Women’s Aerospace Fall 2024
umping off a pamper pole, experiencing
neutral buoyancy, landing a space shuttle
on Mars—just imagine a visually impaired
youth performing these challenges. Beyond
the Stars Education opens the doors to an
incredible chance for Romanian visually
impaired students to feel what an astronaut
feels for seven days in a life-changing
learning adventure.
The idea behind Beyond the Stars Education
started in 2016 when I was one of the science
teachers selected worldwide to be part of the
Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)
training in the U.S. Space and Rocket Center
in Huntsville, Alabama. Two years later, I
became the HESA International Ambassador
via NASA education for the same program. In
2016, during a presentation, I saw a photo of
a student sitting on top of a pole and jumping
in thin air (harnessed, of course) during the
Space Camp for Interested Visually Impaired
Students (SCIVIS) program. At the end of the
presentation, I inquired about the program
and found out that the student was visually
impaired. I was astonished, as most sighted
people would be afraid to perform that.
Moreover, they offer full scholarships for
international visually impaired students, and
none of them are Romanian. This triggered
mixed feelings in me—I was both in awe
of the idea of the program but also deeply
heartbroken at the thought of the students
in my country. Determined to change that,
I looked for Romanian visually impaired
students who had a passion for space, a good
level of English, and were open-minded to
embrace new opportunities.
A Romanian SCIVIS blind student on a pamper pole. Photo credit:
Dorina Girbovan