First of its kind session with SpaceX astronauts
Imagine you and your family are astronauts on the space station right now. You can only use the resources available to you. How would you adapt to the challenges and still keep doing important routines, like exercising, learning, and making time for fun? Students from across the nation will have an opportunity this week questioning around the situation to NASA astronauts abroad the International Space Station.
NASA will host a live Earth-to-space call at 1:10 p.m. EDT Friday, June 19, on NASA Television and the agency’s website. NASA astronauts Robert Behnken, Christopher Cassidy and Douglas Hurley will answer questions recorded by K-12 students from the Challenger Center’s national network of learning centers. In addition, Challenger Center President and CEO Lance Bush will give opening remarks via a pre-recorded video. The student question-and-answer session will be the first of its kind with astronauts who arrived to the station on a commercially owned and operated spacecraft.
Linking students directly to astronauts aboard the space station provides unique, authentic experiences designed to enhance student learning, performance and interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Astronauts living in space on the orbiting laboratory communicate with NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston 24 hours a day through the Space Network’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS).
Cassidy launched to the space station on April 9 and currently serves as the commander of Expedition 63. On May 30, Behnken and Hurley became the first NASA astronauts to launch to the station aboard a commercial spacecraft and rocket, lifting off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket as part of NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission. Behnken and Hurley joined the Expedition 63 crew after their Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour, arrived to the station on May 31.
