Bellefonte Area Middle School students work on out-of-this-world project

For a federal agency dealing in rockets and space travel, NASA operates by kind of a loose timetable.

All that Bellefonte Area Middle School Principal Summer Garman and her students have been given is a 120-hour window at the end of February wherein 7 to 9 minutes will be allotted to a conversation with personnel aboard the International Space Station.

That means there’s not much room for idle chitchat about the weather or to solicit an astronaut’s opinion on this season of “The Walking Dead.” Garman and faculty have been working to streamline the proceedings by having students submit questions in advance, touching on everything from the art of napping in space to homesickness.

“They’ve been doing a lot of research right now on the International Space Station,” Garman said.

Student engagement was important to Amateur Radio on the International Space Station, the group playing operator to two very long-distance parties.

The school’s science classes have had a field day with lessons on how the space station was assembled or what happens to the human body outside of Earth’s gravity.

“I’ve always wondered, ‘how does time work in space?’ ” Davis Corman, a seventh grade student, said.

Davis is looking forward to the moment he hears a human voice transmitted from the stars come out the other side of a radio.

Helping to make the connection is school board member John Guizar and his brethren of local amateur ham radio operators, who helped put together and install the necessary equipment needed to dial space.

Ellwood Brem, a retired electrical engineer, was the one who floated the original idea to Guizar in the hopes of steering students toward jobs in the sciences.

“We’re planting the seeds here today and who knows what wonderful careers will be inspired,” Brem said.

The event is expected to last an hour, including a discussion with a panel of experts that the school is working on assembling. Pedro Rivera, Pennsylvania secretary of education, will also be in attendance.

“Just the experience of talking to someone in space is insane,” eighth-grader Melina Weaver said.

This story was originally published February 15, 2018 at 2:19 PM with the headline "Bellefonte Area Middle School students work on out-of-this-world project."