Staff / Nathan Self 

NASA Mission Specialist Dr. Robert L. Satcher Jr. prepares to show his video taken on the international space station to the students of Woodland Elementary in Sandy Springs.

Wearing a blue NASA flight suit, Mission Specialist Dr. Robert L. Satcher Jr. strode into the North Springs Charter High School auditorium last week heralded by the school orchestra’s “Star Wars” rendition.

Satcher was kicking off the nonprofit Sandy Springs Education Force’s Reach for the Stars program to boost student interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
The Houston resident was treated to a whirlwind orbit of North Springs cluster schools, escorted by nonprofit chairman David Couchman.

“Not only is he an astronaut, he’s a doctor and he has two degrees in chemical engineering,” Couchman said in his introduction of the Harvard Medical School 

and Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate. “He’s here to explain you can achieve your dream if you get an education.”

Satcher caught the exploration bug growing up near the New World colony of Jamestown, Va., a restlessness that led him, at the age of 38, to embark on his third career by becoming an astronaut candidate.

“Because I had done well [in school], I had a lot of alternatives at each step of the way,” he said. “I had this interest in space. I met doctors who had been in space, so I applied.”
Now 44, Satcher became one of those doctors, flying on the Atlantis space shuttle mission last Thanksgiving and walking twice in outer space, as students saw during a video presentation.

“I’m the lucky one who got to do surgery on the arm, using some surgery skills,” he said about detaching a spare antenna from the International Space Station. “I got to ride on the arm and I got some fantastic views.”

Students from the high school and Sandy Springs Middle School, whom Satcher said were the right age to consider joining a mission to Mars, asked medical- and science-oriented questions.

“It takes a couple of days to remember everything doesn’t float,” Satcher said about returning from weightlessness. “People have been known to drop glasses. It’s pretty funny to watch.”

While Satcher has returned to Johnson Space Center, the nonprofit continues the program by offering Sandy Springs public schools the opportunity to apply for a $1,000 grant to implement a STEM program.