SPC hosts space station chat
by Shea Chancey, news editor

A once in a life-time experience hit South Plains College and everyone who got the opportunity to witness the amazing connection to American astronaut Leroy Chiao and Russian cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov more than 200 miles above Earth.

A live downlink with NASA’s International Space Station was the highlight of a historic three-hour event on March 1 in the Sundown Room of the college’s Student Center.

The two astronauts answered prepared questions written by the high school and junior high students from the surrounding schools in the area, about space and how the two are able to survive the unknown.

 “ It was something you will never have any chance of,” said Veronica Mendoza, a senior at Motley County High School who was among the more than 200 students attending the event. “It was cool though.”

The experience all began with SPC calling Houston’s Mission Control Center to receive a connection to the space station. After being connected to the astronauts, the students could see the astronauts as they were speaking back and forth on a video cam and could hear their response over the intercom.

The question-and-answer session began with those questions that were written by the students. Those students picked got to step up to the microphone and ask questions of the crew of Expedition 10, who have been on board the space station since October 2004. The questions varied from exercising, eating and drinking, sleeping, to current Earthly events, such as, worrying about terrorism, advice on how to get in the space program, and what experiments are being performed in space.

Those experiments include research for new aids vaccines, as well as experiments on plant growth, the human heart at rest, health hazards posed by space radiation and the effect of prolonged space fight on human skeletal muscle.

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