As Julie Payette talked about her experiences with sky rockets in flight, the afternoon was full of delight for thousands of young students yesterday.
Payette is a Canadian astronaut who served as the flight engineer aboard space shuttle Endeavour on the 29th shuttle mission to the International Space Station in July 2009.
Payette was in Edmonton yesterday to tell kids about her latest mission to space.
“It’s a very challenging but very rewarding task,” Payette said about her time in space.
“We’re up there advancing the knowledge of humankind in a peaceful manner.”
During her latest mission, Payette’s second, the crew completed the construction of the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module, installed scientific experiments on its exposed facility and delivered critical spare parts and replacement batteries to the orbital complex.
“Basically we were a construction mission,” Payette said. “And we were construction workers.”
After Payette showed the packed house a home video of the mission, students peppered the astronaut with questions like “How does it feel to be weightless?”
“Did you feel closer to heaven?” another student asked, to which the astronaut responded that they were far from Earth but not that high in the sky.
