It's a new era.

Pioneers, stars, sailors and adventurers.

For going beyond anywhere we ever went for.

Apollo.

Splashdown, Orion.

Back on Earth.

And there's a lot more coming.

Our destiny, as always, to go and see what's further and what's next.

There are actually metals being bent, shaped, formed to build the things that we're going to use.

Artemus, there's no longer some far fetched dream.

This is reality.

NASA is at a historic inflection point, poised to begin the most significant series of science and human exploration missions in over a generation.

Astronauts will live and work in deep space and will develop the science and technology to send the first humans to Mars.

I'm really looking forward to all the science will conduct on the moon.

The samples will bring back the knowledge gained from understanding the lunar environment better than we ever have before.

The more nations and companies at the moon, the more we learn increasing our capabilities, strengthening things right here on Earth.

We are going to the moon to learn how to live on other planets for the benefit of all.

Let's go.

Thank you.

Welcome, everyone, today to V&A Studio, sir.

Tony Theater.

We just want to say a huge I very thankful and appreciative.

We are for each of you to be here today.

And we have over 300 students between and studio and many, many more actually livestreaming this as well.

So a huge thank you to Congresswoman Cartwright for making this possible and having so many young people given them the opportunity to join astronaut Bob Hines and NASA administrator Bill Nelson as they share their personal stories and answer questions about all things space.

I think you've heard enough from me.

You want to hear from these lovely gentlemen I would love to introduce again Congressman Matt Cartwright.

Thank you.

Thank you, Carla.

And thanks to everyone who is here in the studio audience and everybody listening online.

And Congressman Matt Cartwright.

And it is my pleasure to serve as the top Democrat on the U.S. House subcommittee that funds the entirety of the space program.

And it's been a delight doing that because I got to know a gentleman who in 2021 became the administrator of Nasha, and he was a former U.S. senator.

And before that he was a U.S. congressman like me.

He was a senator for 18 years.

He was a congressman for 12 years.

He actually flew on the 24th space shuttle mission in space for the better part of a week in 1986.

As far as I know, the only member of Congress ever to ever to fly in space.

I'm talking about NASA Administrator Bill Nelson all the way to my left here.

He is a graduate of the university of Virginia, and he's a lawyer.

He's he actually served two years in the U.S. Army, rising to the rank of Captain.

And as NASA administrator, we have somebody who understands the space program, having been up close and personal to it himself.

And and he has an enthusiasm and a depth of knowledge that is inspiring.

And he's always on us in Congress to give the space program a little bit more money.

And this is one of the most persuasive gentlemen that I've ever talked to.

Folks, this is NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

We're we're pleased and honor to have you with us, Bill.

Thanks, man.

I want to thank you.

Astronaut Bond behind.

And I are especially grateful to be here because you will be the generation that sees us now go back to the moon.

You know, we went to the moon a half a century ago.

We proved that we could go.

We took a lot of samples of the moon.

We came back.

We're still examining those samples.

And by the way, I just recently saw in a university a sample from three of those missions where they are actually growing plants in the moon soil called regolith.

That research will continue as we go back to the moon now, to learn to live, to work, to invent, to create.

Why, in order to go further out into the cosmos.

And we are planning to go to Mars with humans along about another 17 years.

This is your generation.

The old moon program was called the Apollo Program that twin Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon the first time of any human beings.

But this is the Artemis, this program, and you are the Artemis generation.

And it's going to be guys like you that are going to be the scientist and the mathematicians and the technicians and the lawyers and the doctors that all come together to form a team to enable folks like Bob Hines to be able to strap into that rocket and go back to the moon in order to get ready to go to Mars.

Now, we already are on Mars.

We've been there with several rovers.

We've been there, for example, way back a number of years ago, little rovers.

And we learned a lot.

But now we've got a rover that is as big as a pickup truck and it's got an arm and it goes down and it drills to get core samples of the Martian surface, sealing them in titanium tubes about that long and place those titanium tubes in places that we're going to send another lander back and we're going to retrieve those samples.

And it's from a dry lakebed where a river used to come into it millions of years ago.

If there was water there, if there was a lake there, there was very possibly life there.

We're going to retrieve those samples robotically before we ever go with humans so that we can try to understand was Mars at one point?

Was it like Earth?

Did it have life?

Was that life developed?

If it was developed, was it civilized?

And what happened?

What happened if there were life there that we could learn so that we could be better stewards of our planet here?

That's what we're doing and that's the QUEST.

So you are part of the Artemus Gentry Nation.

We've already gone to Mars to to the moon with the Artemus first biggest rocket ever.

It was a test flight.

No humans on board.

Now, next year, late in 24, we're putting four astronauts.

It's an international mission.

It's three Americans and a Canadian astronaut.

And they're going to circle the moon.

And then Artemus three, the third flight likely in 2526, is going to circle.

They're going to climb into a space x lander.

Two of the four astronauts will go down and those two astronauts will be the first woman.

And the next man that will walk on the moon.

So it's going to be rather exciting.

What you are going to be witnessing.

And in the meantime, we have these astronauts that we are training.

And Bob Hines is an example.

Now, you know, look at his background, a U.S. Air Force F-15 super pilot, so good that he was chosen to be a test pilot for the Air Force.

