Rohanen Middle School eighth grader Jennifer Wickenheiser said she’d never really thought much about space ships and astronauts before witnessing the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis Monday afternoon.

Now that she did, it may change the future course of her life.

“I have always actually thought about working with animals, but now that I saw the shuttle launch, it opened up a whole new world of opportunities,” Wickenheiser said about an hour after the launch. “I’m really interested in learning more about astronauts.”

She and 66 of her eighth grade Rohanen Middle School classmates were at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida to see the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis Monday afternoon as part of a field trip that was mostly funded by community donations.

Wickenheiser described the trip as “a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“We were kind of on the coast, and the actual launch was on a little island,” she said. “But you could hear when it broke the sound barrier. It was very impacting.”

The field trip, called Mission:Rebel Launch by Richmond County Schools officials, was arranged by Rohanen Middle eighth grade Language Arts teacher Jane Layton.

Her daughter Christy is a 1999 graduate of Richmond Senior High, and currently works with NASA as an engineer.

For Courtney Miller, the trip was much more than she’d expected.

“I actually learned a whole lot,” she said Monday after the launch. “I thought it was going to be kind of boring, but now that I’ve learned about it - I think I want to learn more.”

She took a home recording of the launch, and perhaps found a new dream to grasp onto.

“I never thought about being an astronaut before, but now I think I might,” she said.

Christian McCall had questions as he viewed the launch.

“The first thing I thought was, ‘Look at all that pollution,’” McCall said. “Then, I wondered how fast they were going, and what the view was like up there.”

His friend Des Dibble said he’s always been fascinated by space ships and astronauts, but after witnessing a live launch Monday afternoon his fascination has grown.

“I’ve always been interested in what space is, what it’s like and what’s out there,” Dibble said about an hour after the launch. “It was very cool. I got really excited when it was about to launch. It was like it lit up for a second and then it shot up in the sky.”

At approximately 12:30 p.m., two hours before the Space Shuttle Atlantis was set to launch, the group was parking the bus outside the space center.

“There is a little bit of cloud cover, but we’re hoping it will clear up and we’ll be able to see the launch in about two hours,” Layton said in a phone interview. “The kids are extremely excited, we’re just hoping that everything goes as planned.”

About 20 minutes later, NASA published a press release confirming all six of the mission’s astronauts were strapped into their seats on Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, and the crew access hatch had been closed and locked for flight.

Atlantis’s crew were carrying out Mission STS-129, to deliver spare parts to the International Space Station.

“The spare parts delivered to the International Space Station by Atlantis during the STS-129 mission will mean more years on the station’s life once the space shuttle fleet is retired,” the release read.

The Lead Space Station Flight Director for the Mission Brian Smith said this will be the theme of future launches as well.

The space shuttle fleet will be retired after about a half a dozen more flights.

“This flight is all about spares - basically, we’re getting them up there while we still can,” Smith said in the release.

Among the spare parts being delivered by Atlantis are pieces Smith termed “the biggest,” and “the most critical.”

They include “two pump modules, two control moment gyroscopes, two nitrogen tank assemblies, an ammonia tank assembly, a high-pressure gas tank, a latching end effector for the station’s robotic arm and a trailing umbilical system reel assembly for the railroad cart that allows the arm to move along the station’s truss system,” according to the release.

It is also said to contain a power control unit, a cargo transportation container and battery charger/discharger unit among its 27,250 pounds of spares.

The crew is scheduled to perform complex robotics work to get the spares in place, as well as taking three spacewalks and completing a complicated rewiring project inside the space station.

The Rohanen Middle eighth graders participated in an October teleconference with NASA Digital Learning Network Coordinator Damon Talley in preparation for the trip.

They are not the only group of students to benefit from this mission. A group of undergraduate and graduate students from Texas Southern University in Houston are conducting an experiment to see how microbes grow in microgravity aboard the shuttle.

While at the Kennedy Space Center, the Richmond County students are also scheduled to take a full tour of the facility, have lunch with an astronaut, perform hands-on experiments in an innovative laboratory and explore concepts of light, sound and waves, electricity and magnetism, and nature’s forces and simulations.

During the remaining time of the three-day field trip, they will go on an airboat tour of the Florida Everglades, visit the Brevard Community College Planetarium and Observatory and the WonderWorks Interactive Museum in Orlando, as well as that city’s Science Center.

The approximately $26,000 field trip was funded by about $14,000 raised by student fundraisers and donations from the community, Rohanen Public Information Officer Lauren Turpin said.

“What the students paid was based on what they wanted to pay, and some were fully sponsored,” Turpin said. “Through the fundraising, we had an overwhelming response from the entire Richmond County community to make these kids’ dream a reality. They’re really excited, and you can see it in their faces, the way their eyes light up.

“It’s really just amazing and all the kids keep saying thank you about everybody.”

n Staff Writer Philip D. Brown can be reached at (910) 997-3111 ext. 32, or by e-mail at pbrown@yourdailyjournal.com.