One Small Step for a Future Astronaut
A random act of kindness can change someone’s life. When Marissa Valencia, a fourth grader at Brea Country Hills Elementary School, received a Random Act of Helpfulness from Honda Motor Company, she took one step closer towards her dream of becoming an astronaut.
Valencia was given an opportunity to attend Space Camp at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, located in Huntsville, Ala., by Honda’s Random Acts of Helpfulness, a regional advertising campaign dedicated to performing various community services and granting gifts to Honda consumers.
Valencia attended Space Camp from Sept. 1–5. Throughout the course of the program, she underwent several astronaut training activities, such as building and launching model rockets and using a G-force simulator, which controls the force of gravity upon the person inside the centrifuge. She noted that one of her favorite parts of the camp was taking part in a mission control where she had to monitor oxygen levels and solve an issue of a mock astronaut. The overall experience made Valencia “feel like a real astronaut.”
“I am so thankful to Honda for this,” Valencia said. “I’ve always loved looking at the moon and the stars. I got to live my dream of space camp.”
She was specially selected to participate in the space program after Columbia Memorial Space Center’s STEM Club in Downey, Calif. referred her to Honda. Valencia was then told that she’d be interviewed for a documentary about kids that love space by a Honda employee. When it was revealed that the “documentary” was actually for a commercial, Valencia was astonished as it was a “total surprise.” The commercial is currently being broadcast on television.
“I want to be the first woman to touch the moon,” Valencia said in her interview with Honda. “No ifs, ands, and buts — I’m going to be an astronaut.”
Not only was Valencia overjoyed with the surprise, but her parents were delighted as well.
“I guess Honda wanted it to be a surprise, using the excuse that it was a documentary. There was no script so everything said was all genuine,” Nina Valencia, Marissa’s mother, said.
Valencia continues to pursue her dream of becoming an astronaut upon her return from NASA’s Space Camp. She is determined to see space with her own eyes in the future.
