On the morning of the 8th January at 8:47, there was the first live feed with astronaut Tim Peake. This was held at Sandringham School. Samuel, Year 6, was lucky enough to (almost) ask a question to him. Six other pupils also went up as the audience.
To decide on who was going to ask a question to Tim Peake, Year 6 each got the chance to write a question that they would want to ask him. Sandringham and Wheatfields also did this. They were then sent off to NASA and ESA to decide on the ten they thought would be best.
All in all, there were twenty questions which ten children would ask him. These included questions about experiments, the Mars Rover and about his favourite moment so far.
As they had to be at Sandringham for 7:00am on the day they all had to get up very early. When the group arrived, all the press had already come with their microphones – it was a bit scary at first. About ten minutes later, they went outside and saw the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time. This was for about 5 minutes.
At about quarter to eight, they had a ‘final’ rehearsal. This was fine – though they did not have time to ask all of the questions. A couple of people wanted to interview the group, including Newsround. It wouldn’t be long before they could speak to Tim Peake.
At first, it was quite hard to gain contact with Tim. However after approximately four minutes, we first heard him. However, within a minute, they lost contact with him. After about 30 seconds, contact was gained again. During this time, they managed to ask five questions. Then, on question number six, they lost contact once again. Unfortunately, they did not regain it. Sadly, Samuel was one of the five who couldn’t ask a question but everyone understood that it was still an incredible achievement to be able to talk to him.
Afterwards, another couple of people wanted to interview them again. Once all this was finished at about 9:40 they walked back to school. They were just in time for the end of assembly.
By Samuel, Amelie – Boo and Sarah