On May 5 NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi gave a front row seat on the International Space Station to students from four schools in the Mansfield Independent School District in Mansfield, Texas. Some of the younger students from the elementary school asked personal questions about how they decided to become astronauts, to which Ayers replied that she was always fascinated with space, and as a young child forced her family to travel away from the city lights to observe meteor showers and eventually graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy where she was steered in the direction of NASA.
The older students were involved with Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) programs and tended to ask specific questions about everything from using 3D printers in space to what were the most difficult challenges they encountered, and how did they resolve the problems? The answers led to discussions from aerodynamics to advanced propulsion systems to allow travel to Mars and beyond, to the 200 experiments that are active at any given time on the Space Station. NASA has had many similar dialogues with students from other school districts and even maintains a separate YouTube channel for these events.
