The lunar and Everest rock samples (and fancy Pringles/duct tape holder) with Zambo

The past few weeks have been a blur of Everest-related activity, and hypoxia is not to blame! The Discovery Channel’s “Everest: Beyond the Limit” series detailing the 2009 summit season went live just after Christmas. Last week we held the official hand-off of the “nuggets” — the small Apollo 11 lunar samples I took to the top, and a summit rock I brought down — over to NASA.

The “Everest BTL” episode in which I was featured, along with buddies Dawes, Danuru, Mingma, Ed, Mike, Louis and Paul, is mega-dramatically entitled: “Deadly Countdown!” If you missed one of the dozen times it played that week, fear not! All is not lost! Assuming you don’t have a heart ailment or fear of heights, here is the full episode online: http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/everest-beyond-the-limit-deadly-countdown-full-episode.html

Last week three great friends joined me for probably the last pages of the “Everest chapter” in my life… Keith Cowing and Miles Obrien flew into Houston for a ceremony to formally hand over the small rocks, picked up literally worlds apart. The recipient was my good friend George “Zambo” Zamka, about to command the STS-130 Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station. Keith and Miles, both fellow Directors of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education (www.challenger.org), were driving forces in sharing the expedition with countless thousands of kids around the world through our blogs and videochats. They encouraged me and helped me find sponsorship despite the longest of odds, and I’m eternally grateful. Zambo flew with me on my final Shuttle mission, STS-120, and he and his new crew will now be the couriers of what I consider to be precious cargo. Although this is  a very minor duty on a very complex mission (!), I hope that having these tangible objects of exploration will help inspire future astronaut explorers as they venture off to places even more distant in the years ahead. You can see the hand-off ceremony (Miles was MC) and a presentation on my Everest years on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3St_RRXZLU

Apollo 11 lunar samples and a piece of the "Roof of the World" mounted and ready for a trip to the International Space Station; they will eventually reside in the appropriately-named "Tranquility Module."

Everest summit gear on display at Space Center Houston

Other mentions of recent events (Big Thanks to Robert Pearlman for the photos above!):

• collectSPACE (Robert Pearlman’s great site): http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-010610a.html
• Air & Space Magazine photo of the day: http://www.airspacemag.com/snapshot/80860072.html
• MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34757736/ns/technology_and_science-space/
• Mother Nature Network: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/rocks-from-the-moon-and-from-everest-join-crew-of-the