FALMOUTH – Cape Cod high school and grade school students got a chance to speak with an astronaut live from the International Space Station on Tuesday.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution held a presentation at the Marine Biological Laboratory which included an interview with Loral O’Hara, a former Oceanographic Institute engineer who had worked on the Alvin deep-ocean submersible. O’Hara said there are similarities to being stationed on the ISS.
“For one, getting ready for the expedition is very similar. It’s a balance of preparation, and also adaptability. So, you do everything you can to be prepared, you try to think of all the problems you might have and anticipate all the training you need, all the equipment you’ll need, but then once you get out there, nothing ever goes perfect according to plan,” said O’Hara.
“So, you have to be able to adapt and change your plan and use the things that you have, use the resources that you have on board your ship or on board the space station, to fix things when they break.”
“You have to be a good teammate,” O’Hara continued. “You have to communicate, take care of yourself when things are really hard and you’re not getting a lot of sleep. All of those things, I definitely got a lot of good practice when I was working in research vessels that I’ve carried forward to this mission.”
The event drew a national audience, while the Cape schools that were represented included Falmouth High School and Falmouth Mullen-Hall and Morse-Pond elementary schools, Barnstable Intermediate School, Dennis-Yarmouth, and the MIT-WHOI graduate program.
NASA is planning a mission this fall to the Jupiter moon Europa, which is thought to have an ocean hidden under a layer of ice.
Staying true to her roots, during the Q-and-A, O’Hara floated upside down in zero gravity to reveal she was wearing Alvin sub-themed socks. She also was allowed to bring aboard a toy version of the vessel. You can see the entire video, over an hour long, on the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution YouTube channel .
Previous coverage of Loral O’Hara from CapeCod.com:
International Space Station Welcomes Former WHOI Engineer
WHOI Research Engineer Selected for NASA Astronaut Program
By Jim McCabe, CapeCod.com NewsCenter
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