The Space Mission Adventure Read Free Page A

explained. “And I bet you’ll like the food—it’s pretty kid-friendly. Pizza, Tater Tots, fries, chicken fingers—stuff like that.”
    â€œSweet!” one of the girls in the group said.
    â€œYou got chocolate-covered asparagus?” Ziggy asked with a grin.
    â€œOoh, yuck!” another girl said.
    â€œWhat about hamburgers with jelly?”
    Samantha laughed. “It’s going to be easy to remember you, Ziggy. You have quite an imagination.”
    â€œHe’s serious, Samantha,” Rashawn explained. “Ziggy has the strangest eating habits in the world!”
    â€œWell, maybe tonight at dinner you can showme how to dip my French fries into my chocolate pudding!” Samantha told Ziggy.
    â€œI’m going to like her, mon! She understands me!” Ziggy put his hand to his heart and fell to the grass, kicking his legs in the air. The rest of the kids in the group cracked up.
    The other three boys who shared bunk space with Ziggy and his friends were Neil, Alan, and Cubby, sixth graders from a small private school in Georgia. Neil and Alan were twins. With fiery red hair that stood up in little spikes, and tall, skinny frames, they were easy to spot from a distance, but a little hard to tell apart even up close. Cubby wore a baseball cap turned backward and what had to be size-twelve tennis shoes. He had already impressed the other boys with his knowledge of space history.
    â€œThat shuttle is the Pathfinder , you know,” he said, pointing to the giant shuttle that was mounted fifty feet above their heads.
    â€œHow big is that sucker?” Jerome asked. “I feel like a bug standing under it.”
    â€œWell, the three parts you see are the orbiter—that’sthe shuttle that carries the astronauts—and the external fuel tank—the thing that looks like a giant hot dog—and the solid rocket boosters. Those are the two white tubes. When they’re full of fuel, they weigh over a million pounds each.”
    â€œWow.” Everyone in the group was silent, in awe of the giant space vehicle above them.
    â€œCan it fly to the moon or to Mars, mon?” Ziggy asked.
    â€œWell, this one doesn’t fly at all, but shuttles aren’t designed to fly so far away. For that, you need something like a Saturn rocket. Right, Samantha?” Cubby asked in a voice that said he knew she’d agree with him.
    â€œYes, Cubby, you’re right. It looks like we have a space expert on our team.”
    Neil and Alan, the twins, rolled their eyes as if they’d heard Cubby’s space facts many times before. “Did you know that these two were named for astronauts?” Cubby asked the rest of the team.
    â€œHow do you know, Cubby? You weren’t there!” Alan said.
    â€œBut you told me, and your mom said it was true. I think it’s really cool,” Cubby said with a wistful look on his face. “I wish my mom had named me after a space hero.”
    â€œSo who are you named after?” Rashawn asked Neil.
    â€œI’m named after Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon,” Neil explained.
    â€œAnd Mom and Dad named me after Alan Shepard, first American man in space,” Alan said. “Our parents are engineers and work for NASA—I guess they have high hopes for us.”
    â€œYou’re lucky, mon,” Ziggy told the boys with a laugh. “She could have named one of you after Sally Ride, the first woman in space!”
    Neil rolled his eyes. “Our three-year-old sister, of course, is named . . .”
    â€œSally!” Alan finished. Ziggy and the others laughed.
    â€œI’m glad to know we’ve got a group who’s really interested in space,” Samantha commented. “I’m proud to have each of you on Team America.” Shethen had each team member do a little introduction. The girls on their team, all students from Alan, Neil, and Cubby’s school, were