“Don’t be surprised if Matthias Maurer doesn’t answer right away. It takes a little while for the sound to reach us,” explained Sina Kürtz. The DLR (German Aerospace Center) moderator, together with her co-moderator Lisa Schüttler, rehearsed the live call with the astronaut, for which seven classes from all over Germany switched to the screen in the Oberpfaffenhofen control center. A connection to space involves an enormous amount of preparation.
The current call was already planned years ago, explained DLR scientist Thomas Uhlig. The astronaut’s “timeline” could be seen on large monitors. “The schedule is timed to within five minutes,” said Uhlig. The radio link sends from the International Space Station ISS via a satellite network first to the NASA ground station in New Mexico, from there to Houston and then to Oberpfaffenhofen. To ensure that everything works, the moderators practiced with the children in advance. In between, NASA turned on the “voice check”. Then the time had come: Maurer appeared on the screen. He floated in a room equipped with many cables and devices and called through the microphone: “I hear you loud and clear”.
In a good mood, he talked about life on the ISS. For a long time he had worked towards his dream of going into space, and when he finally arrived on the ISS he was grinning from ear to ear. He still has to pinch himself sometimes to realize that he’s actually in space and that it’s not a dream. When he looks out the window, he recognizes a “super beautiful planet” with oceans, clouds and at night the big cities can be seen as spots of light. He is concerned about gray clouds over the rainforest if fire clearing is going on there. The ISS flies around the world in 90 minutes at 28,000 kilometers per hour. Then he becomes aware that our planet is quite small, “everything is connected. We shouldn’t ignore problems on the other side of the world,” he warned.
What does he miss most? “Fresh fruit, salad, fresh air, running through the forest, jumping into the water,” said Maurer. They did grow lettuce in a greenhouse on the space station, but it was sent back to Earth for scientific purposes. “Super relaxing and pleasant” is the weightlessness, the astronaut answered a question from the students. He felt “as free as a bird,” said Maurer, and did a somersault in weightlessness to demonstrate. It is a focus of his experiments. For example, the materials scientist will mix concrete. A lot of CO2 is produced during production on earth. Maurer is researching how to optimize the process in weightlessness. “As a bricklayer, I’m predestined to mix concrete on the ISS,” he laughed.
The high point of the live call: Maurer took out a small container and unrolled a ten meter long banderole. The narrow band floated weightlessly through the space station and curled around the astronaut. Under the motto “Hand in hand around the world”, 1000 elementary school students from all over Germany drew themselves. 30 class selfies were printed on special fabric, the rest saved on a USB stick and sent into space. The astronaut repeatedly held pictures of the children holding hands for the camera. Class 3a from the James-Krüss-School in Gilching could also have discovered this: it was one of the 30 selected classes.