And we are fortunate in Nassau that we have him.

He flew on one of the space missions that went to the International Space Station.

He was the pilot aboard that Dragon spacecraft that went to the ISIS International Space Station.

By the way, just to give you an idea, you know, how large a football field is from one goalpost to the other goalpost.

That's how big the International Space Station is.

And it's in low earth orbit orbiting the Earth every 90 minutes.

Bob Huggins spent six months on that space station doing all kinds of research and then came home with his crewmates.

So let's give it up for astronaut Bob Hines.

Hey, thank you, guys.

Thanks so much.

It is an incredible honor to be here, especially to share the stage with you two gentlemen.

Thank you so much for the introduction.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here.

It is incredible.

I spent part of my growing up years here.

I went to high school at Crestwood High School.

Any Crestwood?

No.

Guys here.

All right, go Comets.

The you know, this is fundamental to the developing me as a person who I am and the capabilities and skills that I had, you know, were developed here.

My values were very were developed here in northeast Pennsylvania.

So it's a it's a real honor to get to be back here.

It is an honor to get to be in front of in front of you guys and talk about Nassar and answer some of your questions about the amazing things that we have that was really inspiring.

I'm inspired after listening to Administrator Nelson talk about this, who wants to go to Mars?

Anybody?

All right, here, here.

Well, I mean, you guys are going to see it.

You're like, maybe it is going to be an incredible time.

We have so much stuff going on at NASA.

It is just an incredible, incredible thing.

The honor of Flying on the Crew four mission to the space station launched in April, about a year and a half ago, spent all last summer on the space station and landed back in October.

The space station has 250 different science experiments going on at any given time, and we we touch all different avenues of science.

So, you know, biology, microbiology, and not only for space exploration, we're not just doing this research for space and for helping us to get to Mars.

That research pays off back here on our on our home planet as well.

One of my favorite experiments was called X Roots.

It was it was learning about different techniques for getting water and nutrients to plants.

And, you know, that's obviously important for being able to grow plants in space.

They'll provide food and air for us to get to Mars, you know, to sustain the crew on the way to Mars.

But it also comes back to Earth, that technology comes back to Earth and it helps us grow crops in places where other otherwise you would not be able to grow crops.

And so that can help parts of the world that are, you know, malnourished or, you know, don't have the capability to grow food.

Same thing with water, water purification.

We recycle something like 99% of our water on the space station.

And we've gotten really, really good at that.

That technology can provide clean water in different places in on Earth as well.

And so this technology and these this research that we're doing on the space station is paying dividends back here on our home planet.

But we are really, really excited about what we have.

Looking forward to the the Artemis program.

And it is real.

It has been a just a dream of mine.

You know, I grew up just after the Apollo program and looking back and seeing the giants that accomplished the moon landings and to now be here and to get to where NASA's meatball and be part of these amazing teams that are making this stuff happen is is really special.

And I think that that's something that is really worth noting, is that these you know, the astronauts get to wear the blue flight suits.

We get to sit on the pointy end of the rocket and we get to go do some of these amazing things.

But we are one tiny piece in this incredible machine, this incredible team that makes these things happen.

There are thousands and thousands of engineers and scientists that are helping us develop these these new vehicles, these new techniques to live on other planets.

And so I hope for you guys that this is something that you can think about.

You know, if you are interested in science, technology, engineering, math, that this is you know, we need your help.

We getting to Mars is hard.

We have some really, really big challenges that we got to solve to be able to go to Mars.

And you know, even if you if sitting inside a rocket maybe doesn't appeal to you, we need your help on the site in the science community and the engineering community to help design these things and solve these really hard problems.

So I hope you guys are excited about that.

I am really excited about it.

We're going to get to see our colleagues go circle around the moon here in the next year and a half, two years, and then, you know, the first boots back on the moon.

Wow, what an exciting time that's going to be.

And then, you know, you guys, as the Artemis generation getting to see the first boots on Mars is just going to be absolutely spectacular.

So, again, really excited to be here with you guys.

There is you know, I'm sure you guys have some questions.

And so I'm happy to field whatever questions.

And I'm we're all happy to answer whatever whatever questions we have today.

So thank you again for inviting us.

And we're really looking forward to spending some time with you guys.

My name is Arabella Bevan.

I'm in fourth grade and I live in ARCHBOLD.

My question is, did you bring back any souvenirs from space?

Now, that's a good that's a good question.

We were not allowed to bring a lot of stuff back.

We are we do get a small allotment, a small bag that we're allowed to take up there with us and and then we can have that with us.

A lot of times it's pictures, mementos, things like that.

And then we bring those things back home.

So I certainly brought all of that stuff home.

My youngest daughter is eight years old.

She has a little stuffed turtle named Zippy that brought along with me.

And he actually she told me that she wanted me to take him to space right as soon as I got assigned.

And so I took him around to all of my training events.

And so we have pictures of Zippy doing all of the simulators.

And so he has a fully qualified stuffed turtle astronaut.

He's a turtle not.

And so he spent six months on the space station and he came back home and he holds a special place in our house.

The only thing that I brought back from the space station that was actually a souvenir from space, though, was my spoon.

It's it turns out when you're in space up on the space station, that's really the only utensil you eat with.

