Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 39

www.herald-review.comEntertainment FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 2004 DECATUR, ILLINOIS TIME OUT! 9 8 TIME OUT! Friday, march 5, 2004 decatur, Illinois By ARLENE MANNLEIN Staff Writer Old terminal transformed Astronauts for a day find mission at learning center is a real challenge By ARLENE MANNLEIN Staff Writer i When "that" feeling hit the pit of my stomach, I knew we were in trouble and it must be my fault. Suddenly my computer screen had gone berserk, totally, quickly followed by others. This wasn't the always-frightening blue screen of death that sometimes happens to our work screens. This was a persistent blinking that dragged on, triggering the room's red warning lights. My mind raced back through the prior few seconds, trying to remember what I'd done.

"What button did you push?" asked Mission Commander Janet Moore never mind I was already searching my brain with the same question. I'll It takes several crew members for a successful flight in space. some of the other duties through our headsets. But then everybody had to shut down because the humidity dropped too low in the station, which could cause static electricity that could short out our equipment. After holding a metal bar for a while and getting misted (to raise the humidity), we all returned to work.

Yes, we really did these things; this wasn't a "pretend you're doing it" kind of learning experience. Okay, so now we go back to "driving" the station. Everything is finally making sense. That's when my turn at disaster came. To go into much further detail ruins the experience for the next space adventurer.

But suffice it to say, the teams reversed locations, so now I'm in mission control, trying to get my partner comfortable in the space station role. We are responsible for "firing" test probes before the real thing is launched. Then we wait. Hit or miss? We wait some more, the seconds crawling into long minutes. Then Flight Director Stacey Shrewsbury comments dryly, "Perhaps the radiation shield wasn't a good thing to leave off the probe." Some more waiting, then finally applause roaring through mission control.

It felt like a success scene out of "Apollo 13." i' je(M- "Xlsl liJS" 1 "SH? Commander Janet Moore looks over the shoulder of Arlene Mannlein as she navigates the space station crew toward a comet. BLOOMINGTON When the Central Illinois Regional Airport in Blooming-ton-Normal moved east and into a new terminal, the vacated former terminal presented a golden opportunity to the nearby Prairie Aviation Museum. So even though board members of the museum had long dreamed of expanding and building new facilities, the possibility of having a Challenger Learning Center in the former terminal leapfrogged those plans. It was in 1999 that Fran Romine, with help from Connie Fetzer and a volunteer task force, began a long-term project of researching the possibility of a space learning facility. "We didn't know anything about Challenger Learning Centers," said Romine, who now serves as vice president and youth director of Prairie Aviation.

After the 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle mission one with educational objectives ended in disaster, the Challenger Learning Center concept was born as a nonprofit organization started by families of the Challenger astronauts. Today, there are more than 50 centers in the United States, England and Canada. The former Bloomington-Normal terminal became a mission control center and space station at a cost of $750,000. The cost was covered with individual donations and grants from the Department of Education and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Visitors to the Bloomington site are guided through simulation exercises by Janet Moore and Stacey Shrewsbury, both of whom have educational backgrounds.

It was as a student at Illinois State University, when Moore worked in the ISU planetarium, that she really became interested in space. "I always tried to find ways of bringing space into my math classes," she said. Now she and Shrewsbury take fifth-through eighth-grade students into space with flight simulation. They have notified schools within a 75-mile radius of the Bloomington-Normal area to let them know of the center's possibilities. "For any school class, whether there are 16 or 32 students, there is a $600 flat rate" to take the 2'A-hour flight, Moore said.

Besides the simulation, the fee includes a teacher development workshop and a binder of activities for students both before and after their visit. Tentative plans call for adding summer camps for students from fourth through seventh grades, Moore said. Romine added that some public events are also planned, where people can come and spend an evening participating in the simulation. Go info Tim Cain studies results from tests of the life support system. I put myself through this trauma by responding to will be working on one of eight teams in Mission Control and aboard the Space Station." Did this sound cool or what? Me? Wow what an invitation from the Prairie Aviation Museum's new Challenger Learning Center in Bloomington! The reality of this role-playing adventure with other news media representatives and a few bankers didn't settle in until Moore began explaining what those teams could be.

Team choices for this mission of probing a comet included medical, navigation, data and communication, life support and medical and remote. After getting beaten out for communications, I decided: TU just watch; can't embarrass myself that way." Presumably the look on my face was betraying those thoughts, because fellow staffer Tim Cain urged me to go for navigation, adding, "You drove up here, didn't you?" Navigation. Hmmm. Part of my job description for the past 30-plus years has been "chief navigator," so I certainly have the map-reading experience. Only.

Only what I encountered in the space station was no map reading. This was computerized navigation through the stars. We're talking a three-dimensional "map," locating the correct coordinates and telling the computers the correct information. Man, I wished I'd paid more attention to those computer games our son and daughter had urged me to play! After a few small hitches, though, things weren't so bad. I had a ground (mission control) partner, Dave Wampler of Bloomington.

Between us, we got a kind of rhythm going. I learned to bypass the communications team and put my own computer codes in before going to the next level. He guided me through WHAT: Prairie Aviation Museum with a Challenger Learning Center. WHERE: near Central Illinois Regional Airport, 2929 E. Empire Bloomington.

HOURS: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. ADMISSION: $2, $1 children ages 6-11 free for 5 and under.

ONLINE: www.challenger.orgclc; www.challengercentralillinois.org. Bloomington's Challenger Learning Center opened in December and started offering flight simulation missions to school students in February. The site also includes a temporary exhibit honoring the 21 Illinois astronauts. Mission facilities can be toured by visitors if there is no school mission in progress. The next scheduled public mission is 7 p.m.

Saturday, March 20. Cost is $25 per person for the simulated mission, which lasts roughly 2 hours. Other missions will be scheduled, according to Fran Romine, vice president of Prairie Aviation Museum. Anyone interested in participating should call (309) 661-1621 to make reservations. Participation is limited, but Romine said people can be put on a waiting list.

Would I recommend the experience? A resounding yes, in more ways than one. It is great fun to walk into a room that looks and feels just like the real thing, to sit at the same consoles, to wear the same headsets, to have a taste of what we've all seen televised into our homes, schools and work places. But even better, the experience in the Challenger Learning Center is a subtle lesson in stress management, problem solving and teamwork, not to mention following directions (reading skills), calculating (mathematics) and experimentation (science). Arlene Mannlein can be reached at amannleinIierald-review. com or 421-6976.

A robotic arm is used to weigh and test samples. Herald Review photosLisa Morrison Commander Stacey Shrewsbury supervises mission control at the Prairie Aviation Museum's Challenger Learning Center In Bloomington..