A photo of Stephen Bowen boarding the Crew-6 Mission rocket in March. Photo: Getty Images
COHASSET, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — A native son of Cohasset gave local school kids a lesson from 250 miles up on Wednesday. NASA's SpaceX Crew-6 Mission Commander Stephen Bowen was on hand to answer questions from Cohasset Public School students, live from the International Space Station.
The Crew-6 Mission is performing hundreds of science experiments on the station during its 6-month stay.
Bowen has longstanding roots in Massachusetts. He was born and raised in Cohasset, graduated from Cohasset High School in 1982 and got a masters from MIT.
The commander answered questions from 17 students about life in space.
"The earth is always amazing to look at," he said. "We circle the earth every 90 minutes or so...It's incredibly bright outside, no clouds," he said.
Bowen had the Cohasset flag draped behind him during the presentation.
Sixth grader Payton Phillips asked Bowen what the coolest thing he'd seen in space was.
"People," he said. "This is not our normal place to live, right? We've always lived on earth. The fact that we're able to live and have had people living here continuously for 20-something years is absolutely amazing. As long as you've been alive, people have been living in space. Us older people...we're like a different species, this is new to us. But as far as most of the people in this audience know, we have always lived in space, and that just changes how you view humanity and how you view the earth," he said.
This is the astronaut's fourth time aboard the ISS. He was also there in 2008, 2010, and 2011.
WBZ's Jim MacKay (@JimMacKayOnAir) has more:
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