FONTANA >> Seven students from Dorothy Grant Elementary School in rapid-fire succession Wednesday asked an International Space Station astronaut questions about shaving, where he gets oxygen and why he wanted to venture into space.
As the space station streaked by at more than 17,000 mph — which would limit conversation to at most 10 minutes — educators here felt students would have a life-long memory in what may have been a life-changing event.
For now however, when asked about the experience, Mikayla O’Brien, 9, said, “It was neat.”
“I think students learned that with hard work, anything is possible,” said Beverly Matheson, a fourth-grade teacher, who three years ago became the founding adviser for the school’s burgeoning amateur radio club, which counts 23 licensed radio amateurs among its 45 members.
Fontana Unified School District educators believe the impact went far beyond the brief conversation between German astronaut Alexander Gerst and a few students — which was heard throughout the school.
In the weeks leading up to Wednesday’s event, students school-wide had been learning about space exploration, the planets and other science-related topics, said Anne-Marie Cabrales, principal.
Cabrales and other FUSD officials look to real-life experiences like this as a way to boost interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects and ultimately be a stepping stone for well-paying careers.
A year ago, Matheson began the lengthy process to secure time for station K6DGE, the club’s call sign, with one of the space station’s two licensed amateur radio operators. The exact date and time was not known until last week.
Although the basic transceiver was what the school’s amateur radio club uses, special satellite tracking antennas were brought in and installed by volunteers from several ham radio organizations.
Eric Archer was the volunteer control operator for Wednesday’s event.
After the space station’s signal disappeared, Archer, who is a space communications engineer with the NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory, talked to students about his employer’s plans to place a special kind of radar on the ISS which would measure ocean wind speeds and directions.
“This will be very important as we continue our study of global warming,” said Archer, who is assigned to this ISS-RapidScat project. It will also help improve weather forecasts, according to the NASA/JPL website.
The device will be launched later this year and the ISS crew will exit their orbiting shelter to install it, Archer said.
For a time Gretchen O’Brien, mother of licensed ham Mikayla, was among those worried the space station connection wouldn’t happen.
An hour before the time of contact, the tracking system on one of two antennas broke down, and the precision automated job of moving the antenna fell onto the arms of a volunteer, who guessed how to move it as best he could.
The result was a conversation shortened by about two minutes and at times plagued with static.