Abu Dhabi: A group of Abu Dhabi school children were treated to a virtual session with a real-life astronaut earlier this week. Christopher Greenfield, Physics teacher at Brighton College Abu Dhabi, organised the session with American astronaut Mike Fincke. He told Gulf News that he wanted to provide a sense of excitement amid what has been a prolonged period of distance learning for many students during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Other than providing an opportunity to speak to a real astronaut, I want children to reimagine what they can hope to achieve in the future. One of the questions that the students posed was about what inspired [Fincke] to become an astronaut, and he went on to explain how seeing astronauts on TV as a child provided the inspiration for him to work through school, college and the air force until he became an astronaut,” Greenfield said.