Space Station Crew to Talk with Students in Silicon Valley

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – News media representatives are invited to a live interactive event with students and the crew aboard the International Space Station as part of Destination Station activities during the month of March. The event takes place March 7 at The Tech Museum in San Jose, Calif.

Destination Station is NASA’s national awareness campaign to promote space station research opportunities, educate the public about station activities, and communicate the current and potential future impacts of the station on everyday life.

The event begins at 10 a.m. PST. Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineer Don Pettit aboard the space station will speak with students visiting the museum during the downlink portion of the event, which will be broadcast live on NASA Television beginning at 10:20 a.m. Journalists who would like to attend should contactRoqua Montez at 408-795-6225.

The downlink is one of several events planned March 1-12 to showcase the agency’s newest multimedia exhibit, “Destination Station,” which is free with admission to The Tech Museum. The exhibit is open to the public through April 15.

On Thursday, March 8, news media also are invited to attend NASA’s Space Research Expo and Twitter Town Hall from 1-5:30 p.m. PST. Both events will be in building 152 at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. Astronaut Rex Walheim and NASA spacestation program scientist Julie Robinson will give presentations from 3:30-4:30 p.m. At the Twitter Town Hall, starting at 4:30 p.m. a panel of space station experts will answer questions about the wonders of the station and how it improves life on Earth.

Joining Walheim and Robinson on the panel will be NASA Ames scientists Sharmila Bhattacharya and Jacob Cohen. Bhattacharya has served as principal investigator for experiments to study immune changes, effects of radiation, and altered gravity during spaceflight. Cohen is the chief scientist for the International Space Station Utilization Office at NASA Ames. He also served as the principal investigator for the technology demonstration of the Light Microscopy Module (LMM), a new multi-capability microscope which helps scientists study the effects of the space environment on physics and biology aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Media interested in attending the Space Research Expo and Twitter Town Hall should contact Huong Nguyen at 650-604-4789 or huong.nguyen@nasa.gov by noon on Thursday, March 8.

For more about Destination Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/destinationstation

For more about the space station and crew, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station

For NASA TV streaming video, schedule and downlink information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about the Space Research Expo on March 8, visit: http://SpaceExpo.arc.nasa.gov