Area Students Connect Live to the International Space Station
Challenger Learning Center-St. Louis provides local student downlink
The Challenger Learning Center-St. Louis recently provided a day to remember for some area school students. Students from Cold Water Elementary in the Hazelwood School District and the Pontiac-William Holliday School District in Fairview Heights, Ill., talked live to Richard Garriott, a space tourist onboard the International Space Station (ISS). The event was also broadcast on the national Challenger Center Web site.
Through the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program downlink, students, parents, and teachers asked questions about living and working in space. They listened to a brief overview of the ISS and the Garriott project. The primary purpose of ARISS is to allow students, engaged in a science and technology curriculum, to speak with an astronaut orbiting Earth. The students were also able to ask questions to Owen Garriott, Richard’s father who spent 60 days onboard Skylab in 1973.
“This was an exciting day and a tremendously successful event,” said Tasmyn Scarl Front, director of the Challenger Learning Center-St. Louis. “The students did a fabulous job and were thrilled to have had the opportunity to connect live to the ISS.”
The Challenger Learning Center-St. Louis, is a partnership of the Cooperating School Districts of Greater St. Louis, Ferguson-Florissant School District, and the St. Louis Science Center, and is part of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, an international not-for-profit education organization founded in April 1986 by the families of the astronauts tragically lost during the Challenger space shuttle mission.
