Astronaut Mark Vande Hei Visits Central Minnesota

(KNSI) – Astronaut Mark Vande Hei will be in central Minnesota for several events on Tuesday.

The first is a presentation to the Rotary Club of St. Cloud at noon at the St. Cloud Country Club. President Leigh Ann Davis says the talk is not open to the public, but speakers are part of every weekly program the group puts on.

“We have a pretty robust program team that looks for different folks to speak to us. We actually get a lot of amazing speakers throughout our year of programming.”

Vande Hei grew up in Minnesota and holds the record for the longest stint in outer space at 355 days, nearly a full year. He’ll be talking to his alma mater, St. John’s University, at 4:00 p.m. and everyone is welcome to that presentation at the Pellegrene Auditorium inside the Peter Engel Science Center.

Davis says if interest is there in the future, open Rotary talks could possibly be an option for talks in the future. Davis says Vande Hei is one of many great speakers brought in to address the group.

“We have folks that talk about national things that are happening. We have very local conversations about people who are starting businesses in our own community, things like that. I’ve been a member of Rotary since 2009, I believe, and it’s one of my favorite things, is how hard our program committee work.”

The Rotary Club meets every Tuesday at lunchtime. Information on how to join the group is here.

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