What: On April 24, TJ Creamer — the first astronaut to become a payload operations director at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. — will speak to more than 200 members of the Boys & Girls Club of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Decatur, Ala., about his time aboard the International Space Station and the science investigations being performed on station today. Randy Brackins, one of the operations controllers at Marshall, has been working as a tutor at the Boys & Girls Club and invited Creamer to speak so that the students could learn more about the space station from someone who has lived there. The event aims to attract and retain the interest of children in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, disciplines to ensure the next generation can accept the full measure of their roles and responsibilities in shaping the future of NASA. The media is invited to attend.
Who: TJ Creamer is a payload operations director at NASA’s Payload Operations Center at the Marshall Center — the command post for research on the station. Creamer is responsible for guiding the daily activities of station astronauts as they perform experiments in space. Before being named to this position, Creamer traveled 65.2 million miles around the planet while living and working more than five months aboard the space station. He launched aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft Dec. 20, 2009, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and docked with the space station two days later. For the next 161 days, he served as a flight engineer and NASA science officer on Expeditions 22 and 23. Creamer and his crew members supported three space shuttle missions that delivered the U.S. Tranquility module; installed onto Tranquility the Cupola — a seven-window facility looking directly at the Earth, from which we are getting many of the spectacular images from the space station; put the finishing touches on U.S. laboratory research facilities; and attached the Russian Rassvet laboratory to the station. Creamer and the Expedition 23 crew returned to Earth aboard a Soyuz on June 1, 2010, landing in central Kazakhstan.
When: 3:30-4:45 p.m. CDT, April 24
Where: St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, 1700 Carridale St. SW Decatur, Ala.
To attend: News media interested in attending the event can contact Tracy McMahan in Marshall’s Public & Employee Communications Office at 256-544-0034. Media should arrive at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church by 3 p.m.
