On February 16, 2016, my sister Gabrielle and I got to listen to a real-life astronaut live from space. That day, many elementary and middle schoolers in Austin, Texas, were invited to a live video chat on the NASA website streaming from the International Space Station. During the video chat, I learned a thing or two about life on a space station more than 200 miles above Earth's surface.
The astronaut was Tim Kopra who was an engineer working on the ISS. Kopra also hailed from Austin, so I suppose he was quite excited to speak to a group of students in Austin.
During the video chat, students asked Kopra several questions and I learned some interesting facts. When I joined with Gabrielle, Kopra was holding a "running harness." He said that astronauts need to exercise even while on a space station, so the astronauts run on treadmills while wearing harnesses so they don't float off in the station's zero-gravity conditions. When asked about how astronauts contacted Mission Control in Houston, Kopra held up a small blue microphone with a white cord attached to the wall of the station. He explained that messages spoken into the microphone were transmitted to satellites, which then transmit the messages to Mission Control. However, astronauts have to take turns on the microphone. He also showed an iPad on which he watches movies streamed from the Earth's surface, a Kindle on which he reads books, and packets containing various assortments of foods for the astronauts to eat (he squeezed out and ate banana pudding on air!). When asked what he liked to do as a hobby, Kopra said he liked to take photos through windows on the station. And when asked what was the weirdest thing he'd seen, he showed water floating around in a circular bubble and popped it into his mouth. I'd heard that liquids formed into spheres in zero-gravity conditions and in the vacuum of space, but I'd never seen it in a video, let alone in a live video chat.
Kopra gave some good advice, too. He said that the most important thing to bring into space is the ability to get along with others. He also said to live by the motto: "Work hard, play nice." This is good advice if you want to become an astronaut. It's also good advice if you want to be or do anything else in life. I certainly learned a few things that day.
