Astronaut Joe Acaba answers your questions — from space!
The Puerto Rican astronaut, second from right, shares a meal with his crew mates aboard the International Space Station.
By INGRID ROJAS
Joe Acaba is living many people’s childhood dream of becoming an astronaut. In that process, he’s set to become the first Latino to spend the most time in orbit after he completes his current five month mission aboard the International Space Station.
But Acaba’s road to space was unconventional. After working for several years as a math and science school teacher in Florida and California, he was accepted into NASA’s Astronaut Candidate Class in 2004. Five years later, he took his first spacewalks aboard the Discovery. This past May, Acaba boarded his second mission which is scheduled to return to Earth in September 2012.
The 44-year-old astronaut, who is of Puerto Rican descent, is part of a handful of Latino astronauts who have conquered space, among them Franklin Chang-Diaz, NASA’s first Latin-American to go into space and Jose Hernandez, the son of farm workers, turned astronaut, turned politician.
Acaba is currently blogging from space and will take questions from our Univision News Twitter followers about his experience on how is it like to be in orbit for months at a time. What does he eat? Can he watch TV from space? How does he even get online?
Send us your questions to Joe Acaba via Twitter to @UnivisionNews and include #AstroAcaba as the hashtag by June 22nd. Joe will answer your questions via video from space, which will be posted right here on Univision News Tumblr.
(Photo: courtesy NASA)
