Samohi alumni talk with students from International Space Station

As SMMUSD elementary, middle and high school students piled into Barnum Hall about 15 minutes into first period on Oct. 30, they might not have fully understood that they were about to witness history. However, roughly 20 minutes later, the International Space Station (ISS) was at its best vantage point relative to Samo. Dean of Students Catherine Baxter got up on stage, said that she was so glad that everyone was there to watch history being made, and moments later, awestruck students watched as two NASA astronauts appeared on the Barnum screen. “I am so proud of all of our alumni! And when they are able to share their adventures with current students it is the best of all worlds,” Baxter said. The alumni in question is International Space Station (ISS) Commander Randy Bresnik (‘85),  clad in Samohi gold, and his fellow ISS crew member  and Southern California native Joe Acaba who were joining the Barnum Hall proceedings by way of a special downlink (uplink?) with the ISS. Bresnik has been living on the ISS since July 28 of this year and Acaba since September 17.Bresnik, aboard ISS since July 2017, and Acaba, on ISS since September 2017  gave the audience a brief overview of their work on the ISS, their education and career paths the led them to the ISS, and then responded to questions from students selected ahead of time in a competition that also won their homerooms the privilege of attending the event.Ifeyani Williams (’18) was one of the students who was chosen to ask a question, which was “How did Samohi prepare you for space?”“It was inspiring, seeing one of our fellow Vikings that’s literally out of this world. Honestly, Bresnik seems like a cool guy to meet in person. When I saw him flip the fidget-spinner, wear his Samohi T-shirt, and start to show off his “botany in space” it made me realize how original and fun of a person Bresnik must be, while he still maintains being a respectable and responsible commander,” Williams said. Williams is referring to the question Anan Waktole (’20), “How long would a fidget spinner spin in space.” Bresnik replied to Waktole’s question by whipping out a real fidget spinner, what Bresnik nicknamed a “space-spinner,” and set it off spinning and floating around in the ISS. “The spinner is pretty gyroscopically stable, so it’ll spin for a long time. The only thing that is acting on it right now is the friction from the center portion, on the actual part that’s spinning. And so, it’ll spin for a pretty darn long time. Technically, it should spin forever if there wasn’t any friction on that center part,” Bresnik said. The astronauts also discussed some typical aspects of space life, such as eating, sleeping, and bathing, experiments, spacewalks, and daily experiments and difficulties of the lifestyle. “The most difficult thing is the work routine that we have, where you have to stay focused all day-long and we do so many different tests throughout the day, so it’s really keeping that focus. This morning I was working in the airlock, and made a couple of mistakes. Luckily, I had Houston there watching me. Keeping that focus all day-long, and giving your best at every moment is a challenge every day,” Acaba said. The planning for this event began last summer when Bresnik, who had spoken about his experiences in training as an astronaut to the student body in 2010, contacted Baxter. "Commander Bresnik emailed Samohi in July of 2016 that he was going into space again and would be at the ISS for five months,” Baxter said. “We corresponded and he encouraged Samohi to submit an application for the downlink.  It was a ten month process to complete the application and then another two months to set everything up once Samohi was selected." The earth-to-space call is a part of a NASA initiative to encourage learning, interest and performance in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and was one of many made to schools around the country. “It’s not only incredible that one of the astronauts at the International Space Station, Randy Bresnik, is a Samohi grad, but it’s also just an amazing opportunity for Samohi students to watch, listen, and learn about space exploration, and hear directly from two astronauts talking directly to them,” Gail Pinsker, SMMUSD Community and Public Relations Officer, said.