So you don't need a knife, you don't need a fork, you just use a spoon.

And so that spoon that I ate off of for six months that came back with me and is sitting in our silverware drawer with all of our other spoons.

And by the way, that spoon is accompanied with a pair of scissors because often you get dehydrated food and it's in a plastic container and you stick it with something that looks like a basketball air needle and you dial up your amount of water, hot or cold, and then you mush it around and reconstitute it into delicious food and you use the scissors to clip off the front of the package and fold that back and then use the spoon.

Now, why in zero-G do you think that the spoon, that the food holds the spoon and it doesn't just fly off because it's moist and the moisture holds it to the spoon, But if you take the spoon like this, then that food's going to go flying through the zero-G of the spacecraft and food up there is really pretty delicious.

It is pretty good that you actually remind me of.

One of our cargo vehicles came up and sometimes they put in little kits for us to of different, you know, themed food.

And we had one that was I think it was Chinese food or something, but the rice they sent up, it turned out not to be sticky rice.

So, you know, some rice is stick together and others it's just all these little grains.

This was dry rice.

And so we open up that bag and rice kernels just explode and they go all over the place.

And so we had a little bit of a cleaning activity to deal with.

Following that.

You know, I.

Feel one thing that you mentioned was the Artemus program.

And would you guys explain the significance of the name Artemus to this program.

In Greek mythology, uh, Apollo is one of the major figure figures, but Apollo in Greek mythology had a twin sister and her name was Artemus.

And since the first woman is going to land on the moon, it's appropriate that now the whole program is called the Artemis Program, the twin sister of Apollo, by the way, I wanted to tell you about with food.

I played the Eminem game.

I love him.

And arms, and so do my crewmates.

So one of my crewmates would get on the other side of the spacecraft and I'd take an Eminem and I'd beam it to him and it'd float across the spacecraft and he'd catch it.

And then he'd do that with me.

And one item, by the way, that we're taking on the flight, going to the moon is Snoopy in his space outfit.

Why We need a zero-G indicator.

So as the spacecraft is flying to the moon, you will see Snoopy floating around the spacecraft showing that they're in zero gravity.

One of the best parts about being in space is you get to play with your food and it's okay.

It's.

My name is Rider Bevan.

I'm in fifth grade.

I live in Archibald.

I'd like to know what does a day in the life of an astronaut look like?

Hey, that's a great question.

So I think there are two aspects to that.

There's the what's a day in the life of an astronaut on the ground and what's a day in the life of an astronaut in space, on the ground.

We have all different kinds of jobs that are supporting the space station operations.

You know, a unique thing about the space station is it is up there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

It's been up there for 23 years nonstop as long as you guys have been alive, probably twice as long as you guys have been alive.

There has been an American in space every single day on board the space station and the operation that is required to keep that going.

There's just so much support on the ground.

We have mission control.

The astronauts have to sit in a position called Capcom because we're the primary communicators with the crew.

And then there's lots of other things.

Some of them are supporting the families of the crew members that are up there.

Some of them are working with the engineering teams and developing all these other vehicles in space.

No day is really the same.

There's a same routine, but your events are always different.

We work about a 12 hour day, so we meet with the ground team at about 730 in the morning.

We go over just a brief synopsis of the day's activities and then our day is scheduled in five minute increments.

So every minute of the day is scheduled to keep us very, very busy doing all these different science experiments.

And we do about 30% maintenance on the space station.

And then the rest of the time is doing science experiments.

We get a little break for lunch in the middle of the day, and then we continue all the way until 730 at night.

So 12 hour days.

And then after that, you know, we'll eat dinner and we'll have a little bit of time to ourselves.

We were talking earlier about, you know, in the space shuttle days, there wasn't a lot of that extra time, but that is our time to be able to go look out the window, look out the cupola and take pictures of the earth.

It's also a chance for us to connect with our families.

One amazing thing with the space station is that the connectivity back to Earth is absolutely incredible.

It's actually better than it was when I was deployed on military deployments.

I get to talk to my family more often from space than I did from, you know, other parts of the world when I was deployed.

So it is it's a really, really special thing to be up there and be part of a team that is doing all these amazing things and accomplishing all this incredible research.

Oh, yeah.

Good point.

So two and a half hours every day, we work out.

And so part of that day is keeping our bodies healthy.

Our zero gravity is really, really hard on the human body.

And so our our heart starts to weaken if we don't do anything, because it's not it doesn't have to fight against gravity.

So we do a cardio workout either on a treadmill or a bike that's usually about an hour long.

And then zero gravity also is hard on our skeletal system.

Our body recognizes it doesn't need the bone mass anymore and starts just shedding bone mass.

And so too, that would obviously be bad, right?

If I shed too much bone, then my skeleton is weak when I come back home and it's easy to break bones.

So to keep us healthy, we work out on a an exercise device that gives us resistance.

Kind of like lifting weights.

And we do that for about an hour and a half every day.

So lots of hard work just to keep our bodies healthy so that when we do come home, that that we're we're still in top shape.

The question.

Hi, my name is E.J.

Morales.

I'm in sixth grade and I live in Scranton.

And my question is, what did you miss the most about Earth while you were in space?

A.J., that's a really good question for me.

