 Purdue Space Day is a one-day outreach event where we bring in third through eighth grade students to participate in three STEM activities and interact with an astronaut to learn more about space. Elementary school students are naturally curious and part of that curiosity is geared towards space exploration. So the mission for Purdue Space Day is to foster that curiosity and show them that they can enhance this curiosity through STEM activities. Space Day makes an effort to make it a magical day. It's not just a day for learning about science and doing activities. It's a day to really get a sense for the impact in the grandeur of what space travel and space exploration are all about. I think it's really unique that it is a student-run volunteer organization that pulls off something of this scope and this professionalism. You know there's obviously a lot of other amazing professional organizations out there that offer something like this for students, but I love that this is a university-backed student-run passion project. These students work tirelessly to put on the best Purdue Space Day possible. They come up with all of the activities for the event. They're the ones who decide who our astronaut should be and send out the invitations. One of the things I loved about Purdue Space Day was the Purdue astronaut alums that came back to be involved. We have an astronaut come who was able to talk to the kids about his or her experiences in space. That's been one of my favorite parts definitely about being able to work with Purdue Space Day is getting the chance not just to meet astronauts but actually to kind of get to know them a little bit. Just how ironically down to earth a lot of them are both about their experience in their careers. Astronauts are very quick to point out that you know they're just one person or one crew amidst a team of tens or hundreds of thousands of people that made what they do possible. All the astronauts that we've had are full of praise for what we do at Purdue Space Day. A lot of astronauts are really keen to go out and spread the love of science, of space, of engineering, whatever it is that they do and are most passionate about. Having the chance to ask questions about what it's like to be in space and having the chance to actually apply different things that the students have learned and in a setting as conducive for space education as Purdue I think all of that comes together to make it really special. What makes Purdue Space Day unique is really the scale at which it operates. It started in 1996 and it's gained momentum and expanded every year since then. In the first 24 years that Purdue Space Day operated it reached over 10,000 students. So a few years ago because of logistics we would cap Purdue Space Day to the first 800 students that would sign up and they would really sign up within two to three minutes. So that just gives the level of excitement that they can't wait to sign up and really be a part of Purdue Space Day. The 25th anniversary coincided unfortunately with COVID-19 and the 2020 pandemic. We switched to a virtual presentation where we were able to reach approximately 4,500 students from 46 states and eight countries so that's been very encouraging to see the interest that is out there for this type of outreach activity. Purdue Space Day is amazing for what it offers for our STEM elementary students that they can come and engage outside of their classroom, outside of their home, outside of their normal activities to come on a major STEM campus. Purdue students are passionate about human spaceflight and they want to pass that passion forward to younger students who might someday pursue the same kind of career fields. It shows the kids that all these technical skills aren't just dry things you learn in a textbook that they're really fun.