VULCAN, Alta. – Four astronauts from the International Space Station found a fitting way to end their 20 minute conversation last week with southern Alberta high school students: live long and prosper.
The ultimate in long-distance telephone conversations took place Sept. 23 at County Comprehensive High School in Vulcan. It was the result of months of planning with the Canadian Space Agency, Alberta Education and the town that has built a tourism theme around the iconic television series Star Trek.
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It is a memory that will last a long time for the students who were selected to ask the astronauts questions through a live video downlink.
While the town shares the name of the home planet of Star Trek character Mr. Spock, Alberta education minister Dave Hancock said it was not selected because of the science fiction connection.
Rather, the school district was chosen because of its use of technology to link 6,200 young people via the internet, video conferencing and other innovative ideas.
Students from the Palliser Regional School District received word in June they had won the opportunity over thousands of others across the country who wanted their minute with the men and women orbiting the earth at 28,000 km/h.
Students were invited to submit questions on-line in April.
At centre stage was Canadian astronaut and physician Robert Thirsk, who arrived at the station in May and will return to Earth at the end of November.
Students asked him as well as two Americans and a Russian about astronauts’ health and the effects of bacteria in space as well as more basic housekeeping queries about how they do laundry and cook their food.
The students could see the astronauts, but the astronauts could only hear the students. Responses were delayed by only a few seconds.
For 15-year-old Janeva Deslippe of the Calgary Christian School, her moment with Thirsk opened up a new frontier of career possibilities in medicine.
“I have always been drawn to the medical aspects of science,” she said.
“This opened my eyes. I can do medicine, not necessarily on Earth.”
Her question was a practical one: how do the astronauts wipe up spills?
Thirsk’s reply was that they try to be tidy but spills can happen. As he answered, a globule of water floated by and he caught it with a towel.
Twelve-year-old Skyler Fleming of Champion, Alta., wanted to know what time it is in space.
“I asked because no one else thought of it,” he said.
The answer: clocks are set to Greenwich Mean Time, which means for the astronauts it was 4:20 p.m. and 10:20 a.m. in Vulcan.
Connor Kingston of Coaldale, Alta., wanted to know if the astronauts used microwaves to cook food in space. He learned that a simple hot water technology is used to heat meals. He is interested in video games and plans to become a game designer, but he is impressed with space exploration, including the fact men walked on the moon 40 summers ago.
Palliser is a large school district stretching from Coaldale to Calgary.
The district has more than 6,200 students in schools as small as one or two rooms to larger facilities with 700 students.
