Astronaut presents student with scholarship

Jim Lovell, who travelled into space four times as an astronaut and was later portrayed by Tom Hanks in the film Apollo 13 about the eventful and nearly catastrophic 1970 mission on which he was commander, visited campus Wednesday, Sept. 26 on behalf of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF). He awarded a $10,000 scholarship to fourth-year Applied Mathematics and Physics double major Nicole Larsen and spoke to an audience about his past experiences as an astronaut.

The presentation was held Sept. 26 at the Ferst Center and included a short video by the ASF, awarding of a check to Larsen and a lecture by Lovell that included detailed descriptions of and anecdotes about his four space missions.

Founded in 1984 by the six surviving members of the Mercury 7 mission, the ASF annually awards 19 students $10,000 towards the advancement of their education. Its goal is to aid the progression of promising students to keep the U.S. at the forefront of mathematic and scientific discovery.

"We wanted to give back something to the students for all the things that they've done for us and the schools, and give them an incentive to get a good education," Lovell said.

Larsen was commended for her 3.88 GPA, especially for being in math and physics programs that are typically underrepresented by women.

"The Astronaut Scholarship is the biggest honor I could imagine. It's the culmination of my four years at Georgia Tech, and a reminder of great things to come," Larsen said.

Larsen has recently been involved in research at Tech through a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in material science.

"I really want to do research. I just like discovering new things and playing around with stuff that no one's ever played around with before," Larsen said.

She hopes to get some of her work published and then go on to graduate school. To receive the scholarship, Larsen was first selected as one of the two allowed applicants from Tech, after which she was notified that the ASF had chosen her as the candidate who best embodied their goals.

"[Larsen] demonstrated a drive and a curiosity about how things work and seemed poised to really continue her career in research, wanting to understand what is going on with the world rather than use her science education to go into industry," said Randy McDow, director of the Office of Special Scholarships.

Larsen now joins the list of 15 Tech students who have received the prestigious award.Since the scholarship's creation, the ASF has donated more than $2.5 million to students at carefully selected universities nationwide in hopes of advancing their scientific endeavors to positively impact the scientific community.Of this amount, upwards of $174,000 has been contributed specifically to Tech and its students.

"It's an honor for Tech to be on the list of schools that gets to give out a scholarship, and the support of the astronauts who actually come and visit and meet our students, I think, is really special," McDow said.

Other than appearing to award Larsen's scholarship, Lovell shared some of his experiences on his four space missions.

Born in 1928, he served in the Navy after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy, including service during the Korean War. He was selected by NASA as an astronaut in 1962 and first went to space as pilot of Gemini 7 in 1965. Gemini 7 was the first space flight to spend two weeks in space.

Lovell subsequently returned to space in Gemini 12 in 1966. In 1968 he flew on Apollo 8, the first manned flight to orbit the moon. But his most famous mission was his last-Apollo 13, intended to be the third manned mission to the moon until an oxygen tank exploded and the mission had to be aborted.

Lovell discussed how he and the crew of Apollo 13 managed to safely arrive back home after an unbelievable and unprecedented amount of incidents. He joked about how, after the shuttle lifted off at the ominous time of 13:13 CST, he should have known something was going to happen.

Lovell retired from NASA in 1973, was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1993, and served as the ASF chairman and president from 1997 through 2005.

The event filled up the Ferst Center, which has a capacity of 1,200 people, and even had people standing in doorways and sitting in aisles, which was surprising to ASF executive director Linn Leblanc who said their scholarship presenations usually attract about 100-300 spectators. This was a testament to the publicity leading up to the event. Ryan Iandoli, second-year Aerospace Engineering major, was the publicity chairman for the event and helped get it promoted not only through a campus-wide Megamod email, but through flyer distribution and chalking on sidewalks.

After the main event, Lovell, along with his wife Marilyn, attended a reception with ASF executives and selected Tech faculty and students. The reception was organized by Robert Loewy, professor in the School of Aerospace Engineering, and the school's Aerospace Systems DesignLaboratory.

"We selected several exemplary undergraduate students for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet an American hero in such a private setting," said Patrick Biltgen, research engineer in the School of Aerospace Engineering and past Astronaut Scholar.