Brunswick Fifth Graders Question Astronauts Live Aboard Space Station

Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary School fifth graders peppered two floating astronauts with questions Friday morning when Dr. Jessica Meir and Dr. Christopher Williams took a live video call from the International Space Station, roughly 250 miles above Earth, and beamed into a Brunswick gymnasium packed with more than 400 students.

Meir, a Caribou native and the first woman from Maine to travel to space, had launched for her second ISS mission just last month. When the connection crackled open through NASA Mission Control, she wasted no time acknowledging the home crowd. "We have you loud and clear — we're so excited to be talking to my home state today! Go Maine!" she said, prompting cheers from the assembled students.

The roughly 20-minute session was organized by the Challenger Learning Center of Maine, based in Bangor, which had been working toward the event since executive director Kirsten Hibert learned Meir would be heading back to the station. Hibert moved quickly to secure the school's participation, and Harriet Beecher Stowe was selected for what Press Herald described as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Before the call could begin, NASA Mission Control had to establish the link. Students listened as the exchange played aloud over the gymnasium speakers: "Station, this is Houston. Are you ready for the event?" an operator asked. "This is station, we're ready for the event," Meir responded. Meir and Williams then took turns floating before the camera and answering students' questions about living and working in orbit.

For teacher Maria Palopoli, who has collaborated with the Challenger Learning Center of Maine for years to bring STEM programming into her classroom, the moment carried particular weight. "Ever since these kids have been alive, someone's been living in space," she said. "As long as I've been alive, there wasn't always someone living in space. It was unusual and rare, and I'm honored to be picked." She also connected the event to the broader goals of her teaching: "I think it's really important for kids to understand how to make good decisions, how to think critically. And science is a big part of that."

Students left the gymnasium with the kind of perspective that is hard to manufacture in a lesson plan. A student identified as Cutler summed up the mood directly: "It's kind of awesome that somebody from Maine is in space." Another student, Gleason, was already looking further ahead: "Maybe someday commercial space flight will be cheaper, and I could go to space."

The last time a live educational downlink of this kind took place in Maine was in 2020, according to the Challenger Learning Center of Maine, underscoring just how rare the Friday morning session was for students in the state.