The Record Newspapers - Hometown News For Orange County, Texas

The ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp program was founded by Bernard Harris Jr., an astronaut and the first African American to walk in space. The program focuses on STEM-based curriculum to reinforce critical thinking skills and reduce summer learning loss. Harris will make a personal visit to the camp on June 19 to encourage students to continue their studies and enter the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields. The free residential camp serves incoming sixth, seventh and eighth grade students who excel in mathematics and science. Forty-eight students are participating in this year’s camp.

Harris was at NASA for ten years, where he conducted research in musculoskeletal physiology and disuse osteoporosis. He conducted clinical investigations of space adaptation and developed in-flight medical devices to extend astronaut stays in space. Selected into the Astronaut Corp in January 1990, Harris was a mission specialist on the space shuttle Columbia in 1993. As payload commander on space shuttle Discovery in 1995, he served on the first flight of the joint Russian-American Space Program. A veteran astronaut for more than twenty years, he has logged more than 438 hours and traveled more than seven million miles in space.