International Space Station Expedition 10 Commander Leroy Chiao, KE5BRW, visited via Amateur Radio January 13 with fourth and fifth graders at John Baldwin Elementary School in Danville, California. That’s the same school Chiao attended more than 30 years ago when he was growing up.
“We just looked him up in the yearbook and found his picture, and there he was, smiling away,” said John Baldwin fourth-grade teacher Starr Dawson, who coordinated the contact at the school. Dawson said 17 pupils who proposed questions to ask the ISS commander were chosen to participate in the event, which was arranged by the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program. Chiao answered 11 of them. Responding to one youngster’s inquiry, he said the Apollo missions inspired him to become an astronaut.
“I first really knew I wanted to become an astronaut when I was eight years old attending John Baldwin School there and watching the first Apollo moon landings,” he recalled, “and from that point on, I knew that that was what I wanted to do.” Of all his space missions, his current tour aboard the ISS has been his “most unforgettable.”
Replying to another question, Chiao allowed for the possibility of life forms other than human elsewhere in the universe.
“I believe, personally, that there is other life in the universe, and I think that it’s just that we haven’t found it yet–or they haven’t found us,” Chiao told the youngsters. “You know, we haven’t had any confirmed life on other planets, but some of the results coming back from the Mars probes is showing some promise that there was water, and of course if it looks like there was water on the surface of Mars in the past that opens up the possibility that there may have been life there.”
Chiao also said that he and crewmate Salizhan Sharipov were working on an ultrasound “Telemed” experiment. It’s aimed at coming up with a system that would permit physicians on Earth to diagnose health problems space travelers may experience during long-duration space flights, such as those required to journey to Mars and beyond, he explained.
Handling Earth station duties for the event was ARISS veteran Tony Hutchison, VK5ZAI, in Australia, who contacted NA1SS directly. An MCI-donated teleconference link handled two-way audio between Australia and the school. Audio of the contact also was distributed via EchoLink and IRLP. The QSO with John Baldwin Elementary School marked the 160th ARISS school group contact.
ARISS is an educational outreach program with US participation by ARRL, AMSAT and NASA.