Turkish students chat with astronaut via radio

Zülal Atagün - IZMIR

In a first for the nation, students from a public school in the western province of İzmir were able to connect to the space station via radio and pose questions to astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli.

Students of a school in Gaziemir district communicated with the orbiting space station via radio to talk to Iranian astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli within the scope of the project called “Turkish Children in Space in the 100th Year of the Republic.”

The project was initiated by an eighth grader named Pembesu, the daughter of Ali Rıza Özsaran, Türkiye’s first amateur radio operator to talk to an astronaut in space.

Pembesu, who transferred her self-made radio to the computer, submitted the project she wrote together with her teachers to NASA.

The project was selected among 50 other schools’ projects. The school became the first and only public school in the country to be selected by NASA to communicate with a space station.

On Sept. 6, a connection was established between İzmir and the NASA Communication Ground Station in the U.S., then with the International Space Station (ISS).

About 20 students talked to the astronaut asking questions in English for 10 minutes, posing questions such as “Does space have a smell?” and “What do you miss the most on Earth?”