Adec brings astronaut to tell students about space

Adec brings US explorer Chris Ferguson to UAE with message that success can be achieved with work and determination.

A guest visits the Boeing CST-100 capsule craft that accompanied former US navy pilot and astronaut Capt Chris Ferguson to Mubarak bin Mohammed School in Abu Dhabi. Silvia Razgova / The National

ABU DHABI // When Dr Amal Al Qubaisi, director general of Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec), made a promise at the beginning of the school year that the UAE’s journey to Mars begins in education, she was not just repeating a slogan, she brought the promise of space exploration to her schools.

At the Mubarak bin Mohammed School on Sunday, former Nasa astronaut Capt Chris Ferguson spoke to hundreds of students about his journey and the future of space travel.

“Today, I hope to get you all a little bit excited about space,” Capt Ferguson said.

“I had this dream that I have cultivated as a young man since I watched men walk on the Moon in the late ’60s and I want you to have it, too.”

The astronaut, now 53, was a US navy pilot for 15 years before deciding he wanted to fly higher. He was a Nasa pilot on the space shuttle Atlantis on his first mission into space.

Nasa accepts applicants to its space programme every two years through a strict selection procedure. Capt Ferguson was rejected twice before passing.

“After six years of persistence I got in,” he said.

“There’s one message I’d like to leave you with: you need to follow your dreams and you need to be persistent, because people along the way will tell you that you can’t do it. I never accepted no.”

As commander of the final mission of the space shuttle programme, which featured 135 flights, Capt Ferguson said that although his time in Nasa is over, he sees the future of space travel as a promising concept.

“While we hated to see the space shuttle go away we understood that it was getting a little older and it was time to take the next step,” said Capt Ferguson, who has logged more than 40 days in space during three missions.

As part of the Boeing space programme, Capt Ferguson is working with the aeronautics company to build the CST-100, a spacecraft engineered to take passengers and crew to low-Earth orbit destinations such as the International Space Station.

The CST-100, short for Crew Space Transportation, is being built in collaboration with Nasa’s commercial crew programme, which has contracts with Boeing and Virgin Galactic’s SpaceX to transport US crew to the space stations.

One of the pupils at Mubarak bin Mohammed School, Mohammed, 9, said that hearing the astronaut talk has led him to believe in his ambitions.

“I think that I can do anything,” Mohammed said. “I want to make my dreams come true. I really wish I can go into space one day.”

Dr Al Qubaisi said that the Abu Dhabi school system is designed to help pupils to achieve their highest ambitions.

“The objective of Adec is to have plans to prepare our students with the proper education in science, maths and engineering. To have the skills to enter space engineering and go to space,” she said.

“We said that the journey to Mars begins today, and we want every dream that our students have to be achieved.”