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Touching Outer Space

Kathryn R. Satterfield

When she was a child, Noreen Grice liked to think about what might be "beyond the Earth," in space. Now, she is helping others envision things that were once beyond their reach. Grice, an astronomer, owns a company called You Can Do Astronomy. She helps blind and visually impaired students see the wonders of the universe. She designs touchable pictures of the sun, stars, distant galaxies and other cosmic sights, and writes text in braille, a language of raised dots that blind people read with their fingers.

Grice is a coauthor of Touch the Invisible Sky, a new book from NASA that is available in schools for the blind, libraries and museums. The 60-page book features 28 color photos taken by Hubble and other NASA telescopes. Each image is also illustrated with textures like raised lines and dots. These patterns represent shapes and other features.

Grice has published five braille books on astronomy. They fill what was once a black hole in braille publishing. Translating pictures into braille is costly, so not many science books for blind people include raised images and graphics. Grice says she wants to put these images at blind students' fingertips "so that they can make pictures in their minds' eyes, and maybe discover things that other people didn't notice."

Chelsea Cook, 15, is visually impaired. When she looks at the night sky, she is able to make out a full moon but not the stars. Grice's books are helping Chelsea envision a future twinkling with possibility. "(The books) definitely opened doors to a lot of opportunities that I didn't think probable," Chelsea told TFK. "I want to become the first blind astronaut."

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