Spokane’s own astronaut Anne McClain answers kids’ burning questions aboard the ISS in live video chat with 1,300 students, ‘You can do anything from Spokane’

Spokane astronaut Anne McClain’s digital homecoming Tuesday kicked off with a fervor.

McClain’s return to her alma mater Gonzaga Preparatory School had more than a few similarities to the U.S. Army colonel’s launch to the International Space Station as a member of NASA’s SPACEX Crew-10 mission just a few months ago. Anticipation clung in the air of the private school’s gymnasium as the countdown ticked away to the drumming of the feet of giddy children – a roar that sounded almost like a Falcon 9 rocket taking off.

The Mobius Discovery Center hosted more than 1,300 elementary and middle school students for a “downlink” with McClain, a rare opportunity to chat via satellite with an ISS crew member. Students asked Spokane’s space traveler about her background and training, lessons she learned in orbit and her day to day aboard the floating laboratory, then heard McClain answer in real time while orbiting the Earth at speeds close to 18,000 mph.

“I have no doubt that some of you are going to come back to Spokane and you’re going to tell the next generation of kids what you went and did,” McClain told her rapt audience. “Maybe it’s going to be an astronaut also, but maybe it’s going to be that cool dream that’s living inside of your heart.”

The 1997 G-Prep graduate fielded around a dozen questions in the 20-minute call from curious kids in the Spokane area from both private and public schools, all sardined inside the gym.

Chloe Bockelie, a Shadle Park High School freshman, asked McClain what she’s learned from Crew-10 that she wished she knew on her first voyage to the ISS.

McClain talked about her nerves the first time she launched into space in 2019 and how the second time around, she feels much more self-assured. This confidence she only developed because she pushed herself the first time, she said.

“The magic doesn’t happen inside your comfort zone; you gotta scare yourself a little bit,” McClain said. “To me, that’s a really good sign that you’re pushing yourself beyond your boundaries, and that’s how you achieve amazing things.”

Nolan, a fifth-grader from Skyline Elementary School, asked McClain how she and her crewmates pass the time outside of watching 16 sunsets each day.

They like to play a version of air hockey, she explained, in which crewmates blow a pingpong ball back and forth in the weightless microgravity of the ISS. They watch movies, tell riddles and other activities that don’t require much equipment, she said.

“We do have a pretty playful spirit up here, because at the end of the day, we’re living out our dreams here in microgravity, and we’re having a lot of fun doing it,” McClain said while doing backflips in midair, her microphone still floating when she let it go.

While riddles and games satisfy astronauts’ playful spirit, McClain is kept plenty busy with work aboard the ISS. Since 2000, more than 270 astronauts have conducted more than 4,000 experiments to help advance human health, safety and technology.

Matthew Manley, a student of St. Thomas More Catholic School, asked McClain her favorite experiment. It was hard for her to pick from the hundreds to which she’s contributed, but she highlighted research on growing plants without sunlight.

Matthew was eager to address McClain, but the two go way back – they even have a rocket-themed handshake to prove it.

An aspiring astronaut, 11-year-old Matthew met McClain through the local nonprofit Wishing Star Foundation, which sent him and his family to tour the NASA facility in Houston with McClain and visited Cape Canaveral to watch her launch in March.

“That was my wish, because I have to wear a BiPAP at night; it’s this big mask that goes all the way around my whole face, and I’ve always thought it was like an astronaut mask,” Matthew said.

His siblings, Miranda and Joshua, were also in attendance, decked out in NASA gear. Though they don’t share their brother’s dreams of space travel, there was plenty for them to learn from McClain’s 20-minute address.

“The highs are great, but you are gonna have some lows,” said Joshua, 9.

Resoundingly, kids learned to “follow your dreams,” many said.

Graeme Scott, a fourth -grader at Ruben Trejo Dual Language Academy, left with the lesson to “keep going and always achieve my goal,” he said.

One goal for the youngster is to finish a Lego set he got for Christmas, a model of the Endurance sea ship that includes over 3,000 plastic pieces to assemble.

“I rage quit,” he said. “I couldn’t get these two massive pieces to fit together.”

“Some things are hard, but you just keep going and going,” classmate Reece Tennant added.

To the 1,300 kids watching, the downlink showed undeniably that someone who once played in their same parks, roamed the same streets and sat in the same gym could set their sights high and reach them.

McClain was once a Spokane student, much like the audience, before becoming a West Point graduate, Team USA Rugby player and Army pilot with more than 2,000 flight hours. Steve Schreiner, a former classmate of McClain’s and now G-Prep IT director, said as he emceed the event that she’s a model for kids regardless of their ambitions.

“Every kid is in need of inspiration,” Schreiner said. “It doesn’t have to be space, but this is a really visible way to see the end result of an inspired person’s work. I hope kids will leave here thinking to themselves that they can set their own path to whatever they want for themselves.”

Schreiner said he hoped those children pondered what a “fulfilling” line of work would be.

“I feel like that’s a message that’s lost on children,” Schreiner said. “When we define success, it’s often financial success, but I think Anne shows that fulfillment should be at the center of our decision making.”

McClain’s journey to her dream job did not come without challenges, as she and her mother, Charlotte Lamp, told the crowded gymnasium Tuesday. There were a handful of times that McClain was almost bumped off the path to becoming an astronaut, like when she suffered an injury in a high school softball game that delayed her start at West Point by a year, Lamp said. While biding her time, McClain took some classes at Spokane Falls Community College, joined Gonzaga University and started considering becoming a firefighter.

“I think she was trying to find out, ‘What are things that would interest me if I can’t go on to become an astronaut?’ ” Lamp said.

It worked out in the end; Lamp encouraged McClain to recommit to her goal since childhood, and McClain wound up finding her passion for rugby while hanging around the Gonzaga campus that year.

“I love that there are so many kids that have heard her say she had to keep making the decision over and over again, and doing things, as she says, that pushed her beyond her comfort level,” Lamp said. “That’s a huge thing, because so many people have visions of what they want to do as kids, and it falls away.”

She’s arrived at the goal she first verbalized as a preschool student, but McClain said the role comes with unique challenges and stressors.

McClain told Spokane youth being an astronaut requires flexibility and a diverse skill set, as evidenced by the rigorous training regiments she and her peers underwent.

On a day-by-day basis, astronauts cycle through underwater strength training to simulate space, foreign language lessons to communicate with their crewmates, learning medical maneuvers like drawing blood to further research or boot camps on how to communicate their complicated work to the public, McClain said.

“And if you just think about the skills that each one of those things requires, it requires you to adapt over time, but it also requires you to adapt a lot during one single day,” McClain said. “You may have to be really good at something at 9 o’clock in the morning and then completely shift what skills you’re using at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. That ability to adapt and change, and to kind of get used to that, was a real challenge.”

Lamp said she was happy to see so many Spokane kids in attendance to hear her daughter’s message. She sent McClain a few photos of the crowd of students just before the event got underway, alongside the message: “this place is packed.”

Before the satellite connection came to a close, McClain told those students of her faith they’ll go on to reach lofty heights of their own.

“The biggest thing that I can tell you is that you can do anything from Spokane,” McClain said. “I grew up in Spokane, and here I am in space. I can’t wait to see what you guys do.”