NSBRI's Defying Gravity : Embracing Life in program now has an active Performance Patch that is available to girl scouts within the Girl Scouts Council of Greater New York. It is achieved by conducting levels of activities corresponding to all the scout levels “Daisy,” Brownie,” “Junior,” “Cadette” and “Senior”. Sarah Walter designed the patch after being inspired during her participation in the Defying Gravity Summer Institute 2001: An Education and Research Odyssey .

The new patch is based within the “Women with Wings, Girl Scouts Conquer the Sky” initiative, which has roots back to "Wing Scouting". Juliette Gordon Low founded this program and its “Flyer Badge” in 1913. The new age flyers may well be astronauts, and as the GSCGNY remind us “It's said that the first Astronaut to set foot on Mars will probably be a woman & she might be in your Girl Scout Troop right now!”

http://www.gscgny.org/HTML/girls/WomenWithWings.htm .

Girl Scout founded “Women with Rockets” epitomes such as Eileen Collins, Nancy Currie, and Janice Voss who have flown in Space Shuttle missions and Barbara Morgan who was the first educator astronaut, certainly provide abundant inspiration for young women like Sarah Walter, our hometown founder of the Defying Gravity patch, to make big statements in space.

Patrick J Gannon, PhD

Director, Defying Gravity Program