posted 11-03-2006 04:26 PM               

Col. Eileen Collins (USAF, Ret.), who commanded the 2005 'Return to Flight' mission of Space Shuttle Discovery, and Mercury astronaut-turned-Senator John Glenn, who made his own return to space aboard Discovery in 1998, will each autograph a photograph from their respective missions and author letters to Astronaut Autograph Club (AAC) members during 2007.

Begun in 2004, the AAC delivers a different astronaut's signature and personalized letter to club members each month of the year. All proceeds from the Club go to support $10,000 scholarships for exceptional college students pursuing science and engineering degrees. To date, the foundation has awarded more than $2.3 million in scholarships to 211 deserving students.

Joining Collins and Glenn in 2007 will be 10 other exceptional astronauts, all of whom flew aboard the space shuttle:

• John Blaha - lived aboard the Russian Space Station Mir for four months;
  
• Brian Duffy - commanded the 100th space shuttle mission
  
• Sam Gemar - flew three times and logged over 580 hours in space
  
• Tom Jones - spacewalked outside the International Space Station to install a science laboratory
  
• Mark Lee - tested a new jet backpack outside the International Space Station
  
• Jon McBride - piloted the first shuttle mission with seven crew members
  
• Bruce Melnick - mission specialist who flew on the maiden flight of shuttle Endeavour
  
• Rhea Seddon - studied life sciences aboard Spacelab as a payload commander
  
• Kathy Thornton - spacewalker who repaired and serviced the Hubble Space Telescope
  
• Don Williams - deployed the Galileo spacecraft to study Jupiter

posted 01-11-2007 08:19 AM               

It was also personalised which is great. Also got my tickets to visit KSC.

Looking forward to the year's photos.