Future explorers anxious for space

“I’ve talked to reporters so I already have experience,” Christopher Caviedes said matter-of-factly. The nine-and-a-half-year-old fourth grader was spinning around in the office chair of his after school program director, Simcha Waisman, proudly showing off his throne to passersby.
“Hi, Harnoor,” he shouted, blowing on a pinwheel and giggling as a young classmate walked by.
“Wind power!” Caviedes exclaimed mightily as the pinwheel spun in his hand.
Caviedes and 25 other fourth- and fifth-graders in the Richmond Hill One Stop Community Center’s Computer Technology and Videoconferencing program are anxiously anticipating their chance to “downlink,” or videoconference live with astronauts aboard the International Space Station. They’ve been in training since January, and Thursday, March 6 was no different.
“It’s amazing, because I’ve never spoken to them [astronauts],” Caviedes said, minutes before he and his fellow students began a lesson, via videoconference, with a Space Science Educator at Space Center Houston.
“I’ve heard of speaking with astronauts with ham radio. And this is like ham only different; you actually get to seem them,” he said.
As the students settled in their seats, all facing the expensive videoconferencing technology made up of a remote-controlled camera and wide-screen television, one student couldn’t help but look ahead to the “downlink” with the astronauts.
“When are we going to talk with the International Space Station?” he asked leaning forward in his elementary-sized chair.
Elizabeth Lebowitz, the program’s assistant director and a full-time teacher, responded like an educator.
“Well, I’ll answer that question with a question: When is STS-123 [the next mission to the space station] taking off?”
“March 11!” the students shouted in unison, prompting Lebowitz to explain that the astronauts would need a few days to “settle in” before they were able to talk with One Stop.
“You should have been here the first week. They were like, ‘blah blah blah,’ Waisman whispered, eyes downcast and speaking almost inaudibly as he mimicked his students.
He gazed across the room at kids chatting excitedly as the videoconference link with Houston was set up.
“Now they’ve come out of their shell,” Waisman said with wide eyes.
Once connection had been established, the NASA Space Science Educator asked if any of the students had wondered about what life is like in space.
“I think they like to play with their food a lot,” said one little girl, to which the Educator agreed, explaining that experiments are an astronaut’s way of learning about their environment.
The Educator taught about the vestibular system and motion sickness in space by having the students spin around holding a meter stick – “I felt nauseous” was one response – and opened a dresser drawer in her mock space shuttle to show off the netting that keeps astronauts’ clothes from floating away.
“You wouldn’t want the other astronauts knowing you wear Choo Choo underwear under your space suit,” the woman said, smiling as she held up a pair of children’s underpants. The young crowd giggled wildly.
Many of the kids considered the practice round with Space Center Houston vital to working out the kinks in their videoconferencing skills.
“I don’t want to mess up because it’s live, but you do what you gotta do,” said 9-year-old Emily Balaguera, a fourth grader at P.S. 90, where a majority of her fellow One Stoppers attend school.
Assuming she remembers what she wants to say, Balaguera would like to ask the astronauts of STS-123 “if they every caught any living stuff up there – anything weird. Have they ever gotten freaked because they saw something?”
Anton Seminerio, grandson of Councilmember Anthony Seminerio who helped fund the One Stop program along with Assemblymember Nettie Mayersohn and State Senator Serphin Maltese, is most excited to show the astronauts the mission patches he and his fellow students have designed for STS-123.
Seminerio said he would like to be an astronaut when he gets older.
Adrienne Ubertini, the principal at P.S. 90, proudly watched her students from the back of the room as they interacted with the NASA Educator. Ubertini thinks One Stop’s program, with its all encompassing educational approach, is duly preparing students for the real world.
“They definitely have an improved attitude,” Ubertini said of the students in the program.
“I was in the school yard and I heard some of the children telling other children what they’d been doing. To me, if they’re doing it on their own without a teacher telling them to, that means they’re learning something,” she said.
“Who knows? Maybe one day we’ll have an astronaut from our school.”