Kaua'i students radio Space Station
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser KauaÎi Bureau
PUHI, Kaua'i — Fifteen students at Island School, a small private school next to Kaua'i Community College, chatted with the International Space Station as it passed above them last Thursday.
Jan TenBruggencate • The Honolulu Advertiser
The children spoke with Cmdr. Frank Culbertson Jr. via shortwave radio as the space station passed just northeast of Kaua'i on an orbit cutting across the Pacific from the Aleutians to Cape Horn.
Island School student Justin Vea talks via shortwave radio to Cmdr. Frank Culbertson Jr. on the International Space Station as it passes over the Hawaiian Islands last Thursday.
The students' questions covered a wide field, from how to sleep in zero-gravity, to the colors of space and how you make a rocket ship go.
"If there is no air in outer space, what does your rocket push against to control the space station?" said sixth-grader Krista Speroni, who is a ham radio operator and whose call sign, KR1STA, was used for the communication.
Culbertson said it's not that the rockets push against something in space; rather, they establish a force going away from the rockets and are themselves pushed in the other direction.
"It's pushing mass out the back," he said.
When seventh-grader Erik Talvi asked about spectacular sights in space, Culbertson spoke of meteors entering the Earth's atmosphere, viewed from above, of satellites passing overhead, and of lightning storms on the planet's surface.
Blaise LaMadrid-Nakamura asked whether astronauts could see the Van Allen radiation belt. Culbertson said they could not, but could view its effects, including stunning views of the northern and southern lights.
"It was like we were going to fly through a curtain of green, red and yellow," Culbertson said.
After the roughly 10-minute conversation, the International Space Station moved out of range.
"I didn't think the answers to the questions would be so detailed," Talvi said.
A number of students said they were interested in ham radio as a result of the discussion with Culbertson, but most seemed wary of careers as astronauts.
"This was way out of the world. I don't think I'd be able to spend the time away from my family. I can't sleep without someone in the house," Calah Nakasone said.
The shortwave communication was arranged by members of the Kaua'i Amateur Radio Club, which installed a motorized antenna on a classroom roof and a main radio and two backups inside.
Astronauts were scheduled to talk yesterday with students at Adams Elementary School in Washington, D.C., and with U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige and former space shuttle crewman Roger Crouch to commemorate International Education Week and American Education Week.
In addition to Culbertson, the space station's crew includes two Russians, pilot Vladimir Dezhurov and flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin.
The space station orbits every 90 minutes, and is roughly 240 miles above the surface of the Earth.
