NASA links New Jersey students with astronauts in live space call

NASA is set to bring New Jersey students face to face with orbit, linking Newton Public Schools to astronauts aboard the International Space Station in a live Earth-to-space call that is meant to do more than fill a school auditorium. The event will begin at 12:05 p.m. EDT on Thursday, June 18, and will stream on NASA’s Learn With NASA YouTube channel.

Hosted by Newton Public Schools in Newton, New Jersey, the downlink will reach students in grades K-12 and community members, with the district describing it as a tri-district event involving Newton, Andover and Green. Newton Public Schools listed Newton High School Auditorium as the venue and said the program would run from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. local time.

NASA says the astronauts, Chris Williams and Jessica Meir, will answer prerecorded STEM questions from students while living and working in orbit. That format is deliberate: the agency says a typical downlink question-and-answer session lasts about 20 minutes, and educator guidance for similar events says crews often answer only 14 to 17 questions in that window. Pre-recording the questions gives schools a better chance of making every exchange count.

The agency has framed in-flight STEM downlinks as a long-running outreach tool that connects students with astronauts for live discussion about life and work in space. NASA says the program is open to both formal and informal U.S.-based organizations, and that it is designed to spark and sustain interest in STEM while tying participants to NASA missions, content and people. In practice, the events turn the space station into a working classroom, one that can help teachers and district leaders translate abstract science lessons into something students can hear directly from orbit.

Meir adds another layer to the event’s symbolic weight. NASA selected her in 2013, and she is a first-generation American born to Israeli and Swedish immigrants. Britannica says she was selected in 2020 as one of the Artemis astronauts, has spent more than 200 days in space and has contributed to more than 150 experiments. Williams and Meir will be speaking to students at a moment when NASA is trying to keep human spaceflight visible to everyday learners, not just to specialists watching launches.

The downlink also arrives after NASA marked 25 years of continuous human presence aboard the International Space Station on Nov. 2, 2025, underscoring how the agency uses the station not only for research but also for public support. Across 2026, NASA has kept student downlinks on the calendar in several states, signaling that direct access to astronauts remains one of its clearest tools for building the next generation of scientists, engineers and pilots.