"We went to the offices of this high-tech factory. "Last year, I went with a colleague to visit one of the very successful companies in the Aegean Free Zone, where Space Camp is located, she said. What he chose to do reveals his character and what he found important," Mary Tuncer said. "Kaya's success as a businessman and a developer gave him opportunities to do many things. The 500-acre industrial park attracted foreign investment from top international companies, creating more than 20,000 jobs. "Kaya had a plaque made to put at the entrance of Space Camp Turkey - it is still there - it reads, 'A gift to the youth of the world,'" Mary Tuncer, Kaya's wife and the co-founder of Space Camp Turkey, said on accepting her late husband's induction into the Hall of Fame.īorn and raised in Turkey, the pinnacle of Tuncer's successful career as a businessman and builder was when he established the Aegean Free Zone in 1990. In June 2000, Tuncer opened Space Camp Turkey in Izmir, which more than 150,000 students and adults from 50 countries have attended to date. Today, she has launched her own company, Higher Orbits, to encourage students to develop an interest and pursue careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math - also known as STEM.Īs Ham is doing now, Tuncer used his passion for space and his entrepreneurial skills to inspire children. "Then, my mom and my dad - they scrimped and they saved to get me here the first time after I watched the movie." "I've dreamt for as long as I can remember while looking at the stars, and Space Camp was one of those dreams at one point - and it almost seemed unobtainable, like I couldn't attend," she said. During this time, she trained nearly every astronaut in NASA's corps, as well as international crew members, for their flights to station.īut it was her own training as a Space Camp attendee that helped prepare Ham for her future in the space program. "And it is cool, but for me, that was one of my first space-shuttle crews that I got the joy of training."įor 10 years, Ham worked at the Johnson Space Center in Houston as an astronaut instructor and operations planner for the International Space Station program, teaching the crew members about the inventory and stowage system aboard the orbiting outpost. "To Space Camp, you guys are like, 'Oh, that's cool! It's the flag that Ken flew,'" Michelle Lucas Ham, Ken's wife, said upon accepting the flag during her induction into the Hall of Fame. The pilot on that flight was astronaut Ken Ham. Inductees into the Hall of Fame are presented with a blue flight jacket, an engraved medal, a certificate and a small Space Camp flag that flew aboard the real space shuttle Discovery's STS-124 mission in June 2008. "I'm sure that it helped me keep it alive and strong throughout the years until quite recently, I had a chance to actually become an astronaut." From trainee to trainer "My belief is that, going to Space Camp when I was 18 years old took that dream I had as a child and made it even stronger," she said. "Tonight, being here with you and thinking back to my time at Space Camp, it is such an experience that is even more intense because, in a way, I am seeing myself and my experience as an astronaut through the sparkles in the eyes of my younger self."Ĭristoforetti attended Space Camp in 1995 as a foreign exchange student. "What it is many times is that you get a chance to meet young people, boys and girls, and to see yourself and your experience, what you do, through their eyes," Cristoforetti said. "And then, once in a while, something happens that brings it all back into perspective, and you're overwhelmed again with that sense of wonder and saying, 'Oh wow, I'm really getting to go to space.'" "What happens to you when you train for a long time is that it becomes part of your normal life, and you tend to lose that sense of excitement, that wonder, that you really should have every single day," she said. Cristoforetti, who is from Milan, Italy, was selected as a European Space Agency astronaut in 2009. Ĭristoforetti, 37, was unable to attend her induction into the Hall of Fame because she's currently at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, preparing to launch on her first flight to the International Space Station this November. "When I come back from space next year in May, it will be 20 years, almost to the day, since I was in Space Camp," Cristoforetti said during the ceremony in remarks delivered by video. (Image credit: ) From Space Camp to space From left to right: Liz Warren (2012), Andrea Hanson (2010), Amanda Stubblefield (2007), Samantha, Jim Allan and Robert Pearlman (2009) and Valerie Meyers (2011). Members of the Space Camp Hall of Fame welcome European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti into their ranks.
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