BLOOMFIELD THIRD-GRADERS HAIL COLUMBIA

BLOOMFIELD -- "This is the Space Shuttle Columbia. We copy you Bloomfield Elementary. Over," were the first words 76 wide-eyed third grade students heard from "the man on the moon" Thursday afternoon.

Bloomfield Elementary School was one of 10 schools across the country chosen to participate in the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment during the Space Shuttle Columbia's 13-day mission.

From a classroom decked with space shuttle models, pictures and other space stuff, 12 children were able to ask questions of a space shuttle astronaut in the seven-and-a-half minute window in which the shuttle would be within range of the amateur radio equipment and high-powered antennas wired into teacher Sheila Perry's classroom.

As the children filed into the room, Perry kept stressing the need for all of them to remain silent during the transmission. The young students squirmed, poked at each other, giggled and whispered until the magic moment when Perry called to the shuttle. Then, you could have heard a pin drop in the room.

Leslie Bell said that for just a moment, she had forgotten what her question was. "I was shaking all over," she said. "It really makes you excited knowing you talked to the man on the moon."

Eight students were lined up, hoping they would get a chance to speak to the astronauts. The students had been selected from their lot via a question contest, judged by teachers and administrators in the school system.

Wesley Bell was first to speak to the shuttle. He gripped his tiny hand around the microphone, introduced himself and told the astronauts he had heard that a body grows one to two inches when outside the constraints of gravity and wondered if that was true.

"I've never heard that before, but I guess I'll find out when I try to fit into my landing suit," the astronaut answered.

Another student asked about how the astronauts kept time while they were in space.

"That's a good question," the astronaut returned. "We start at zero when we launch and count up from there. Right now, we're at three days, four hours and 55 minutes.

"We circle the Earth every one-and-a-half hours, so we can't keep time in days like you do on Earth," he explained. "When we get to about 13 days, it's going to be time to come home."

Other students asked questions about physics in space, such as the behavior of water particles, whether emulsions on Earth were solutions in space and how experiments are conducted.

Timothy Pruett asked the astronauts what it feels like when they leave the Earth's gravitational pull.

"It's like no other feeling in the world," the astronaut said. "You feel free -- like you're swimming but you don't have to paddle to stay afloat and you don't have any trouble breathing."

Another little girl asked the astronauts what they do for fun while on board the shuttle.

"Well, talking to folks like you is a whole lot of fun," the astronaut returned. "We also like to look outside the space shuttle -- it's very beautiful up here -- and we also have fun floating up and down the length of the shuttle sometimes."

The astronauts also told the Bloomfield Elementary students that they saw the Russian space station twice on Thursday. Once it was about 200 feet away from them, and the second time it was only 100 feet outside their windows.

NASA, which has been in regular contact with Perry since the shuttle took off Monday after two delays, told her that only about four students would be able to ask questions of the astronauts in the short time they could pick them up on radio.

As it turned out, all eight students had asked their questions with about four minutes of contact time to go. It was then up to Perry to improvise -- and she froze. Two students from the group amassed on the floor in front of her rose to ask more questions of the astronauts, until they were out of range and Perry was forced to sign off.

"You pulled your teacher through this one," Perry gasped after she had signed off. A huge roar of applause echoed through the halls of the school. "I don't know whether to cry or what -- you guys were the greatest!"

Perry's classes won the chance to speak with the shuttle as a result of a lesson plan she submitted to NASA called "From Stars and Stripes to Satellites." The plan was based on Bloomfield being the home of the "Stars and Stripes" Civil War newspaper and the continuing importance of communications in society today.

Perry herself is a amateur radio operator. She has several pieces of short-wave radio equipment in her classroom that were funded by a Christa McAuliffe grant.

But to have the capability to speak to the space shuttle, Perry had to call in several amateur radio hams from St. Louis.

Among them was Roy Welch, who designed a computer program that tracks the space shuttle's movement and moved the aerial antenna atop the school building to face the astronauts. Welch's program also counted down the time until the shuttle would be in range.

NASA officials monitored the entire conversation from their headquarters near Houston.

After they spoke with the astronauts, the students were ushered into the cafeteria where they were each given a patch and a certificate to commemorate the day.

"I was so nervous," said Ashley Pruett after it was all over. "It gave me a headache."