Nigerian Teen to Take Zero-Gravity Trip

Stella Felix, 17, a schoolgirl who will become the first Nigerian to experience space flight, gives an interview in Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2006. Felix was selected out of more than 400 students who applied for the zero-gravity flight, which will take off Saturday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (AP Photo/George Osodi) (George Osodi - AP)

LAGOS, Nigeria -- Nigerian teen Stella Felix rises at 5 a.m. to do chores and then walks nearly an hour to school. She has to share textbooks with schoolmates because her parents can't afford to buy them and does homework by candlelight.

On Saturday, Felix will soar above all that from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a special Boeing aircraft, becoming the first Nigerian to experience the weightlessness of space flight.

Felix is the first of many students the Houston-based Spaceweek International Association hopes to send on a zero-gravity flight as part of a program that aims to give people worldwide more access to space.

Felix was selected from more than 400 students who applied from the West African country. She will spend two hours on a modified Boeing 727 jet, which will soar six miles above the Earth before dropping, giving about a half-minute of weightlessness with each cycle.

"I feel like I'm an ambassador," the slim 17-year-old told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday, a day before departing for the United States.

Running her hands down her black skirt, she added that many of her countrymen "thought (space) was only for whites. They don't know that a Nigerian can do it too."

Felix is the top student in her favorite subjects _ physics and chemistry _ at Moremi High School in the southern town of Ife. Most of her class of 60 are lucky to have one book to share between two students.

"At least we all have chairs," Felix said with a laugh.

Flight organizers said Felix was selected based on her performance at a several-day workshop in which applicants had to build models of rockets and satellites. She also fit the profile they were looking for _ a girl between 15 and 18 from a poor family.

Nigeria's ruined infrastructure almost never supplies electricity to her home, and water is drawn from a well in a back yard.

Her parents, who make a living selling secondhand clothes, have not been able to afford textbooks for their daughter's favorite subjects. But they have saved enough money to put all their seven children through school.

"I'll be looking up in the sky for her," Felix's mother Eunice said, hugging her daughter. "I'm very, very happy. God will protect her."