HOUSTON – (April 6, 2021) – Students from eight Houston-area schools will take part in a live Q-and-A session with two astronauts aboard the International Space Station on Thursday, April 8.
The students’ prerecorded questions will get real-time answers from astronauts Kate Rubins and Mike Hopkins. The NASA downlink will be the centerpiece of a two-hour cross-cultural event for students from Houston, Ecuador and Scotland organized by the Rice Space Institute.
The event will feature poems from each region, including one written for the event by Avalon Hogans, above, a student at the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
“My home is the most diverse in the nation/Beyoncé blessed!/My home is the heart of aspiration,” she writes in “Skyline of Mine.”
Video of Hogans reading her poem is available to media upon request.
The public is invited to tune in to the event via Zoom. Registration is required at https://event.webinarjam.com/register/70/5o8nkanx.
Houston-area schools taking part are DeBakey and Seven Lakes high schools; Ryan and Rusk middle schools; Lovett, Lemm and Buffalo Creek elementary schools; and CPD Aerospace Academy.
“I hope that this unique opportunity will excite students: not only about space exploration and the impact of science and engineering but also about the power of cross-cultural collaboration and how together they can make a difference in the world,” said David Alexander, director of the Rice Space Institute and a Rice University professor of physics and astronomy.
WHAT: “Let’s Talk Space — Beaming Schools from Scotland, Houston and Ecuador Onto the Space Station,” including a downlink Q-and-A through NASA’s STEM on Station initiative.
WHO: Astronauts Kate Rubins and Mike Hopkins, with students from Houston, Ecuador and Scotland.
WHEN: Thursday, April 8, from 8 to 10 a.m. Central time. The 20-minute downlink will also be broadcast on NASA-TV beginning at 9:10 a.m. Central.
Read more about the event at http://news.rice.edu/2021/03/29/ultimate-field-trip-will-be-out-of-this-world/.
To arrange an interview with Alexander, contact Mike Williams at mikewilliams@rice.edu or 713-348-6728.
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Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,978 undergraduates and 3,192 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 1 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.