Students in Kuujjuaq, Que., get a surprise conversation with astronaut in outer space

It wasn't with aliens, but students at Jaanimmarik School in Kuujjuaqrecently had an extraterrestrial encounter.

The voice of American astronaut Nick Hague was beamed into the school's gymnasium to dozens of students on Oct. 11, directly from the International Space Station.

Some students had the chance to have their voices beamed right back.

The conversation was possible as the space station travelling about 28,000 kilometres per hour flew over a high frequency radio antenna in the Italian Alps that relayed the signal.

"What keeps you entertained? Do you follow normal time? How many years of school to become an astronaut? What was your scariest moment in space?"

Students peppered the astronaut with questions for about ten minutes before the space station was no longer within range cutting off Hague's last words.

For the curious reader, his answers were: an internet connection and staring at the earth below for entertainment, bouncing around the globe means changing time zones and using Greenwich Mean Time, and lots of years of school to become an astronaut but still always learning.

As for the scariest moment?

"That has to be my first launch. We ended up, the rocket malfunctioned about two minutes into launch and so we aborted right as my rocket was coming apart. So that was probably the scariest, but we came down to a nice parachute landing."

A surprise encounter

Students have been submitting questions for weeks on what they'd like to ask an astronaut, without knowing they'd actually have a chance to do so directly.

Madisson York was one of the students selected to ask Hague a question.

"I thought the astronauts were going to write answers back to us," she said. "I was really nervous I had so many questions, I would have wanted to talk to them all day."

She said knowing astronauts were once a Grade 12 student like her was inspiring.

Racim Ynineb, 12, wasanother student selected to ask a question.

"When I was young, I said I wanted to be an astronaut," he said. "After talking to them, I realized that I'd still like to when I'm older."