Astronaut aboard space station answers student questions live from Pennsylvania

On Thursday morning, students in Allentown will get to ask a NASA astronaut a question — and hear the answer from 250 miles above Earth.

Chris Williams, currently living aboard the International Space Station, will take prerecorded questions from kindergarteners through high schoolers at the Da Vinci Science Center. The live call starts at 12:20 p.m. EST on February 5, streaming on NASA's Learn With NASA YouTube channel.

It's the kind of moment that sticks with you. A kid asking "What's it like to float?" and getting an answer from someone actually floating. That's not a field trip video — that's direct contact with the work itself.

Williams is one of roughly a dozen astronauts living and working on the space station at any given time. For more than 25 years, people have continuously occupied the station, running experiments that wouldn't be possible on Earth. They test life support systems, study how materials behave in microgravity, grow plants without soil. The work sounds abstract until you realize it's laying the groundwork for the next phase: sending humans back to the Moon through NASA's Artemis program, then eventually to Mars.

These live calls with students aren't NASA's version of a school assembly. They're part of a deliberate effort to keep space exploration feeling real and reachable. When a 10-year-old sees an astronaut answer their question live, it stops being something that happens "up there" and becomes something a person like them might actually do.

The event is open to the community, not just registered students. If you're in the Allentown area and want to watch, the stream will be public. And if you're a journalist planning to cover it in person, you'll need to RSVP with Tamara Krizek at the Da Vinci Science Center by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, February 4 (917-692-5038 or [email protected]).

For more details on NASA's education programs and other in-flight calls, visit nasa.gov/stemonstation.