I obviously miss my family a lot.

I think that's the hardest thing about these long duration missions is being separated from family.

But there are other little things that I didn't realize I missed until I got back.

You know, just being on Earth in laying down was something that I found.

I was I was missing when I was working on something on the space station.

And I you know, you're floating.

And I got up near a wall and I found that my body was just craving like I wanted to lay lay down and just feel like that sensation of laying on something.

But as soon as I touched it, I bounced off and floated away.

So that was one thing.

And then we had a cargo ship come up that had fruit on it, and the first one of my crewmates floated an orange over to me and I, I just had no idea.

But as soon as I got that orange and I took a smell of it, I had a physical reaction to missing fresh fruit.

It was and it was so amazing.

So we're really grateful to the teams that make that possible for us to be able to get that kind of fresh fruit.

I had no idea.

I missed it until I smelled it.

And then the quick story for when I came home another thing I didn't realize I missed was ice.

We don't have cold water up there.

We have hot water and lukewarm water.

We do not have cold water.

And when I got in the airplane after we splashdown, we were flying back to Houston.

One of the people on the airplane gave me a little glass with an ice cube in it and just a little bit of cola.

And that was the most glorious thing I think I've ever had.

And then I was a little worried about being sick.

I wanted something crunchy and I had one Dorito, so and it was an incredibly tasty Dorito.

Name is Tucker Gilbert.

I'm in fourth grade and my question is, how fast is this shallow growth in space?

The space shuttle flies that 25 on the astronaut.

That flight suit indicates that you've been 25 times the speed of sound or approximately 17,500 miles per hour.

That is the speed, the velocity that you need to be able to orbit the earth and gravity, not pull you back to earth.

Now, for astronauts that are going to the moon, they are going to go into Earth orbit and then the motors are going to kick them out of Earth orbit even faster in order to get them on to a trajectory going to the moon.

And they will wear a patch.

What?

MUDD 34.

And also they're going to come back faster when when the two of us landed.

We started at Mach 25.

And so you had to slow yourself down from that in low earth orbit, coming back through the atmosphere, the guys coming back from the moon, they're coming fast and therefore they're going to be hotter.

They're going to the underside of their spacecraft.

The ablative heat shield is going to heat up to 5000 degrees Fahrenheit.

And so you've got to be right on the money coming back, because if you come in too shallow, you're going to skip off the Earth's atmosphere and you're going to go out into space.

If you come in too steep, you're going to heat up so much that you're going to burn up.

You got to hit that keyhole just right as you're coming back from the moon and you know, space is hard.

Spaceflight is not easy.

Spaceflight is risky when he straps in to that dragon on the top of SpaceX's Falcon nine, there are a lot of things that can go wrong.

But fortunately, through some very sad times because we lost three astronauts on the pad in Apollo one, we lost seven astronauts on the explosion, John, as Challenger was ascending and to the heavens.

And then we lost seven astronauts as Columbia was coming through the atmosphere back to Earth.

This is serious business.

And therefore at NASA safety is one of our primary goals that we try not to do anything without checking it and rechecking it and checking it again, because space is hard.

And that is, you know, in this current time, we're we're getting more and more commercial providers involved in space.

And space is such a burgeoning industry.

But NASA's is the leadership that is making sure that we as a country and that these companies are doing that safely.

And so it's a it's a really cool time.

There's so much going on in space right now.

There's so many different companies we're partnering with.

With many of them.

We've partnered with SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing and countless other companies out there.

So it is a really, really exciting time to see all of this stuff going on.

But NASA's is still leading the way and and setting the example for how to do spaceflight and making sure that the the rest of the world we're bringing the rest of the world along and making sure that we're doing it safely.

Hi, my name is Grace, and I'm in fourth grade.

I live in Scranton.

My question is, how do you exercise in space?

Oh, that's a great question.

So we have we talked a little bit about it a little bit earlier.

But but because of our the effects of zero gravity on our bodies, we focus on two main things.

There's cardiovascular health and then there's our musculoskeletal health.

So cardiovascular is your heart.

And so in order to keep your heart strong, we do things that make you breathe hard.

So we have a treadmill and we have a bike.

Now, both of those things are a little weird in zero gravity, the bike has no seat and no handlebars, so think about that.

That's a little awkward and it takes some getting used to up there.

We spend about an hour on either one of those and so an hour on that bike.

And then maybe the next day we'll do the treadmill for the treadmill.

Well, if you're in zero gravity, how do you how do you run on a treadmill?

Right.

As soon as I touch it, I'm going to start floating away from it.

So we wear what looks like a backpack harness, so it has shoulder straps and a waist strap, and then it has these clips underneath it.

And those clips go down to the side of the treadmill and they have bungee cords.

You guys know what a bungee cord is?

Yeah.

So it's like a big rubber band and we can adjust the length of that to pull us down with a certain amount of force.

And the goal is to try and get us.

So that amount of force is about what our body weight would be down here on earth.

So for me, I weigh about £180.

Sorry, Mom, but the so I adjust those clips to try and get somewhere around £180 and then start running on the treadmill while I'm wearing this backpack harness.

So it's pretty fun.

I actually really liked it in space.

