Curiosity and old friends brought Katelynn Rose back to Dick Scobee Elementary School for a much-anticipated school-wide assembly last week.

She also wanted to solve the mystery of a mythical Twinkie.

“I’m so excited because I don’t know what I put in there,” said Rose, who was a third-grader back in 2000 when she helped her classmates stuff items into a time capsule. “I remember when we were talking about it … and that somebody put a Twinkie in there.”

As it turned out, there was no Twinkie at all. When Principal Greg Brown reached deep inside the capsule last Friday, he pulled out a baggie containing an unsavory Rice Krispies-covered treat.

What the capsule did contain were many good memories, pamphlets, photos and short stories detailing the lives and dreams of grade-schoolers then, many of whom are high school graduates now. There were school patches, Pokémon cards, a Transformer, Beanie Babies and an official Scobee school T-shirt signed by teachers and staff.

The opening of the time capsule – a 6-foot-long keepsake of momentoes and memories that hung on the wall of the school library for 10 years – was part of the school’s week-long celebration of Dick Scobee and other fallen astronauts from three NASA space tragedies.

The school came together to honor those who lost their lives in pursuit of exploration, including Scobee, the commander of the seven-strong Space Shuttle Challenger mission that exploded moments after launch in 1986.

Scobee’s brother, Jim, and family members were on hand for the assembly, which also brought back students who were part of the school-wide time capsule project led by then-principal Starla Audette.

“At first, I said, ‘Cool, a time capsule, (but) I probably won’t go back to open it,’ “ said Maggie Batson, a third-grader then and a beauty school student studying cosmetology today. “But now that I am here, I’m so excited. I forgot what I had put in it. It would be so cool to look.”

The assembly included tributes – a reading, song and dance – followed by the opening of the time capsule.

Brown and his staff intend to fill the time capsule again and extend a school tradition.

“It brings it full circle for me,” Brown said. “I remember when I first came here. I saw that (the time capsule) was to be opened in 2010, and thought that seemed like so long from then.

“I think it’s so neat for the kids to see this … to see what the kids thought back then and to have the opportunity to now be that group who fills it.”