“Definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity, that’s for sure,” said Grade 5 Student Oden Hopkins, after finishing a call from space.
His school, École Champs Vallée in Beaumont, had a chance to video chat with Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques who is on the International Space Station (ISS).
“David tries to do these video downlinks with schools and with other organizations in Canada every week or every two weeks,” said former Canadian Space Agency astronaut Dr. Robert Thirsk, who coordinated the call from earth.
The call was part of a program called “Living Space,” a partnership with the Canadian Space Agency and Let’s Talk Science.
“I’ve been trying to weave space into my curriculum in meaningful ways. We do a lot of project based learning, tomato sphere, we have a mars garden and we work with Let’s Talk Science,” said Amanda Green, a science teacher at École Champs Vallée.
“It’s this program where they can code micro-bits to do environmental monitoring and compare it to the International Space Station,” she added.
During the call with Saint-Jacques, students were able to tell him about experiments they were working on in class and ask him questions.
One student wanted to know what a spacewalk was like.
“It’s that experience of being outside the station with nothing between me and the rest of the universe,” Saint-Jacques told students from the ISS.
“I felt like a very little satellite looking at our beautiful planet and it just filled me with awe and also humility because you realize that normally it’s impossible to survive there. We only survive there because of the human ingenuity and the thousands of people who work hard to make it possible. So for me it was a great example of team work,” he said.
Some students wanted to know what it’s like to sleep in space and what he thinks is the most important experiment they’ve done on the ISS.
Hopkins, dressed in an astronaut outfit, got to ask about the junior astronaut program and if cuts bleed or heal differently in space.
“The bacteria in space is stronger than it usually is on earth,” said Hopkins.
Saint-Jacques also had a little bit of fun while talking to students, letting his microphone float in front of him and making and throwing a paper airplane.
“It was pretty cool too, how he threw the paper airplane. I thought it was just going to fly normally,” said Hopkins.
The goal of the program is to inspire students to think about careers in space or similar fields.
“I hope that the event today inspired a few dreams in some of the young people that participated today. Space is magic; there’s something about this notion of venturing into this unknown territory that fires the imagination of young people,” said Thirsk.
Hopkins is one of those students. He hopes to be an astronaut when he gets older.
“Because one, zero gravity...it’s awesome. You just float around. It’d certainly be fun, and also because you know we get to hang out. I don’t know why, but I like small spaces,” he said.
“He’s into astronomy, you know, space, astronaut stuff. We bought him a telescope a couple of years ago and he just latched onto it so,” said Steve Peitz, Hopkin’s step-father.
“He has a poster of the Hubble telescope, and then, underneath there’s a picture that he drew of a spacewalk and it says ‘Junior astronaut’s bedroom, do not enter.’”
