NASA Engineer Answers 4-Year-Old’s Questions With a Personal Video

Like many kids his age, 4-year-old Lucas Whiteley is fascinated about space and astronauts and has a lot of questions to ask. Unlike most kids, though, Lucas got his answers directly from a NASA engineer, with a custom-made video no less!

With the help of his dad James, Lucas — a student at the Sunny Hill Primary school in West Yorks, UK — recorded three questions to send to NASA. He asked how many stars there are, who came in second and third in the race to the Moon, and how many animals have been sent to the Moon.

Obviously impressed with Lucas’ interest in space exploration, engineer Ted Garbeff at NASA’s Ames Research Center recorded a ten-minute video response for Lucas, in which he not only answers his questions but also gives a brief tour of some of the research facilities at Ames (as well as a nice sunny beach in Santa Cruz. Yes, I’m jealous.)

Garbeff’s excellent video, which was emailed to Lucas, was then presented to his classmates at Sunny Hill Primary.

It’s things like this that end up making a lasting impression to kids — who knows, maybe someday Lucas will be recording a similar video (or whatever they call them 26 years from now) for another generation of primary school students.

“Being lucky enough to get a job at NASA has been pretty special,” Garbeff said in an interview for the San Jose Mercury News by Molly Sharlach. “I wanted to carry on that idea of motivating the next generation of kids.”

Sources: Mercury News, The Telegraph, and Metro News