{"id":24448,"date":"2017-06-26T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T17:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=24448"},"modified":"2017-06-26T10:41:22","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T15:41:22","slug":"astronaut-rhea-seddon-to-give-free-talk-at-austin-peay-on-august-20th-as-part-of-peayclipse-celebration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2017\/06\/26\/astronaut-rhea-seddon-to-give-free-talk-at-austin-peay-on-august-20th-as-part-of-peayclipse-celebration\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronaut Rhea Seddon to give free talk at Austin Peay on August 20th as part of PeayClipse celebration"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – On April 12th, 1985, Dr. Rhea Seddon sat on 4.5 million pounds of explosives. It was a moment she\u2019d been preparing for most of her life, but that didn\u2019t stop her from feeling a little anxious.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty scary those first few minutes,\u201d she said during a 2015 AuthorSpeak event at the Linebaugh Library. \u201cYou feel this giant explosion way back behind you, and it feels like you\u2019re going to blow up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/a>

Dr. Rhea Seddon<\/p><\/div>\n

On that clear, April morning, Seddon sat strapped inside the Space Shuttle Discovery as it rumbled and vibrated quickly into the sky. About eight minutes later, the Tennessee native was riding comfortably in the quiet vacuum of space.<\/p>\n

At 7:00pm on Sunday, August 20th\u2014the day before the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse\u2014Seddon will deliver a free talk on her experience as one of NASA\u2019s first female astronauts at the Austin Peay State University Dunn Center. An hour before the talk, at 6:00pm, Seddon will sign copies of her book, \u201cGo for Orbit,\u201d in the Dunn Center. The lecture and book signing are part of the University\u2019s PeayClipse celebration, commemorating the historic solar eclipse.<\/p>\n

Seddon grew up in Murfreesboro, and one night in 1957, she looked into the sky, hoping to see the flashing lights of Sputnik\u2014the first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union, to orbit the Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cSputnik, I think, began my thought processes about perhaps being able to do something else,\u201d Seddon said during the Nashville Public Television special, Tennessee Explorers. \u201cI think that caught my imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time, only male test pilots became astronauts, but a motivated Seddon pushed herself to excel, on the chance that women would one day be admitted into the program. She earned her medical degree and a pilot\u2019s license, and then, in 1977, she learned NASA was looking for astronauts for the new space shuttle program. A year later, Seddon became one of NASA\u2019s first six female astronauts.<\/p>\n

She served as a Mission Specialist on flights in 1985 and 1991 and as Payload Commander in charge of all science activities on her final flight in 1993. On May 30th, 2015, Seddon was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n

For information on her talk or additional APSU PeayClipse events, visit www.apsu.edu\/eclipse<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – On April 12th, 1985, Dr. Rhea Seddon sat on 4.5 million pounds of explosives. It was a moment she\u2019d been preparing for most of her life, but that didn\u2019t stop her from feeling a little anxious. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty scary those first few minutes,\u201d she said during a 2015 AuthorSpeak event at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[23,438,30519,262,825,4568,2406,11328,19958,30516,30518,30555,11327,1758,30474],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-6mk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24448"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24449,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24448\/revisions\/24449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}