It was a surreal moment for most of our staff, standing face-to-face with a woman who had touched the cosmos. A former NASA astronaut, who had orbited our planet and witnessed Earth from a perspective few can fathom.
We were so honored to have Marsha Ivins having a brief stop over at our Lae Heliport on Wednesday July 24th. She met our helicopter pilot trainees, female trainee engineers and our pilots.
Marsha Ivins, born on April 15, 1951, in Baltimore, Maryland, is a distinguished former NASA astronaut with a rich history of accomplishments in space exploration and aerospace engineering.
Ivins Earned a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado in 1973 and joined NASA in July 1974.
She joined the astronaut class of 1984 and took part in five missions between 1990 and 2001, accumulating a total of 1,318 hours in space and completing over 4,500 orbits of the Earth.
Ivins traveled to Papua New Guinea in 1987 on her first international outreach tour where she spoke at UPNG and UNITECH to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Amelia Earhart's trip to Papua New Guinea.
She was back in Papua New Guinea again and for her Lae tour, this time, to launch Amelia Earhart Scholarship for girls in STEM and Aviation, and also the ground breaking for the Amelia Earhart Monument at PNG University of Technology.
She visited Manolos alongside the US Ambassador to PNG, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands, Her Excellency, Ann Marie Yastishock, staff from the US Embassy - Port Moresby and Gary Bustin, the PNG Tribal Foundation President.
Her brief discussion with our pilots and pilot trainees generally covered spaceflight and the intense training. She was gifted a Madang bilum by Deborah Bidang and a painting by Gorethy Kaye.
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