A well-traveled, 12-inch Buzz Lightyear action figure received a homecoming on Friday worthy of any full-size astronaut who returned after more than a year spent onboard the International Space Station (ISS).Disney Parks and NASA came together friday at Walt Disney World in Florida to celebrate Buzz Lightyear's landing with the launch of a contest for kids to design the "Toy Story" astronaut's mission patch and debut a new online game as part of the "Space Ranger Education Series" on the space agency's Web site.
NASA also used today to announce a competition for students to develop science experiments to be conducted onboard the station.
The celebration culminated this afternoon with a marching band-led ticker-tape parade down the Magic Kingdom's Main Street USA featuring the flown Buzz Lightyear, his namesake - moonwalker Buzz Aldrin - and astronaut Mike Fincke, who was on the space station for six of the 15 months that the toy Lightyear was there
"It was so amazing," Fincke told collectSPACE.com after the parade. "You could really see that the guests here at the Magic Kingdom were extremely excited and the kids were really excited. I thought it was good for NASA, good for Disney, and I was just proud to be part of it.""Sitting next to Buzz [Aldrin], that was amazing! Beautiful cars and everybody was really excited and I felt like an American hero," he added.
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