Astronaut to Visit Washburn High School Monday

On Monday morning, students at Washburn High School will get to meet Bob Cabana, a former Marine and now head of NASA's Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, FL.

Cabana will regale students with tales of his management of NASA's premier space launch facility and his time in the Marine Corps at a morning assembly. Oh, and he may also share a story or two from the four times he's flown into space on board the Space Shuttles Discovery, Columbia, and Endeavour. 

Cabana wasn't just any old astronaut, either. He was the pilot on two space shuttle flights and the commander on two more, including the first mission to begin assembling the International Space Station in 1998.

Cabana will also have lunch with Washburn students immediately following the assembly. Cabana is, himself, a Washburn grad from the class of 1967, Assistant Principal Linda Conley told Patch. When he decided to come to Minneapolis to help kick off National Aerospace Week, Conley said, he wanted to come visit his old high school.

So, if you know any Washburn parents, and they look a bit bummed out on Monday afternoon after their kids start answering the usual questions about "how was school," cut them some slack. They just missed a chance to meet a real, live astronaut.