College students don't really need an excuse to party. But the Drexel students who gathered for pizza and cookies in the lobby of the Bossone Research Center had a great reason Friday morning.
They came out to watch Drexel alumnus Chris Ferguson rocket into space on Atlantis, as the Commander of the final shuttle mission.
"I've always been interested in what celebrities went to our school, and this is probably as big as you can get, to have an astronaut, who's commanding the final shuttle mission, who actually went to our school," said Dylan Siegfried.
The crowd was tense when the countdown was stopped at T-minus 31 seconds, but when liftoff finally occurred, jubilation followed.
"It was pretty awesome!" said Claudia Gutierrez. "I really enjoyed it, it was really neat."
Sitting in the front row was a design student with a special connection to the flight.
Jennifer Choy designed one of two mission patches that Ferguson is carrying up to the International Space Station.
"That's amazing," said Jennifer. "I'm speechless. It was so much fun to watch. I'm so excited."
"I don't think this will ever be the end of space. A lot of future lies in space. It may not be the government doing it, but I'm sure this will be privatized somehow," said Atit Patel.
And some of these engineering students may just be the ones who take space exploration into the future.
