to prepare, and ultimately, carry on the dream of space exploration.

Welcome to Planet Preschool.