You know, going back to the question about things that we miss, that actual feeling of having loading on your body, having some kind of weight is something that you miss the sensation on your feet, not being able to stand anywhere.

You do start to miss that after a while.

And so getting on that treadmill and feeling that was was pretty nice.

And then the other exercise device is it's kind of like a universal machine, if you know what that is.

It's a machine that you can reconfigure to do all different kinds of exercises.

You can do squats and deadlifts bench press.

You can even do sit ups and things like that with it.

And though the best part is where it's located, if you're doing sit ups, you're sitting on the bench and every time you sit up, you're staring out the cupola, which is the big round area that has seven.

It's about the size of this rug and has seven windows looking out at the earth.

So every time you do a sit up, you're seeing our planet as it goes by beneath us.

And so if you ever need motivation to do exercise, that's it.

Put a big giant window that's looking at the earth.

It was pretty incredible.

My name is Courtney Jones.

I'm in the sixth grade and I go to Pittston Area Middle School.

My question is, what kind of training did you go through to prepare to go into space?

How how long did it take and what was the most difficult part of it?

Oh, wow.

That's a loaded question.

There's a there is a lot of training that goes into it When we first get selected as astronauts, it's about a two year training program that we go through and we hit five major areas.

We learn about the space station systems, how to maintain and operate the space station.

We do.

We learn how to fly the T-38 jet aircraft.

That's a place where we were able to work together as a team and make, you know, real time rapid decisions.

And so flying the Jets is really important.

We do spacewalk training where we get qualified to do spacewalks.

We learn how to fly the robotic arm.

So that big giant robotic arm that's outside the space station, we have to learn how to operate that because when we're doing spacewalks, a lot of times we're on that arm and so the crew member inside the space station is flying that.

I will say for me all of that was hard, not individually, but the fact that they were all so different made it a challenge.

But the hardest thing by far was learning the Russian language.

My this brain is my brain is not wired for learning a language.

I had a hard time in high school.

I tried Spanish and German, and learning the Russian language was really, really challenging.

And so I'd say probably about 80% of my effort during the two years of astronaut candidate training was in learning.

Learning that.

And that is because, you know, it is an international partnership, the International Space Station.

And so we we make an effort to learn each other's languages so that we can communicate.

There's a mission to accomplish and we have to be able to communicate in our lives depend on each other up there.

So we were talking earlier, my Russian isn't great, but thankfully their English isn't that great either.

But we overlap somewhere in the middle and we call it run glitch so that I know just enough Russian and they know not just enough English.

And we meet in the middle and some mixture of the two.

Let me let me jump in with a question for Bob.

But we've talked before.

Was it really easy, smooth sailing all the way to become a U.S. astronaut or did you have challenges and and failures and setbacks along the way?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I think a lot of times it's easy to look at look at us and just see that, you know, we've gotten to a place where many people dream to be, but it is certainly lots of twists and turns along the way.

And I never dreamed that I would be an astronaut is just it was beyond my wildest dreams that that would ever happen.

But one of the things that I would I would say to you is, you know, it is great to have really big goals and to work really hard and put all of your effort into achieving those goals, but make sure you're enjoying your journey along the way.

Whether I ever got selected as an astronaut or not, I would have looked back at the career that I had and the life that I had and been and was really, really happy with it.

I enjoyed every step along the way.

There were certainly challenges and twists and turns that life threw at me that I didn't anticipate.

But, you know, having some resilience and pushing through those, but still having the perspective that you're enjoying your journey.

And you know, what I like to say is it's more about the journey than it is the destination, except when we're going to Mars, or then it's about the destination.

But but I think that that is I think that that is a really important perspective to have because, you know, every every day you're getting to do some amazing things and, you know, enjoying your journey.

Your journey is going to look like no one else's and no one else's journey is going to look like yours.

And so just make sure that you're keeping that perspective and then valuing the people that are contributing to it.

Everybody you encounter every day is contributing to your journey they're developing you into who you're going to be as a leader and as a person.

And so just having the respect for everybody that you encounter with with humility, I think is is really, really important.

Hi, my name is Evan Janick.

I go to Wesley area and I'm in sixth grade.

My question is, do you want to go on a mission to Mars?

Yes.

Yeah, I would say without a doubt, every astronaut is chomping at the bit to do any.

You know, we come in with a spirit of exploration, and I think that's fundamental to the humans we want to explore.

We want to go out and understand the mysteries of the cosmos.

So without a doubt, every astronaut in the astronaut office is chomping at the bit to go be part of these these exploration missions and whether we get to go fly on the missions or support the families and the crew members that are getting to go do them, we are just so excited to be part of this amazing thing that we have going on and to be part of the art of this generation.

Along with all of you.

Just think of the difference between going to the moon three or four days to get to the moon.

The moon's about 240,000 miles.

Think about going to Mars.

It's going to take you months.

It's going to be million of miles.

There's going to be a huge delay in the transmission because light and therefore radio waves, trance that they travel at 186,000 miles per second.

And it's going to be like a minute delay in the transmission and you can't get back in a few days.

So that's why we're going back to the moon, to learn to live and work in a very hostile environment in order so that we can venture out all the way to Mars.

And that's going to be a great day.

And it'll be in your lifetimes that you will see humans in an international mission led by the United States that will go to Mars.

