CLEVELAND — Three hundred fifty students from 21 local schools and youth organizations will participate in fun and competitive events on Young Astronaut Day, Saturday, Nov. 6, in the hangar at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. This is Glenn’s 18th year hosting the event that is designed to stimulate the students’ interest in aeronautics, space science and engineering.

George Williams, chairman of the Northern Ohio Section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, or AIAA, will offer the opening remarks at 9:55 a.m. James Free, director of Space Flight Systems at Glenn, will then welcome the students. Dr. Yvonne Cagle, Air Force medical liaison officer for the STS-30 Atlantis shuttle mission, will deliver the keynote address.

Students in grades one through six will be assigned to the Pilot teams and their challenges include repairing items “in space,” building a marble roller-coaster and designing space shuttle tiles.

Students in grades seven through 12 will be assigned to the Commander teams. Their challenges include designing, fabricating and testing airfoils for a wind tunnel experiment, designing an airplane using computer simulation software and participating in a lunar rock race.

Additionally, the students will bring donations of approximately two thousand canned food items in order to build a structure that will resemble a Robonaut, a robot designed to help astronauts with tasks when they are in space. Afterward, the finished structure will be photographed and the canned food items will be given to Canstruction, a unique food charity, which will coordinate donating the food cans to the Cleveland Foodbank.

More than 50 volunteers from Glenn and AIAA, sponsors of Young Astronaut Day, will support the event.

Media representatives interested in covering the event may contact Sandra Nagy or the Media Relations Office at 216-433-2901 by 4 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 5 to obtain security clearance.

The following Ohio schools and youth organizations will be participating at the event:

Avon: Avon Cub Scout Pac #333, Avon Girl Scout Troop #882
Bay Village: Bay Village Middle School, Westerly School
Berea: Academy of St. Adalbert
Birchwood: Birchwood School
Brook Park: Ford Middle School
Bryan: St. Patrick Catholic School
Galion: Northmor Junior High School
Green: Green Bulldogs Cub Scouts
Iberia: Iberia Elementary School
Lorain: Lorain County Civil Air Patrol
Mentor: Shore Explorers Science Club
Oberlin: Oberlin Comets and Oberlin Rockets, Mount Zion Church
Parma Heights: Parma Heights Christian Academy
Rocky River: Magnificat High School
Shaker Heights: University School
University Heights: Gesu Elementary School
Westerville: Edison Academy
Westlake: Westlake Math Demons

For more information about NASA Glenn, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/home/index.html