Face-to-space chat
City kids have vid session with orbiting NASA astronauts
NYPD to International Space Station: please float over for some questions.
In a video uplink on Monday, NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Nick Hague did just that, taking questions from more than 475 students in the NYPD’s Law Enforcement Explorers and Summer Youth Police Academy.
The Q-and-A with youngsters 10 to 18 years old unfolded at NYPD headquarters in Manhattan, while Koch and Hague moved in microgravity, appearing to be weightless in front of flags from around the world.
An additional 800 students observed the conference remotely at the Police Academy in College Point, Queens.
“Thirty-seven years I’m on this job. I never thought I’d have an opportunity to talk with astronauts up in space,” NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan said.
The video was pretty clear for a live link to a space station 250 miles out, cruising at 17,500 mph in low Earth orbit. To demonstrate weightlessness, Koch moved a floating Hague around the space station with her fingertips.
They touted progress made in space exploration since the moon landing 50 years ago.
“When we first landed on the moon, not only were the astronauts not featuring women, but also you didn’t see women too much in the mission control room,” Koch said in response to a question from Brianna Garcia, 15. “And that’s all going to be different this next trip up. You’re going to have women contributing and being recognized for those contributions.”
Another student asked about unexpected challenges faced by astronauts.
“There’s ties into law enforcement there,” Koch replied. “We train for the worst days, knowing that most days you’re not going to have to rely on that training … We have to know that that training is something we have to keep fresh and always have in the back of our minds.”
Hague told the students about the biggest surprise he encountered in space: “The way that your body changes.”
“I got up here and within the first couple weeks I grew two inches because my spine expanded,” he said. “The callouses on the bottoms of my feet have slowly gone away, and now I have callouses on the top of my big toe because I’m always using my big toe to hold me down, just like I am right now.”
He said seeing the Earth from space was “deeply emotional,” adding, “The scale of it, the perspective that you get is impactful at a level that’s hard to explain.”
Police Commissioner James O’Neill led the students in a farewell wave at the end of the 20-minute uplink.
“We are truly, deeply honored that NASA has brought this unique educational experience to us, and especially to you, the youth of our great city,” he said.
“Today was an amazing experience,”15-year-old Garcia said. “It was so inspiring.”
The idea for the live uplink came from Bruno Gentile, an NYPD radio technician who has been fascinated by the U.S. space program since the Mercury space missions decades ago. He worked eight months with NYPD Chief of Community Affairs Nilda Hofmann to bring the event together.
Former astronaut Mike Massimino (inset), a native of Franklin Square, L.I., told the students of the three rejections he had from NASA before being accepted in 1996 to become an astronaut. He eventually did two outerspace missions that included four spacewalks.
“It’s open to just about everybody,” he said. “When I was a little boy, it was just military test pilots. It was all men. It was just a certain narrow group of people that could become astronauts. But now it’s open to everyone.”