ESA astronaut André Kuipers at Mission-X kick-off event 2013.
European astronaut André Kuipers signalled the start for participants aged 8–12 joining from over 20 countries during a live webcast from ESA’s ESTEC space research and technology centre in the Netherlands.
On his André's flightsuit is the Soyuz spacecraft patch and underneath his PromISSe mission patch for the six-month mission to the International Space Station that André completed in 2012.
André answered dozens of questions from students at ESTEC and via Twitter. From Colombia to Spain, from Japan to the Netherlands, students asked about space food, the calories that astronauts need per day and what it feels like to be weightless.
The Mission-X challenge features training modules and healthy activities inspired by those used by astronauts during their spaceflights.