9th Roger That! Conference: Communication and Space (APPROVED INT201)
Saturday, February 15, 2025
10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Off Campus, Robert C. Pew Grand Rapids Campus
Alumni, Community, Faculty, Staff, Students

The 9th Roger That! Conference – A Celebration of Space Exploration in Honor of Roger B Chaffee will be held on Friday, February 14th, and Saturday, February 15th at GVSU and GRPM. The theme of this year’s conference is Communication and Space – the number of ways space exploration and communication can intersect. Humans on the ground communicate with people in space, engineers communicate with spacecraft, and a lot of amazing communicators work right here on Earth to help communicate ideas and concepts about space exploration to the larger community. Our theme of "communication" encompasses all of those meanings and more! The conference is in hybrid format - register so we can send you the Zoom link. Events at GVSU are free and open to the public while those at GRPM are free with admission.
Our keynote speaker, Commander John Herrington, PhD, is a retired NASA astronaut, U.S. Navy Commander, and the first enrolled member of a Native American tribe (the Chickasaw Nation) to fly in space. During the 2002 STS-113 mission, where he served as a Mission Specialist, he performed three spacewalks focused on the International Space Station's construction. He will be speaking in-person at 6:30 pm on Friday, February 14th at the Loosemore Auditorium and again at 11 am on Saturday, February 15th at the museum. Commander Herrington's talk is titled Living your Dreams.
Our lineup of speakers (virtual) on Friday, February 14th will include:
- Bruce Waggoner, Mission Assurance Manager at JPL, will talk about overcoming the challenges while communicating recently with the Voyager 1 spacecraft from 15 billion miles away.
- Shayla Redmond, STEM educator and mechanical engineer with NASA, will talk about using storytelling to communicate complex ideas of astronomy and robotics.
- Andy Calloway, Flight Operations Manager for OSIRIS-REX, will talk about his experiences on the project to retrieve samples from the asteroid, Bennu. Spoiler alert: it was a success!
At 4:00 pm on Friday we will transition to in-person activities at the Loosemore Auditorium at GVSU with workshops about about the science of sound and building satellites for kids and parents! Join four local artists who will present a panel discussion on the communication of scientific ideas through art.
There will be more family-friendly activities at the museum all day Friday and Saturday.
Location Information
On Friday, Feb 14th, Roger That! activities will take place at GVSU's Loosemore Auditorium in the DeVos Center on the Downtown Pew campus. Complimentary Parking is located in the Seward Ramp Lot at 520 Lake Michigan Dr. Grand Rapids, MI 49504. For parking at the Grand Rapids Public Museum on Saturday Feb 15th, please click here.
The Richard M. DeVos Center, Loosemore Auditorium
401 West Fulton
Street
Grand Rapids, MI 49504
Contact Information
Brad Ambrose, [email protected]
Samhita Rhodes, [email protected]
Karen Gipson, [email protected]
Deana Weibel, [email protected]
Hosting Department, Organization, or Business
CLAS, PCEC, Grand Rapids Public Museum
Tags
asteroid astronaut engineering familyfriendly int201 k12 science space workshop
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This event was added to the calendar by Samhita Rhodes (rhodesam@gvsu.edu) on Friday, January 17, 2025 and was last updated on Monday, February 3, 2025 at 11:09 a.m.
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