We had a nice surprise today! An Astronaut came to visit our class!

Astronaut Dr. Steven Swanson came to visit our class today!

We had SO many questions for him.

Here are a few videos of him while he was on the Space Station that we watched today (he just returned to Earth in September).  Below are some of the pictures from our talk with him today in our class.

This video shows Astronaut Swanson and his colleagues filming what happens to water in space.

This video is an interview with Astronaut Swanson while on the Space Station about life in space.

He answered many of our questions.  

Here are a just a few of the things we learned today:

*  There are no chairs or any furniture at all in the space station.  They just float.

*  When on the International Space Station an astronaut sees the sun rise and set 16 times in a 24 hour time period.

*The starts don't twinkle in space because there is no atmosphere.. they are more like pin holes.

*It takes 8 1/2 minutes to get to space from the time of lift off.

* The astronauts do all kinds of science experiments while they are there.

*  The astronauts come from different countries

*  He was on the space station for 6 1/2 months!

We followed the meet with Dr. Swanson by writing letters to our 'future selves' reminding us about all we had learned today and how neat it was to meet a real astronaut!  In April when we study space we will get them out of our time capsule and read them to ourselves to get ready for our own space explorations.

I encourage you to click here and explore with your child to help them learn more about the International Space Station and what the astronauts do while they are up there.