I met Buzz Aldrin!

I had a very outer space-filled day on Thursday. My day started out by going to NASA for work. I attended the public session of the NASA Advisory Council (Eileen Collins, the first female pilot, and first female commander of the space shuttle, was there.)

At 2pm or so, I went to see the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. There was actually a good chance that weather was going to make the launch be delayed to the next day, but the weather stayed good, and the launch was successful. It was amazing watching it from the NASA Space Operations Center. The room looks like something you'd see in a movie - covered with flat screen TV showing video, system information, and monitoring all the news channel coverage, and tons of people in earphone/microphone headsets.

After leaving work at NASA, I went to my Space Security class. We had a speaker from the Air Force, who talked about the system the United States is creating to monitor objects in space.

After class, it was off to the Kosmos club with some friends from class to attend the International Space Week reception. It turned out Buzz Aldrin (second man to walk on the moon) was there... and Stephanie and I got our picture with him!