Canaveral Section Chapter Hosts AESS Chapter Dinner with Astronaut Win Scott

The IEEE Canaveral AESS Section Chapter joined the Canaveral Council of Technical Societies to host an Engineers Week dinner on 2/21/25. We enjoyed a wonderful talk from Winston Scott, a retired United States Navy Captain and former NASA astronaut. He served as a mission specialist on STS-72 in 1996 on Endeavor and STS-87 in 1997 on Columbia. Captain Scott logged a total of 24 days, 14 hours and 34 minutes in space, including three spacewalks totaling 19 hours and 26 minutes. Often known by his nickname of “Win”, he was also a Naval Aviator and initially flew helicopters and later transitioned to fighter aircraft. His talk shared his experiences on military and space shuttle missions, space walks, and the space community. Two interesting anecdotes from his space walk stories were that he had to capture a Spartan satellite by hand while moving at 7.8 km/sec, and that while on a space walk, each day lasted only 90 minutes and had very dynamic thermal cycles. He also shared his thoughts on the future of space travel. We had about 50 people in attendance, including students and leaders in the community and local industry.