Liberty Acquires Piece of NASA History

Last spring library media specialist Lisa Touzeau was able to secure a bit of NASA history for Liberty Middle School.

Through the American Library Association's weekly newsletter, Touzeau learned that NASA, in an effort to preserve its history and artifacts and "inspire the next generation of space explorers, scientist and engineers" was offering 7,000 shuttle heat shield tiles to schools and universities that wanted to share technology and a piece of space history.

Knowing that astronauts and were , Touzeau realized that it was Liberty's duty to preserve this unique piece of history so that the students can understand the effort and knowledge that it takes to plan and complete a mission.

Touzeau was also able to obtain, through her cousin, Mr. Richard Van Riper, a former West Orange resident and retired aerospace engineer, who worked closely on the Apollo missions of the 1960's, the press kit of the final Discovery mission.

This kit outlines the mission and gives a detailed account of the crew, the experiments, spacewalks and payload for the lay person.

In a glass display case, the school features the triangular, dark-colored heat shield tile, used to protect the shuttle from extreme heat when reentering Earth.

It is through these items that Touzeau and the Liberty staff hope to inspire their students to realize that they can achieve almost anything with hard work and knowledge.