Very cool for this 17 year old to get to travel to the US and to experience Zero G. Of course, it is a big advertisement for the space program. Why is it that questioning the value of the space program can get one labeled as unpatriotic? Because we have such a tremendous love and value for the acquisition of knowledge? Don’t think so. I think people see what we are doing to this planet and realize that we are using it up and will need a new one. Not a surprising attitude in a culture where we use up and dispose of just about everything…
Anyway, congratulations to Stella Felix. And reduce, reuse, recycle.
A 17-year-old schoolgirl is to become the first Nigerian to experience a space flight when she takes off from the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday.
Stella Felix from the south-east was chosen from 400 Nigerian students who applied to go on a zero-gravity flight.
“I feel like an ambassador,” she said before leaving Lagos for Florida. “I feel so happy to be the first.”
She will fly at an altitude of 10 km (6 miles) on G-Force One, before dropping, giving a few minutes of weightlessness.
Stella is top of her school in science subjects. Her parents earn a living selling second hand clothes.
“I’ll be looking up in the sky for her,” her mother Eunice told AP news agency.
The trip is organised to coincide with the United Nations’ Space Week.