NASA Astronauts on Space Station to Speak Live with Dallas Students

NASA astronauts on the International Space Station will speak with students and faculty from the School for the Talented and Gifted (TAG Magnet) at Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center in Dallas at 12:15 p.m. EST (11:15 a.m. CST) Thursday, March 5. 

The 20-minute Earth-to-space call will be broadcast live on NASA Television and the agency’s website. 

Students will have the opportunity to speak with Expedition 42 station commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and flight engineer Terry Virts. Prior to the space chat, the students will spend time learning more about research aboard the station with Roderick Heelis and John Hoffman, two distinguished researchers from the physics department at University of Texas-Dallas.

Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, will join the TAG Magnet students and participate in the conversation from the school.

Media interested in covering the event must contact Yinka Robinson in Johnson’s office at 202-226-3393 or Olayinka.Robinson@mail.house.gov. The Dallas Independent School District’s Townview Center is at 1201 East Eighth Street, Suite 302.

Wilmore and Virts are among six space station crew members currently in orbit. The pair recently completed three spacewalks to begin outfitting the station for the arrival of commercial crew spacecraft in 2017. 

This in-flight education downlink is an integral component of NASA’s education strategy to improve science, technology, engineering and mathematics teaching and learning in the United States. Linking students directly to astronauts aboard the space station provides them with a unique, live experience of space exploration, space study and the scientific components of space travel and possibilities of life in space.

The exact time of the downlink could change.

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

For information about NASA’s education programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/education 

For information about the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station

To learn more about the crew and its mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition42