By By LYDIA GRIMES – Features Writer
W.S. Neal Middle School student, Jacob Pearson, was one of 15 students selected to participate in an international space project on Tuesday, April 22. He, along with the other students, gathered at the Gulf Coast Exploreum and Science Center in Mobile to interview the three Expedition 6 crew members aboard the International Space Station in a live transmission. He was nominated to participate by his science teacher, Sharon Couch.
While the students watched the space station crew on the dome-screen theater, they were allowed to ask a question that they had submitted. Orbiting over 260 miles above the Earth, NASA astronauts Ken Bowersox and Don Pettit, along with Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, talked with the students and answered their questions.
The space station crew has been in place since November and were originally scheduled to return to Earth in March aboard the space shuttle Atlantis, but after the Columbia disaster, the plans are to return in about two weeks aboard the Russian-built Soyuz spacecraft.
Pearson, the son of Jack and Melissa Pearson, said he would love to become an astronaut as an electrician and scientist.