Jessie MarkovetzEditor-in-chief

Frost Arena will have a slightly different look April 5.

The lower level of the arena will become the vision of the final frontier for Space Day 2002.

Space day will feature talks with former astronauts, exhibits, aerospace-related activities and teacher training. Many freebies will be given away as well and SDSU ice cream will be served from 2:30 p.m. until it is gone. The day is geared to middle school and high school students and the general public. Dr. Ed Gibson, former Sky Lab astronaut, will speak twice at 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. in Doner Auditorium. Tickets are required but still free, and are available for Gibson’s afternoon session. For tickets call Kim at 688-4184.

Dr. Bob Polcyn, who was involved in the Galileo Mission, will have a standing exhibit and will visit with visitors

throughout the day. Polcyn is South Dakota’s Solar System Ambassador. One of the exhibits to be shown is a large international space station built by the Rutland High School students. It is a large-scale mock-up of plastic, inflated compartments where people would live and work in space. Charnel Petersen, outreach education outreach coordinator for the South Dakota Space Grant Consortium, is especially proud of what the Rutland students created.

“The whole school got into it,” said Peterson. “They had a showcase performance, made uniforms, wrote a script and put Lite Brite stations inside the cells, because that’s what the computing technology like in space,” she said, “It’s designed to be robust and easy to fix.”

All of the Space Day exhibits deal with earth science, space science and technology. Some will enlighten as to the various jobs available in the aerospace field; astrobiologist, acoustic engineer, exobiologist, facility engineer, icing researcher, electrical engineer and intellectual property officer. Workshops will train teachers to show their students how to look at things from a different perspective with “Where on Earth Are You?” and “Space Exploration/The Galileo Mission.”

Petersen said they expect 1,500 to 2,000 people to attend Space Day, which is sponsored by the South Dakota Space Grant Consortium and is held in a different city each year. Space Day is being held in conjunction with the 48 annual Regional Science Fair, which will be held on the upper level of Frost Arena. Check out the Space Day web page at http://www.engineering.sdstate.edu/spaceday2002.htm.