Video: Boise State's 'Too Cool' Close Encounter With Int'l Space Station

Some 250 miles above the Earth floats the International Space Station, but on May 6, the space station touched down, not physically, but digitally to Boise State University, where a group of students, educators and select guests eagerly awaited a close encounter.

Set up in Boise States Student Union Building, the Space Symposium created a live-link connection with two ISS astronauts, Steve Swanson and Rick Mastracchio.

A group of students known as the Space Broncos have been planning this event since late January 2014. Students in the Space Broncos come from different colleges and disciplines across campus. John Garretson, who joined at the beginning of the 2013 fall semester, is a senior public relations and communication major who discovered the opportunity to join Space Broncos through an e-mail from his adviser.

I had to take it right on the spot, it was too cool of an opportunity to pass up, Garretson said.

Leigh Ann Dufurrena, digital and social media communications specialist, took the position of co-professor of record for the Space Broncos and headed the Space Symposium event.

The culmination of all the projects we've been working on and all of the field trips and community outreach is this event, Dufurrena said.

The idea originally came from NASA, which approached the Space Broncos about the downlink, since then the students have been working with Swanson on the project. Swanson received the title of Professor of Practice in February 2014.

Its [Professor of Practice] a new program with community and business leaders to help in creative learning across all the colleges, Dufurrena said.

The opportunity to have what is, more or less, a Skype session with the ISS hasnt been offered to many other universities.

Theres been a couple of other universities that have done these, but its a really rare opportunity for any university to get to have a downlink with the space station and especially a two-way downlink like we are doing today, Dufurrena said.

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Video: Boise State's 'Too Cool' Close Encounter With Int'l Space Station