World Space Week Begins! Skype Chat with Ecuadorian Astronaut Ronnie Nader (written by the whole class)

 On October 4^th our class, along with a class of 5^th graders, got to Skype chat with Ecuador’s only astronaut, Commander Ronnie Nader. For the start of our celebration of World Space Week (October 4 to 10), seven people in our class got to ask him questions like these:

·         D. G.  asked: Is the next satellite, Krysaor, being launched in November because it’s a good time for weather? The answer was: There were many things were involved in the decision for the launch date, but weather wasn’t one of them. He also said that right now the 24 international satellites are being organized inside the top of the Russian rocket.

·         A.C. asked: What were the challenges of building Krysaor? Astronaut Nader answered: Everything was a challenge. For example, if the measurements were off by just a tenth of a millimeter, then the whole mission could fail!

·         A.C.G. asked: How did you learn how to build satellites? Commander Nader said: He and the team learned how to do this on their own with their education, books, papers, information from the Internet and Commander Nader’s training as an astronaut in Russia!

·         E.L. asked: What do you hope to learn from the new satellite? He said: One thing would be that, by watching the live video camera on board, we could know if a meteorite was approaching; like the one

that surprised everyone in Russia this last year.

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       E. B. asked: Is there anything that we can do to prevent Krysaor from hitting an object in space and spinning, like what happened with Pegasus? His answer was: Since debris  going around the Earth are in unstable, descending orbits, there’s not much we can do to prevent these kinds of accidents. 

We were VERY lucky to get to ask our own questions of Ecuador’s only astronaut, and it was a pleasure to Skype with him!