Virginia Students To Speak Live With Space Station Resident

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Jul 02, 2012, 12:10 ET

WASHINGTON, July 2, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- More than 200 students will meet at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond, Va., to speak with Expedition 32 flight engineer Joe Acaba aboard the International Space Station at 8:55 a.m. EDT, Thursday, July 5. Media representatives are invited to attend.

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The question-and-answer discussion, coordinated by NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., and the museum, will be broadcast live on NASA Television and include video of Acaba. The students, most of whom are Hispanic, will ask questions about life, work and research on the space station. Several of the questions will be asked and answered in Spanish.

To attend the event, reporters must contact Nancy Tait at [email protected]. The museum is located at 2500 West Broad Street in Richmond.

Many of the students also are participating in other NASA programs, including camps associated with the agency's Summer of Innovation (SoI) project. SoI provides hands-on learning opportunities for middle school students and educators through NASA-unique science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) educational activities during the summer school break.

Acaba arrived at the space station with Russian Federal Space Agency's cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin on May 17. They will be joined later this month by NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.

This in-flight education downlink is one in a series with educational organizations in the United States and abroad to improve STEM teaching and learning. It is an integral component of NASA's Teaching From Space education program, which promotes learning opportunities and builds partnerships with the education community using the unique environment of space and NASA's human spaceflight program.

The exact time of the downlink could change. For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

To follow Twitter updates from Acaba, visit:
http://twitter.com/AstroAcaba

For information about NASA's education programs, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/education

For information about the International Space Station, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/station

SOURCE NASA