Online conference with famous ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano

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Author: Marina Stanojlovic Mircic

This is an online activity which took place on 16th April 2020. My students and I had the opportunity to meet a real active Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano and find out all about his occupation and ways of life in the spaceship. Knowing of our tremendous desire to meet him, Mr Steve Sherman invited me and my students to connect for the interview with Luca and it was one of those powerful opportunities not to be missed, especially because we were at home due to #COVID19. Of course, there were other students, mostly from the United States, who followed Luca’s interesting story.

Since my students decided to be the active participants of this interview, they’ve prepared the questions. I was doing this activity because some of my students aspire to be astronauts and they admire those people. The most interesting part of the interview was when Luca answered my students’ questions in Italian as my students learn Italian as a Second Foreign Language in secondary school.

OUR QUESTIONS FOR LUCA  In English:

  • Are you afraid you’ll run out of air?  
  • How does it feel to be in space, in a rocket or on a planet?  
  • Are there any living beings on any other planet?
  • Is there any possibility of another planet settling?
  • How did you decide to be an astronaut?
  • Would I have the honour of being taken for a ride in your spacecraft, because today on 16th April is my birthday?
  • What the astronauts eat?
  • What do you do all day?

In Italian:

  • Quali sono i Suoi progetti futuri? (What are your future plans?)
  • Tra due mesi finiremo la scuola secondaria di primo grado e dovremo scegliere la scuola superiore in base al nostro sistema scolastico in Serbia, Lei ha qualche suggerimento per noi su come scegliere la scuola giusta? (In two months we will finish the 9th grade of elementary school and we have to choose high school according to our school system in Serbia, do you have any suggestion for us on how to choose the right school?)

So the highlights of the interview were: how space is launched, how it takes off, the speed, kind of food in space, no force of gravity, how they sleep and eat, how the pee is recycled for freshwater to drink.

It was a great online event where my students definitely enriched their knowledge and got involved in such event so that they can easily select their career path in future. The Luca’s motivational story was really powerful and magic and I wish all youth were able to connect and hear this story themselves.

The whole interview is available on Steve Sherman’s Youtube channel.

5 thoughts on “Online conference with famous ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano”

  1. It should be an exciting and fascinating experience for students, a very good idea.

  4. Thank you very much, I really appreciate your ideas, Good luck!

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