Newsflash: Nigerian teen getting a taste of zero-Gravity

[Haleemah]

By Katharine Houreld

Updated: 7:13 p.m. ET Sept 20, 2006

LAGOS, Nigeria - Nigerian teen Stella Felix rises at 5 a.m. to do chores and then walks nearly an hour to school. She has to share textbooks with schoolmates because her parents can’t afford to buy them and does homework by candlelight.

On Saturday, Felix will soar above all that from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a special Boeing aircraft, becoming one of the few Nigerians to experience the weightlessness that's usually associated with spaceflight.

Felix is the first of many students the Houston-based Spaceweek International Association hopes to send on a zero-gravity flight as part of a program that aims to give people worldwide more access to space.

Felix was selected from more than 400 students who applied from the West African country. She will spend two hours on a modified Boeing 727 jet, which will soar 6 miles above the Earth before dropping, giving about 10 cycles of weightlessness lasting a half-minute each.

“I feel like I’m an ambassador,” the slim 17-year-old told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday, a day before departing for the United States.

Running her hands down her black skirt, she added that many of her countrymen “thought (space) was only for whites. They don’t know that a Nigerian can do it too.”

For More Information:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14927587/