Lt. Col. Carey is a former Air Force A-10A Thunderbolt II, F-16C, and test pilot for United States Air Force. In 1996, Carey joined NASA as a space shuttle pilot. In 2001, he was the pilot for the space shuttle Columbia, spending 11 days in space in support of the Hubble Space Telescope mission.
During the assembly, students watched a narrated video on life in space, learning how astronauts eat, sleep, and work in space in zero gravity.
“Anyone that cares about the future, which is most people,” said Lt. Col. Carey, “the surest way to have an affect on the future is to interact with kids.”
Lt. Col. Carey currently works with the Space Foundation in Colorado Springs, speaking publicly nationwide to schools and corporations.
“It was great having Lt. Col. Digger here along with the team from the Space Foundation Discovery Center,” said Brett Wiltz, Dean of Students. “There are few things that capture children and drive their curiosity in the same way that space can. You could feel their excitement as they listened to what it was like to actually go to space. As Digger pointed out to one group of students, they will be the ones that travel to Mars in the coming years and what they do and learn today is moving them toward those great achievements.”
After the assembly, students had the opportunity to work on experiments with Discovery Center educators in their classrooms.