NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold spoke to students at W.P. Wagner School in Edmonton on Thursday.
“I just wanted to give them a sense of what humans are capable of doing when they work co-operatively together,” said Arnold, who has had two stays on the International Space Station (ISS) since 2009.
Only a handful of school districts across Canada have participated in NASA’s Student Spaceflight Experiments Program.
“I haven’t had any of my experiments flown in space, but there’s a group of students here in junior high school that [will],” Arnold said.
Fifty-five student teams from Edmonton Public Schools competed to have their experiment sent to the ISS, while 3,500 students vied to have their artwork featured on spacesuit patches that will also be sent to to orbit later this month.
Imagine putting that on your college application.
“I hope they know that in terms of careers, there’s no limit for these guys,” Arnold said.
READ MORE: Edmonton students compete to have their science project head to International Space Station
The veteran astronaut’s presentation brought the kind of lessons that show the sky is the limit.
“It changes the way kids fundamentally think about science and about themselves, and about the whole scientific process,” said Stacey Mabey, one of the teachers responsible for bringing the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program to Edmonton.
“It’s engagement that you can get in a class, but not in this kind of authentic way,” Mabey said.
After congratulating the winning students, Arnold described what’s it’s like to live on a space station.
“You really crave the texture of food. So fresh fruit and vegetables were the best,” Arnold said with a laugh.
He also showed in-capsule video footage of the rough descent back to Earth on his last trip home.
“I don’t think anything can really prepare you to come back to Earth in a fireball and land like a cannonball,” Arnold said. “It was something I’ll never forget.”
Comments