BELLEVUE, WI (WTAQ) — Students at Green Bay’s Christa McAuliffe Elementary got an out-of-this-world virtual visitor on Friday. Mark Vande Hei, a NASA Astronaut aboard the International Space Station, spoke to over 400 students at the school on Friday.
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Kids at the school had a lot to ask of the man who has set the record for single longest spaceflight by an American. They ranged from the simple to the complex. With one student’s question about ‘how plants know which direction to grow in space’, getting a Newtonian Physics lecture in response.
“I’m in a room that’s falling towards the center of the Earth, but I am moving so fast horizontally that I keep missing,” Vande Hei said, explaining literal rocket science. “So I am in gravity, but we are just falling all the time.”
He was asked what he likes about his job.
“The combination of physical and mental challenges is really nice, I also really appreciate doing science that helps all of humanity,” Vande Hei said. “And pushes the boundaries of human existence.”
Vande Hei is actually the cousin of McAuliffe Elementary School Speech and Language Pathologist Michelle Vande Hei McVane.
“It was a secret, and then it came out, and the excitement in the school just grew,” said McVane. “Until today, when kids were just buzzing with excitement, and you know what? We needed that during COVID times.”
The visit came on the 36th anniversary of the Challenger Disaster in which the school’s namesake, Christa McAuliffe, was killed.
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