And Matt Cartwright, your congressman, is going to fund that mission.

You bet I am, Bill.

Bill, I'm not going to let you go without making you explain what ingenuity is and what that means for the, you know, the kind of human engineering triumph that NASA's capable of.

So on Mars is a rover that I mentioned, and its name is Perseverance.

But it took along with it a helicopter.

Now, this is a rather unusual thing because here on earth we have an atmosphere and when we have a helicopter, the blades cut that atmosphere that has resistance.

And you can lift a helicopter, an airplane, whatever.

On Mars, there's only a 1% atmosphere.

So our scientists had to design a helicopter blade that could cut into that only 1% atmosphere, not a 100% atmosphere that we have on Earth and lift.

And it's a little helicopter that's called ingenuity.

It and ingenuity has not only flown one time, they wanted to prove that they could do it by flying it five times.

Just a few days ago, it flew on its 56 flight on Mars.

So that's ingenuity.

Thanks, Congressman.

Yeah, And you know, the word ingenuity is, you know, about, you know, how do you solve problems.

And that I mean, it's such an such an appropriate name for that helicopter because they they they needed ingenuity in order to solve those problems.

And that's what we're going to need as we move forward, going to Mars to solve all the problems that we have in order to successfully do that mission.

So such an appropriate mission or such an appropriate name and the fact that it's sitting there, that ingenuity is sitting there on Mars waiting for us to, uh, to go back, and that we're going to need ingenuity in order to get there is really, really important.

My name is Artist is Gorski, and I'm in sixth grade at Wayne Highlands Middle School in Honesdale.

My question is, how do you shower in space?

Good question.

So if you think of a shower here on Earth, right, you turn the faucet on and what happens?

Water comes out and it does what?

It falls.

Okay, So if I do that in space, what happens?

I make a gigantic mess.

Right.

Water just goes.

It'll either squirt out and go everywhere or actually, what tends to happen when you turn on water, if it's not enough pressure, it just starts to bubble up around.

So if there was water coming out of my microphone, it would just start to bubble up and the surface tension would hold it right on here and you would end up with a big bubble of water around there.

So showering in the traditional sense doesn't really work in space.

And that's another one of those things that kind of miss when you're when you're up there is being able to shower and feeling water on your body.

The so what we do is we have washcloths, wet the washcloth, all of a bag of water.

We might have a little bit of soap.

We have some washcloths that have soap embedded in them.

And you just scored a little bit of water on it of a damp washcloth.

And then it's kind of like a sponge bath.

You're just using the washcloth to keep yourself clean.

Shampooing is another interesting thing because it's really hard to rinse your hair.

So you put shampoo, especially if you have long hair like you do.

You put shampoo in your hair and that that's okay.

But then you've got to figure out how to get that shampoo out.

And so it's just pouring a whole bunch of water.

Squirting a whole bunch of water on your head.

It looks like you have a water helmet on because the way it just kind of jiggles around on your head and then you you've got to get a big towel and just absorb all that out and kind of squeeze all the soap out of your hair.

So it's a much more complicated process than it is.

And that's part of the time that has been factored into when we do our exercise.

A decent chunk of that time is us trying to get ourselves clean after we've done all that sweating and showering.

So how do you do laundry in space?

Oh, boy.

So we don't is the short answer.

So laundry and so we rewear our things.

We have a table that tells us how long we're supposed to wear each article of clothing.

So if we have a like, cargo pants, I think those are good for almost a month.

But like t shirts, like our exercise shirts are about seven days.

And, you know, there's just a cycle.

And so once we're done with it, then then it goes in the trash.

And so we we put them in bags.

The stuff gets stashed in a certain area of the space station.

And then when we have some of our cargo vehicles, they come up with lots of cargo.

But then when they're empty, we start filling them with trash and they burn up in the atmosphere On the way home.

And so that's what we do with a lot of that stuff, is it gets put in there.

So if you ever look up in the night sky and you see a shooting star, that may not be a shooting star.

Could be our dirty laundry burning up in the atmosphere coming on.

So, Bob, tell him, how do you go to the bathroom in space?

Was that already somebody's question?

Or we steal in their thunder.

So going to the bathroom in space is a very delicate and, again, much more complicated process.

But we use airflow to get things to go where they need to go.

You know, we use gravity here on Earth and that gets everything where it needs to go up there.

Air flow is the thing that does it.

And so we have a small little toilet that has a little bit of airflow on it.

And that's really all you need to get things going in the right direction.

But if you do it wrong, it can be a big old mess.

And there's we say there's those who have and those who will.

And so we are all very well trained in cleaning procedures just in case something like that happens.

But but yeah, so we basically have a slightly low powered vacuum that keeps the, uh, the scent and all of the stuff.

Exactly where it needs to be.

I let it sink.

I am in third grade at Weatherly Area School District.

And my question is, do you ever get lonely?

How do you talk with your loved ones?

Oh, that's really good.

Um, we don't get lonely because we're up there with friends and colleagues that we know really well, so we don't get lonely because of that.

We do get to know each other very well.

Our families get to know each other very well.

And so we basically become one big family.

So our families that are down on Earth are still talking with each other the whole time that we're in space.

And then we're up there and get to spend lots of time together.

