NASA Hosts Google+ Hangout Live to Connect With Space Station

In a first, NASA is hosting an interactive conversation between fans and astronauts living aboard the international space station (ISS).

The space agency will host a Google+ Hangout live with the space station on Feb. 22 from 10:30 a.m. EDT to 11:30 a.m. EDT that gives an opportunity for people to hangout with three of the astronauts living in space. The live session will allow people to chat face-to-face with the astronauts.

During the event, astronauts on the space station and on the ground will select and answer several video questions. In addition, NASA will select real-time questions submitted by the followers on Google+, Twitter and Facebook. Expedition 34 commander Kevin Ford and flight engineers Chris Hadfield and Tom Marshburn will answer the questions as well as provide insight into life aboard the space station. The conversation can also be watched live on Google+ or YouTube.

For more details, visit NASA's official website.

The international space station is a research laboratory orbiting some 250 miles above Earth. The space station, which was built in 1998, is a joint effort by NASA, Russian Federal Space Agency, the European ESA, the Japanese JAXA and the Canadian CSA, to perform various research works. The station completed its tenth anniversary of continuous human occupation in 2010.

A six-member crew of Expedition 34 is currently aboard the space station. Flight engineer Hadfield will take over as commander of Expedition 35 which will begin after the three-member group of Expedition 34 - Ford, Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin - returns to Earth in March, 2013. Expedition 35 will have crew members - Hadfield, flight engineers Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko - until a new three-member crew joins them in March.