Astronaut Don Pettit to Speak at Ice Fest

HOUSTON, March 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — NASA astronaut and Antarctic researcher Don Pettit will give the keynote address to kick off Ice Fest on March 9. Pettit’s presentation, “Polar Perspectives,” will start at 2 p.m. in Muenzinger Auditorium, Colorado Ave., University of Colorado, Boulder. This event is free and open to the public.

Ice Fest is a celebration of the start of the International Polar Year (IPY) at the University of Colorado-Boulder. IPY is an international scientific collaboration and cooperation protecting Antarctica for scientific research.

Pettit recently spent six weeks researching meteorites on the ice fields of Grosvenor Mountains in Antarctica as a member of the 2006-2007 Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) expedition. ANSMET is a yearly expedition to gather meteorites that naturally concentrate on the Antarctic glaciers.

Pettit was selected as an astronaut in 1996. He was the science officer on Expedition 6 to the International Space Station. He logged more than 161 days in space, including more than 13 hours during two spacewalks.

For more information or to schedule an interview, contact Adriana Raudzens Bailey, University of Colorado-Boulder, at 303-492-6289 or Brenda A. Cabaniss, NASA Johnson Space Center Astronaut Appearances Office, at 281-244-8860.

   For more information about Pettit, visit:             http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/pettit.html   

To read Pettit’s “Space Chronicles on Ice” about his Antarctic expedition, visit:

           http://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/pettit_chronicles.html    For more information on ANSMET, visit:              http://www.humanedgetech.com/expedition/ansmet2/    For more information about Ice Fest, visit:                 http://cires.colorado.edu/events/icefest/   

NASA Johnson Space Center news releases and other information are available automatically by sending an Internet electronic mail message to listserv@listserver.jsc.nasa.gov. In the body of the message (not the subject line) users should type “subscribe hsfnews” (no quotes). This will add the email address that sent the subscribe message to the news release distribution list. The system will reply with a confirmation via E-mail of each subscription. Once you have subscribed you will receive future news releases via e-mail.

NASA

CONTACT: Brenda A. Cabaniss or Kylie S. Clem of NASA Johnson SpaceCenter, Houston, +1-281-483-5111

Web site: http://www.nasa.gov/