And so those are some of the most special relationships really, that we get to build.

Do I miss my family while I'm in space?

I 100% miss my family while I was in space.

It is it is really hard sometimes because you miss things kind of like a military deployment, but you miss things like birthdays and holidays.

Um, but I tell you what, a six month mission is a long time.

But we have an American hero.

Frank Rubio has been up there for, I think as he crossed a year yet.

Yeah.

So he's he actually got up there he and I overlapped for about a month.

So he got up there.

We were there for a month together.

And then I came home through a number of different circumstances.

He's been up there for over a year and by the time he comes home he will have the longest single human spaceflight record.

And his family, they are all heroes.

They he is just doing an incredible job up there.

And just what a what an amazing human being he is and I can't wait to see him.

We're really excited.

We should be back here in the next couple of weeks.

So I really can't wait to give him a hug.

I'll probably hold him up a little bit when I give him a hug because it's been a long time since he's experienced some gravity.

But yeah, we all absolutely miss our families while we're up there.

We do get to talk to them.

There is a telephone, it's through a computer, but it's called an IP phone.

And we're able to call our families almost every night now, which is really nice.

And then when I was there once a week, we got a video call.

So kind of like a face time or a Skype where we could talk to our families and see them.

After about a week, though, my family had kind of gotten sick of not sick of it, but my kids, the newness had worn off and it wasn't cool anymore.

And so my wife got to the point where she just set up the laptop with the camera and pointed it to the living room.

And the kids just went on about their day.

And so I just got to sit there and watch them play video games or something, you know, in the living room.

But having dad in space was not not very interesting to them anymore.

Let me jump in with another question for Administrator Nelson.

Bill, under your watch, NASA has had an unbroken string of victories and one of them was the James Webb Space Telescope.

Will you tell everybody about that?

This is a telescope that is positioned a million miles from Earth.

It's at a neutrally buoyant point because of the gravitational forces of the earth, the sun and the moon, and it stays there looking out into the dark of space.

It is operating well outside of the Earth's atmosphere.

A million miles is far out.

It is looking out into the dark of space and is looking in the infrared spectrum.

So it is looking back into the very beginning of time.

We have captured images, photos of the formation of the first galaxy that occurred 13 and a half billion years ago.

In other words, that light has been traveling to the telescope at speed of light, 186,000 miles per second for 13 and a half billion years.

Now, that's hard for me to even get my head around, but that is the discovery we're learning about.

The formation of the universe.

We're learning about the formation of galaxies, about the formation of other solar systems like our sun and its planets.

And we are discovering other planets.

I'll leave you with this.

I asked the question of our scientists What is the likelihood, a mathematical probability, that out there in this vastness of the universe, that is a galaxy like ours having a billion or more stars, and there are billions of galaxies with billions of stars, what's the likelihood that there's another sun or a medium sized star like our sun that happens to have a medium sized stony planet, like our planet that has the chemical makeup with carbon to create an atmosphere?

What's the likelihood out there in this vast cosmos that there's another like Earth that could have life like ours?

And the scientists said at least a trillion possibilities.

We're going to start discovering that with this telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope.

Yeah.

I think is a engineering marvel.

And what an amazing accomplishment.

We actually were on orbit when that when it launched and got out and we got to see the first images as those were those were downloaded.

And man, what an inspiring vantage point that that it has.

You know, when we're here, even in low earth orbit, we are affected.

What we can see is affected by by the earth.

And so being a million miles away, it can see such incredible things.

How many of you have heard of the Hubble Space Telescope?

Okay, so you guys have probably seen pictures from Hubble that has been up there for what is it now, almost 30 years.

So James Webb is the next generation.

It is a leap forward in technology and capability.

And one of the neat things is that it's able to look at things that Hubble can look at and we can compare and contrast them because it looks at different parts of the light spectrum.

But then it can also see things that Hubble can't because Hubble is only a visual spectrum.

So it sees like our eyes see, But you know, like Administrator Nelson was talking about it, you know, James Webb is using infrared.

And so therefore it is looking way back and seeing light that that Hubble can't even see and is just absolutely amazing, amazing technological feat.

My name is Marvin Blackwell.

I go to Wesley area.

I'm in 10th grade and I would like to know what are careers would you have gone for instead of being an astronaut?

Yeah, that's a good question.

So for me, I was I was and am still an Air Force officer.

So my passion growing up was aviation.

I really wanted to be a pilot and that was the that was the goal that I was driven to achieve.

And so after college, I actually worked as an engineer for a couple of years and then eventually applied to the Air Force and got accepted to be a pilot, went through flight school and became a fighter pilot.

So that is what I would probably still be out there doing, although my clock's ticking.

I would probably be nearing retirement out of the Air Force here pretty soon.

But the I was going to I was going to do something that had to do with aviation.

That was my my goal 100%.

You know, and it was going to be a military pilot or otherwise.

I was going to I was bound and determined to make that happen.

We talked a little bit about twists and turns.

One of the things so my goal was to go to the Naval Academy when I was in high school and I actually failed an eye exam.

It's the only eye exam I ever failed my entire life, but for some reason I failed that one.

And that meant that my goal of becoming a naval fighter pilot was not going to be realized, and I wasn't quite ready to hang up that goal yet.

