Michigan Students to Speak with NASA Astronauts on Space Station

Credits : NASA

Students at St. Mary Cathedral School in Gaylord, Michigan, will speak with NASA astronauts living, working and doing research aboard the International Space Station at 11 a.m. EDT Friday, Oct. 6. The 20-minute, Earth-to-space call will air live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

Twenty northern Michigan students, grades preschool through high school, will be invited to ask the astronauts questions about living in space aboard the space station, NASA’s deep space exploration plans, or any other topic that interests the students.

For Expedition 53 Commander Randy Bresnik, this is his second mission to the International Space Station. Bresnik launched to the space station on July 28 and is expected to return to Earth in December. Joe Acaba arrived at the space station Sept. 12 for his third mission to space. Bresnik and Acaba will participate in three spacewalks this month to service the space station’s robotic arm and install new external cameras.

Media interested in covering the event should contact Christie Perdue at 231-409-1214. St. Mary Cathedral School is at 606 N. Ohio Ave. in Gaylord.

Linking students directly to astronauts aboard the space station provides unique, authentic experiences designed to enhance student learning, performance and interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). This in-flight education downlink is an integral component of NASA Education’s STEM on Station activity, which provides a variety of space station-related resources and opportunities to students and educators.

Hubble's Bubbles in the Tarantula Nebula

At a distance of just 160,000 light-years, the Large Magellanic Cloud is one of the Milky Way’s closest companions. It is also home to one of the largest and most intense regions of active star formation known to exist anywhere in our galactic neighborhood — the Tarantula Nebula. This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows both the spindly, spidery filaments of gas that inspired the region’s name, and the intriguing structure of stacked “bubbles” that forms the so-called Honeycomb Nebula (to the lower left).

The Honeycomb Nebula was found serendipitously by astronomers using ESO’s New Technology Telescope to image the nearby SN1987A, the closest observed supernova to Earth for more than 400 years. The nebula’s strange bubble-like shape has baffled astronomers since its discovery in the early 1990s. Various theories have been proposed to explain its unique structure, some more exotic than others.

In 2010, a group of astronomers studied the nebula and, using advanced data analysis and computer modelling, came to the conclusion that its unique appearance is likely due to the combined effect of two supernovae — a more recent explosion has pierced the expanding shell of material created by an older explosion. The nebula’s especially striking appearance is suspected to be due to a fortuitous viewing angle; the honeycomb effect of the circular shells may not be visible from another viewpoint.

Credits: NASA