Do you copy, Josh? Over.
The ISS is currently flying over the Atlantic Ocean.
This contact will be performed using the Amateur Radio Telebridge Network.
Josh will be talking to students at schools in eight countries
of the Caribbean and Central America.
These students sent questions related to disaster and natural hazard
monitoring, such as hurricanes, volcano eruptions,
tsunamis, coastal erosions and climate change.
Okay, I am calling now.
Here it is.
That’s us, that’s us. Got’em!
Welcome aboard the International Space Station.
Good.
Good afternoon, Josh.
You're signal is loud and clear.
If you are ready, I am going to pass the microphone to the first student.
Over.
I have you loud and clear and I'm ready for questions.
Over.
Raul from Panama.
What is the International Space Station? Over.
Hello.
Well, the International Space Station is the largest spacecraft
that we've ever built.
It is a floating laboratory.
It's about the size of a football field, about about 100 meters across.
And in the part that we live in, it's about the size of a six bedroom house.
And we're traveling at over 17,000 miles an hour
or just about 250 miles above you.
And, in fact, just a couple of minutes ago, we passed over South America
and will be over Saint Lucia in less than an hour and a half.
Santiago from Costa Rica.
How do you see meteorological events from space
and what is it like to be there?
Over.
Well hanging from the bottom of the space station
is something that looks like half of a soccer ball.
And each half of each face of that soccer ball is a beautiful window
that we can look out and see our beautiful planet.
And so we love to spend a little time there whenever we can,
because the view of our planet is really breathtaking.
And I'll tell you, when I'm in there, it is never, ever boring.
There is no part of this planet that I don't absolutely love looking at over.
Willow from Antigua and Barbuda.
If a hurricane is happening, can you see it in space?
Over.
In fact, we can see hurricanes from space.
We are only 250 miles above you
and racing around the planet so we can see these big storms.
We can see them from the cupola.
We can take high resolution photography and we can see when they're coming.
Lucia from the Dominican Republic.
How long did you study to become an astronaut?
Over. Hello Lucia.
In fact, I feel like I've been studying my whole life to be an astronaut.
And I don't know that I'm ever going to stop
because I really, really enjoy learning new things.
In my previous life, I was a physicist.
I studied physics, and then I became a pilot in the U.S.
Navy and then eventually a test pilot before I became an astronaut.
And so the best thing about this job is there's always something new to learn,
whether it is how to live and work in space and get better at that,
or if it's helping our researchers do their experiments and learn
new things about their fundamental science that they're doing.
Over.
Gabriel from Cayman Islands.
What do you do in space?
Over. Hello Gabriel from the Cayman Islands.
Well, I'll tell you, every day is different up here.
Some days we're doing
research and helping run those experiments that we were just talking about.
And those experiments go from everything from biology
to physics to research on the human body.
Or sometimes we're doing maintenance on the space station, and sometimes we
have to do even more adventurous things like go grapple and catch a cargo vehicle
with a robotic arm or go outside and do a spacewalk.
And in fact, just last week we did a spacewalk
and we built some new apparatus that we can put a solar array on.
And we're going to go put solar arrays on next week over.
Daena from Saint Lucia.
Do you study and measure climate change from space?
Over.
Well, we can certainly take photography from the cupola
like we were talking about, and we can see the effects of climate change
from time to time.
But primarily we have instruments that are mounted on the outside
of the space station that are used to collect data on the planet itself,
whether that be surface temperature or atmospheric content.
And that helps us give information back to the researchers and the scientists
to help us understand where we are, where we're headed,
and what we can do about it. Over.
LeAnn from Antigua and Barbuda.
When a volcanic eruption happens, can you see the effects from space?
Over.
Hi LeAnn.
We absolutely can.
In fact, we did have an astronaut a couple of years ago
who saw a volcano erupt and he actually made
a call down to Alaska and let them know what he saw.
And they didn't even know it was erupting yet.
So, yes, we can absolutely see volcanoes from up here.
Over. Benaniah from Saint Lucia.
What are the impacts of space hurricanes and does it affect us here on Earth?
Over.
Well, space hurricanes
are a little different than the hurricanes we're familiar with on Earth.
You know, the
hurricanes on Earth are based on water and rain
and pressure differences and even the rotation of the Earth.
The space hurricanes tend to come from
energetic electrons that are coming from the sun,
and then they collide with oxygen and nitrogen in our atmosphere.
And that's
what makes those beautiful colors, the greens and the blues of the aurora.
And that's actually some really,
really neat quantum mechanics that makes that happen.
And sometimes very rarely, but sometimes the magnetic field of the earth is such
that it actually makes a swirl of that aurora and makes it look like a hurricane.
But the good news is that doesn't have an effect on us, on the planet.
There's no threat there.
It does sometimes maybe affect our satellites a little bit.
But I haven't seen a space hurricane yet, but I'm keeping my fingers
crossed for sure. Over.
Joash from Saint Kitts and Nevis.
Do other planets have volcanoes? Over.
Hello, Joash.
Yes, there are other planets with volcanoes.
We see a lot of old dead volcanoes around the solar system.
In fact, I think it's just Earth and maybe Jupiter's moon Io
that have active volcanoes right now.
We think that there might be some on Venus
and maybe on another one of Jupiter's moons, Europa, but we're not quite sure.
But yes, there are definitely volcanoes throughout the solar system over.
Nicole from Costa Rica.
When does
the Sahara sand cross the Atlantic Ocean?
Over.
We haven't seen it yet because that tends to happen
in the middle of the summer., but I'll keep an eye out for it.
Over. Christian from Panama.
What does the moon look like up close?
Over. Great question.
If you go Google it,
there are some incredible images of the moon that we've taken just this week.
Those pictures are breathtaking.
Over.
On behalf of Hieem from Trinidad and Tobago.
What can I do to make sea levels stop rising?
Over.
I think you just did it.
I think the very first thing we need to do is ask what we can do.
We are absolutely in a spot
where we're affecting the planet and we hope we wish that wasn't true.
But wishing that it's not true doesn't help us solve the problem.
So I think that humans are smart enough and resourceful enough to fix it.
And if we're all together, we can actually solve this very hard problem over.
We have a loss of signal.
Ladies and gentlemen, we just shared a moment in history.
Ciao from Italy.
Thank you. Bye.
Subscribe for more space.