Students get rare chance to talk with astronaut on space station

Students in West Palm Beach get rare chance to talk with astronaut on space station

WEST PALM BEACH — 

The voice came out of the ham radio like it was coming from a garage down the street instead of 260 miles up in space. The people gathered at the South Florida Science Museum burst into applause.

Eleven students and two teachers already were lined up and started barking their questions rapid-fire for Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, who has been on the International Space Station since mid-July. And Hoshide — speaking in flawless, near-accentless English — was quick with the answers.

The musem was one of only 10 sites in the nation participating on Tuesday as part of the collaboration between NASA’s Teaching From Space arm and museums and educators worldwide to encourage kids to pursue careers in science.

Palm Beach County students in grades 3 to 12 in public and private schools, and home-schooling, were invited to write a 250-word essay on “Why is space exploration important and what does it mean to me?”

Jerry Allison Stegenga III, 8, of Boynton Beach, said later, “it was shocking to hear someone from another place, in another part of such a vast universe, talking to somebody in such a small space.”

And Mom Veronica called the encounter “a once in a lifetime experience.”

Because the station is racing around the earth at about 17,000 mph — about 25,000 feet per second — the event’s window was only 11 minutes, from 11:58 a.m. to 12:09 p.m., so students and their teachers worked up their questions in advance.

Ham radio operator Mike McIntosh of Boca Raton, who’s with the West Palm Beach Amateur Radio Group, had begun hailing the space station about two minutes before the window opened. At first, Hoshide came in “clean and green.” It went in and out a few times, then failed altogether in the last 90 seconds, after the last student had gone but before the two teachers could ask their questions.

McIntosh said a one-week delay, forced by an ammonia leak on the station, left the spacecraft at a bad angle and so low on the horizon that trees got in the way.

Asked about producing water in space, astronaut Hoshide drew titters from kids and parents alike when he described how the station recycles “pee” and astronauts — eek — drink it. And he explained how an unmanned cargo ship delivers supplies and leaves with space station trash that burns up with the ship on reentry.

Emma Lilly, 8, of Boynton Beach, wanted to know, “what was the most interesting experience you’ve done in space? Over.”

Hoshide mentioned the launch of a satellite only four to five inches high from a robotic arm, and studies done on the bones and muscle of small fish in a space station aquarium.

Marking a link from the past to the future, the youngsters were joined by part-time Palm Beach Gardens resident M. Scott Carpenter, now 81, who a half-century ago, aboard Aurora 7, became the fourth American in space. He said of the kids, “They represent the life and everlasting future of this nation in its scientific pursuits.”