Hines, Cristoforetti, and their fellow Expedition 67 crew members-NASA’s Kjell Lindgren and Jessica Watkins-spend much of their time conducting experiments to determine the effects of what is technically called microgravity, as well as maintaining and repairing the ISS with their three Russian counterparts onboard.ĭuring the approximately 20 minutes of live connection from the ISS, Hines and Cristoforetti answered questions ranging from the food on the space station-rehydrated lasagna is his favorite-to the education you need in order to become an astronaut. Imani Williams, 15 (left), and Ella Holloway, 15, work together to get their balloon-propelled rocket to work efficiently in the BU Academy gym, where rocket-inspired STEM activities were offered to high schoolers prior to the start of the NASA Downlink event with astronaut Bob Hines (ENG’97) in the GSU. Fewer than 400 Americans have gone into space, and an even smaller number have gone into orbit. He then proved to be willing to get silly for science, drifting after the droplets as they floated in midair and gulping them down.Ī former Air Force test pilot and combat pilot with 76 missions, Hines is the first BU alum in space, joining a very select group-fewer than 600-who’ve ventured beyond Earth’s atmosphere. “I’ll show you,” Hines said, producing a plastic bag of water with a protruding straw and squeezing a couple of droplets loose. It lasts a little longer.” He had headaches during his first few days on the ISS, too, perhaps because of fluids in the body reacting to the change. “It’s a different kind of dizzy to me, though, without gravity in there. Questions from them, and from the BU and BU Academy students, were prerecorded on video and answered during the downlink by Hines and Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, whose vertical hair may have been the best demonstration of the zero-gravity effect. Many of those in the GSU were high schoolers attending the Calculus Project, Upward Bound, and other programs, both at BU and at several Boston-area communities. Last fall, when Hines was assigned to pilot NASA’s SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft to the ISS, she got to work planning Wednesday’s event. “I’m always trying to get people who are alums to interact with the students we have now,” Grace says. She got a tour of NASA astronaut-training facilities in Houston, Tex., with Hines, and later helped coordinate a Zoom session between Hines and BU students. He eventually joined the US Air Force, and when he was named an astronaut in 2017, she reached out to him. Grace taught Hines in the 1990s, when he earned a BS in aerospace engineering, and recalls him as a great student, with his heart set on flying planes. “The whole point is to give students a chance to see how fun STEM can be and how important it can be,” said Sheryl Grace, a College of Engineering associate professor of mechanical engineering, who organized the event with NASA, “so they know what they might do if they study these things in school.” “I want to pursue a career in space science.” “It was so cool,” said Salma Jabri, a rising senior at Excel Academy Charter High School in East Boston, who’s working in a BU neuroscience lab this summer through GROW. “I never thought about a career specific to space work, but now I have a lot more curiosity.” The live link to the ISS “was a little hard for me to wrap my mind around,” said Nicky Mosharaf, a rising senior at Belmont High School, who has spent the summer working at a BU biology lab as part of the Greater Boston Area Research Opportunities for Young Women (GROW) program. “Don’t be afraid to set big dreams and go after them and keep reaching for the stars.” About 500 high school students filled the ballroom along with members of the BU community for the NASA downlink, culminating a day of STEM outreach activities. “This could be you,” he told the approximately 500 junior high and high school students in summer science programs at BU and around the Boston area who had gathered in the George Sherman Union Metcalf Ballroom for part of a daylong STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) outreach program, along with some BU and BU Academy students. Wearing a red Terriers hockey jersey he brought along on his trip to space, Hines (ENG’97) talked about the joys of living in orbit-just looking out the window, for one thing-and demonstrated by turning slow-motion somersaults in midair. “It’s actually one of the funnier things that happens up here.” On the International Space Station (ISS), “you lose something, and you give up on finding it, and two weeks or a month later, it just comes floating by,” NASA astronaut Bob Hines told a Boston University audience Wednesday on a live downlink from the ISS, as he floated weightlessly in front of the camera. How is being in space different from Earth?
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