Fort Huachuca, Arizona - The sixth grade students at Colonel Smith Middle School could barely sit still as they eagerly waited for astronaut Capt. Mark Kelly to answer their Skype call Monday afternoon.
The 30-minute Skype call was the first call between the students and Kelly who were able to view him on two large projection screens and a laptop. Ten honor students from the 120 sixth graders were able to ask Kelly questions during the call.
One student, Annie Ricks, 11, asked him, "What advice can you give kids our age who are interested in working for the space program whether it be through NASA or through private industry?"
"The better you can do in school, it will give you more options," Kelly responded. "The better student you are now in middle and high school gives you more options as to which college you get to go to. And if you do well in college it will give you more options to which field and what kind of job you get. So I think that the best advice I got is to work hard and find things you're interested in. If you think one day you want to work in the space program whether it's at NASA or private industry start thinking more about science and math; then try to do well in it."
Ricks was delighted by this answer as one day she hopes to go to the space station.
"I like learning about space and astronauts," Ricks said. "[Kelly's response] was what I expected, he said to keep believing and focus on math and science."
Tristan Post, 11, thought Skyping with Kelly was, "cool because not a lot of people get to do it, and I have never met an astronaut before."
Post was impressed that Kelly answered all of their questions but still wants to ask him what the best part about being an astronaut is.
The students are currently working on a space project following Kelly and his identical twin Scott while the two participate in a twin program for NASA. Kelly offered a unique perspective to the students, "My brother and I are doing this for the International Space Station. I am in Tucson, Ariz.; my brother is 250 miles above us, orbiting the earth every 90 minutes, at 17,500 mph, aboard a one-million-pound space station that is as big as a football field outside your school," Kelly said. "He's going to spend a year in space. It's all about science and how people can spend a large amount of time in space and a whole bunch of other experiments."
The "Mark Kelly Project" was started after Language Arts teacher Andrea Weigle, read an article about the twin project. After contacting one of Kelly's organizations, the project began in January.
The students have conducted research on various space flights from the Mercury Seven to the Challenger disaster.
"We covered these events so the kids know that space travel isn't routine and things happen, but NASA learns from their mistakes and moves forward," Weigle said.
"We are a [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math] school so I wanted to make STEM connections for them and to see you don't have to be an astronaut to have a STEM job or career," she added. "We looked at all the people working in mission control…and what do they do. So Mark is going to guide us through the mission and let the kids know other things that they can do as a support role."
The project will continue until March 2016 when Scott returns. When the students move to seventh grade next year, Weigle is going to partner with a seventh grade science teach who has an astronomy unit, and they will integrate that into the project.
The students currently keep mission journals with research and NASA updates, and do weekly reports. Their journals include a biography on Kelly, information about his space flights and information about the twin study mission.
"Now they're doing weekly journal entries on what Mark is doing and the human exploration research that NASA is conducting," Weigle said. "STEM is now STEAM to include the arts, the humanities. Soon math will be the big piece because we are going to collect data with Mark's help and graph and chart all of that so we can show him it all at the end of this project."
The students hope to Skype Kelly again in the future but will continue correspondence through email and checking NASA's website for updates.
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