And so I found some other options and went and pursued that.

Even if it was just going to be a hobby.

I wanted to pursue aviation, But but yeah, 100%.

I was going to be a pilot.

I was going to find a way to do it one way or the other.

And I've been really, really blessed to have an incredible career in the Air Force.

I had some amazing leaders that really encouraged me to do do things, even if they were a little different than the normal career path.

And, you know, it just it has just been an amazing ride.

So really, really fortunate to have a lot of people in my life that enabled those kinds of those kinds of things.

And a very nonstandard career path for me.

And then just having the opportunity to be an astronaut was icing on the cake.

So it's such an incredible team that makes spaceflight happen.

And there's just thousands and thousands of people all around the world.

And being one tiny cog in that machine is is really, really special.

So Bob Hines is an example of why we revere these folks, because he just told you the story, that he had a huge disappointment.

Inexplicably, he failed an eye exam.

He couldn't pursue what it was his lifelong dream.

And yet when you get knocked down, you got to get up.

And that's exactly what he did.

And look where he is now.

We've got other astronauts.

We've got one that was grew up in an abusive household.

And in the process, he saw his father killed and this astronaut decided he was going to overcome those circumstances.

Very, very poor circumstances.

And he decided that first thing he was going to do, he was going to become a U.S. Navy SEAL, which is pretty difficult to achieve.

And from that, he became a medical doctor.

And from that he was accepted into the astronaut corps.

And so when you're knocked down, you you've got to get up.

Yeah.

Here he is, an amazing individual.

And he actually the Navy just put him through flight school.

So now he is a Navy SEAL, a doctor, an astronaut and a Navy pilot.

A pretty amazing person.

Hi, my name is Austin Morales.

I'm in third grade and I live in Scranton.

My question is, what was your most scariest moment in space?

Was scariest moment.

I don't know if I have a scary moment in space.

The training program that we have is absolutely incredible.

The teams that that get us ready to go and go in space do such a good job that on the day of the launch, it feels like you're in the simulator.

And honestly, I wasn't even it felt exactly like the simulator and I wasn't sure I was going to space until the actual rocket engine lit.

And then the feeling was different than it was in the simulator.

But then the whole ride uphill was just like being being in the sim, other than the actual feeling of an elephant sitting on my chest and from the forces of gravity.

But even with our spaceflight in, you know, on the on the space station, our training was had prepared us so well and the teams are so good and so focused on safety that it never really felt like that was in doubt.

And I'll say from my military career, it's kind of the same thing, right?

The training does such a good job.

We're able to compartmentalize it.

We're aware that there are risks and the things that we're doing are pushing the envelope.

We are there.

They are dangerous, there's no doubt about it.

As Administrator Nelson said earlier, space is hard and there are certainly dangers out there.

But we kind of acknowledge that.

And then as astronauts, we kind of put that off to the side and we got a job to do.

And so we get on with that job.

We make sure that the team is prepared.

We make sure that we're prepared, and then we we focus on accomplishing the mission.

So it was really, really fortunate to be part of an amazing mission and but never really had fear come into the equation.

We're just about out of time.

And what I thought I'd do is ask our guests to have some final comments, starting with you, Administrator Nelson.

Well, I'm going to tell you about my scariest moment.

It was on reentry.

Remember, you're the spacecraft is going to heat up to several thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

We're on the night side of the earth coming in and it's pitch black out.

And you look out and suddenly you think you're in daylight because the underside of the space shuttle has heated up so much that it is glowing around the spacecraft and it looks like daylight.

So knowing that we are in this very precarious time, all of a sudden we hear this loud bang and everybody into the communication system is shouting, what's that?

Well, one of my crewmates who was tending the flight deck of the space shuttle coming in, he was sitting near the toilet door and he kept trying to close the toilet door and it wouldn't latch.

And we're coming back into gravity.

And all of a sudden he takes it and just slams it.

And I'm telling you, it definitely got everybody's attention.

But our final comments.

Yeah, it is.

You know, it's like I said, it's an honor to be here.

It's great to be back here in northeast Pennsylvania.

Thank you for thank you for the invitation.

You guys had some great questions.

Thank you guys for being so attentive.

I tell you what, the future is so bright.

You know, you guys are going to be part of some amazing, amazing things that Nasser has come and that our country has come in.

And, you know, if you are interested in science, technology, engineering, math, even other things that are accounting and business and all that, there is a place for you at NASA.

We have all kinds of people at NASA that make make the mission possible.

And so if it is something that you're interested in 100%, set that goal and go after it.

But we have such amazing things coming ahead.

And you guys, as the art of this generation, are going to see some incredible things.

And and who knows?

You know, the first person on Mars might be sitting in this room right now.

Hey, Congressman, thank you for making this possible for Bob and me to come and share with your constituents what it's like in space and and to tell them that really we want them as a part of America's indeed the world's space program.

Thank you, Bill.

And thank you, Bob.

And thanks to all our audience for being here.

I can see you gentlemen have lit a spark and a lot of young people here.

And going into science, technology, engineering and math careers is so important.

America needs continue leading in those areas.

And this gentlemen like Bill Nelson and Bob Hines, that are continuing to inspire that.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Thank you.