{"id":562839,"date":"2026-03-26T20:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/562839\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T20:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:54:08","slug":"astronaut-and-ubc-alumna-answers-questions-from-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/562839\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronaut and UBC alumna answers questions from space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>VANCOUVER \u2014 University of British Columbia alumna Jessica Meir has given current students a look at her office \u2014 as an astronaut in the orbiting International Space Station. <\/p>\n<p>Meir is the commander of NASA\u2019s SpaceX Crew-12 mission to the station, where she\u2019s living for eight months. <\/p>\n<p>U.S.-based Meir, who studied zoology at UBC from 2009 to 2012, answered questions from high school and university students, on subjects ranging from missing her husband and three-year-old daughter to how she keeps her curly hair clean in space.<\/p>\n<p>Meir spoke about how hard it is to adjust to basic tasks like drinking water or using the washroom in a zero-gravity environment.<\/p>\n<p>She spoke for about 20 minutes on the Zoom call that was screened at the alumni association building at the Vancouver campus, with a UBC flag in the background and her distinctive hair floating above her.<\/p>\n<p>Meir did somersaults for the audience which also included daycare students, one dressed in a Nasa-branded spacesuit costume.<\/p>\n<p>This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 26, 2026. <\/p>\n<p>Marissa Birnie, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VANCOUVER \u2014 University of British Columbia alumna Jessica Meir has given current students a look at her office&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-562839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}