Judging from the reception Madison County’s first space-bound resident received at Anderson Intermediate School Tuesday, there will be no shortage of eager aspirants to follow him.
About 350 sixth graders sat on the basketball court in the gymnasium to hear Jason Williamson announce that one Anderson Community Schools student will be chosen to attend Space Camp next year.
Space Camp, based in Huntsville, Alabama, is a program that teaches participants about astronaut training, rocketry and space exploration through hands-on simulations.
When Williamson asked students at an assembly who would like to go to Space Camp, dozens of hands shot up amid loud cheers.
“This is exciting,” said Williamson, who graduated from Space Camp and will be going to space aboard a Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceflight sometime in 2027. “It’s a blessing to meet with the students.”
Williamson wrapped up a two-day visit to Anderson Community Schools by answering questions from the assembled sixth graders and, in a smaller setting, students in a class taught by his sister, Missy Hoppes. He visited Monday with students at Anderson High School.
Williamson will be inducted into the Anderson Community Schools Hall of Fame in October.
The opportunity to attend Space Camp, he said, can be life-changing.
“It impacted my life,” he said. “I hope a lot of kids want to go to space camp.”
The Purdue alumnus will be traveling into space next year as part of a crew of five university employees. He will be doing research and engaging with students from Anderson and elsewhere in Indiana.
He is the first Purdue University civil engineer to go into space. The patch for the flight has been approved that will include the names of the astronauts, five stars and Purdue University.
“For me this is a dream of being an astronaut,” he said previously. “The dream started when I was young — all things space related.”
Williamson said he wanted to get an ACS student to the Space Camp for the people in the community that supported him before graduating from Madison Heights High School in 1993.
“We want to inspire people,” he said. “There are other things we will be doing that we will be able to talk about in the future.”
The week-long space camp has four different tracks for students to participate in.
“I did get a lot of good questions,” Williamson said after meeting with the students, “a lot of inspiring questions.”
When asked about the space flight, Williamson said the crew is placed in quarantine for several weeks and only interact with each other.
“There are different types of space travel,” he said. “I’m taking part in a short duration flight.”
For Hoppes, this was the third year her brother has visited her classroom. They learned a year ago that he was actually going into space.
“It’s always a lot of fun and the kids enjoy it,” she said. “I like that he can give the kids some motivation to never give up on their dreams.”
Hoppes said at first, she heard from a lot of people about her brother going into space.
“For a long time it was, hey, I saw your brother is going into space,” she said. “It has quieted down a little bit, but it will ramp up again. It’s fun.”
This article appeared in The Herald Bulletin.