Life in Space with Astronaut Ricky Arnold

Public invited to Learn about Life in Space with Astronaut Ricky Arnold August 22 at Wallops NASA Visitor Center

The public is invited to learn about life in space with Maryland native Astronaut Ricky Arnold at 4 p.m., Thursday, August 22, 2019, at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility Visitor Center.

During the presentation, Arnold will talk about his experience as an astronaut on the International Space Station. A question and answer session will follow the presentation.

Arnold, born in Cheverly and raised in Bowie, was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 2004 and has spent more than 200 days in space.  His first journey in space was on the 36^th flight of Space Shuttle Discovery in March 2009. During this mission to the space station, Arnold accumulated more the 12 hours during 2 spacewalks.

He returned to the space station in March 2018 on a Soyuz spacecraft.  He spent 197 days on the station seeing the arrival of 6 visiting vehicles, participating in dozens of educational downlink events (including one with the Wallops NASA Visitor Center) and venturing outside the space station on three spacewalks to perform maintenance and upgrades.

He completed a Bachelor of Science degree in 1985 and a teacher certification in 1988 from Frostburg State University, Maryland. While working on his Master of Science degree at the University of Maryland, which he completed in 1992, he conducted research at Horn Point Environmental Laboratory in Cambridge, Maryland.

His teaching career, which began at John Hanson Middle School in Waldorf, Maryland, has taken him to various locations around the world including Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Romania.