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24 APR. 2012
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As part of the Take Your Classroom into Space initiative, ESA astronaut André Kuipers will talk from orbit today with over 1500 students in Germany, Spain, The Netherlands and the UK. A live webcast of the event will start at about 17:10 CEST (replay now available).
Hundreds of European school students are taking part in ESA’s Take Your Classroom into Space programme, in which they perform the same experiments in their classrooms as performed by André on the International Space Station.
Scroll to the end of the article for a replay link.
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Schoolchildren joined the event from four European cities including Thessaloniki, Greece
During today’s live call, students will have an opportunity to compare their results with André’s, testing their predictions and seeing the effects of microgravity first-hand.
The first experiment, EPO Convection, demonstrates on a small scale how thermal gradients drive convective currents and thus, on the large scale of a planet, how temperature gradients influence density-driven convection and create atmospheric and oceanic currents.
The second experiment, EPO Foam Stability, illustrates the physical properties of wet foams and how gravity influences stability, as well as how understanding foam formation and stability can help us make cutting-edge materials.
André will show students how a foam is created from pure water in microgravity, and observe its stability.
Watch a Replay of the inflight call via http://wsn.spaceflight.esa.int/?pg=mm&id=388
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German
Student report on EPO foam lesson (German)
Spanish
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Related links
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Follow André's mission
André Kuipers is eager to share his many experiences, sunrises and sunsets flying at around 350 kilometres above our heads. Last summer he launched a dedicated blog in Dutch, a good way to track him during the final stages of his training on planet Earth.
Photos from Baikonur
Launch of the Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft with ESA's André Kuipers with Don Pettit from NASA and Oleg Kononenko from Russia is scheduled for 21 December 2011. The preparations for the liftoff are going ahead at the Baikonur cosmodrome following the traditions that have been part of every human space mission from Baikonur for decades, with roots going back to Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering 1961 flight.These photos show the crew, busy with the final preparations for their mission.
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