André Kuipers to speak with Chancellor Merkel from space

The opening event at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany, will see Chancellor Merkel joined on stage by David McAllister, the Prime Minister of the German State of Lower Saxony, Prof. Dieter Kempf, President of the German Association for Information Technology, keynote speaker Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Board of Google, and Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil.

ESA's Director of Human Spaceflight and Operations, Thomas Reiter, himself a former astronaut, will moderate the call to the International Space Station, orbiting 400 km above Earth.

A webcast from CeBIT of the opening event and in-flight call can be followed starting at 18:00 CET via PC or mobile device.

During the call, German students Simon and Sara Kopf, candidates in the Europe, Middle East and Africa regional finals of the international YouTube Space Lab science competition, will pose questions to André.

Sponsored by YouTube, Lenovo and Space Adventures together with ESA, NASA and the Japanese space agency, the international student contest is now in the final round of judging.

The final winners will be announced in March and their experiments will be performed later this year on the Space Station and live-streamed on YouTube as part of a global event celebrating science and space.

ESA at world’s largest IT fair

The call will take place during CeBIT's gala opening.

CeBIT is the world's largest trade fair showcasing digital IT and telecommunications solutions for home and work. In 2011, it had 339 000 visitors from more than 110 countries.

André Kuipers is now on the Space Station for his six-month PromISSe mission, during which he is taking part in more than 30 ESA experiments covering human research, fluid physics, materials science, radiation and solar research, biology and technology.

Most of these are being carried out in Europe's Columbus laboratory, a world-class research platform in space.