NASA astronaut and retired Navy pilot Barry Wilmore made a surprise visit to students at Meadowland Elementary School\u00a0in Sterling on\u00a0Wednesday morning, sharing stories of his unexpectedly long stay on the International Space Station last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wilmore\u00a0was one of two astronauts aboard a Boeing Crew Flight Test that launched to the ISS in June 2024. The mission was expected to last eight days, but after the capsule\u2019s thrusters malfunctioned, Wilmore and Suni Williams extended their stay to 286 days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wilmore, a Tennessee native, is visiting the area to be honored\u00a0with\u00a0the Smithsonian\u2019s National Air and Space Museum\u2019s 2026 Michael Collins Trophy for Current Achievement, along with Williams.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meadowland art teacher Lane Bolyard is friends with Wilmore and his family and asked if he would be willing to surprise her students. He agreed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Principal Anna Purdy said they had very little notice, but the team worked quickly to get the proper approvals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just came together miraculously,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wilmore spent his 45-minute talk\u00a0telling students\u00a0about his time in the Navy running test flights before transferring to NASA for the second half of his career, sharing photos and videos from his time in space,\u00a0and teaching students about the aircraft and tools that make\u00a0living\u00a0in space possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A critical piece of equipment for astronauts is their multi-million-dollar space suits.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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NASA Astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore speaks with 4th and 5th graders at Meadowland Elementary School during a surprise visit March 25, 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hanna Pampaloni\/Loudoun Now<\/p>\n
\u201cThis space suit\u00a0is\u00a0roughly about $7 million,\u201d Wilmore said,\u00a0gesturing to a photo of himself\u00a0in space. \u201cNow we’ve had them for a long time. We’ve\u00a0done\u00a0a lot of maintenance on it\u00a0over\u00a0the years. This drill\u00a0on my hip is about a\u00a0$2 million\u00a0drill. They\u00a0cost that much because they\u00a0have towork every time, and there’s only\u00a0like 10 of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The suits keep the astronauts\u2019 blood from boiling\u00a0because of the low\u00a0pressure above the atmosphere, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis keeps us alive and provides air\u00a0enough to breathe\u00a0when we go outside\u00a0to work on the space station,\u201d Wilmore said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Students had\u00a0many questions about life on the\u00a0ISS,\u00a0including what it felt like to fly through space, what it felt like returning to gravity after nine months, how Wilmore spent his time, what he ate, and whether he would return to space if given the chance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat’s it like flying through space? You look down at the Earth and you’re flying like Superman,\u201d Wilmore said.\u00a0\u201cI can’t put it in words. It is amazing\u00a0to look back at the\u00a0Earth as\u00a0it’s going by and all the variety of colors, over the oceans, over the deserts, over the forest, over the mouth of the Amazon River.\u00a0I mean, it’s just amazing to be able to look at\u00a0it\u00a0and see it from thatvantage point. It\u2019s hard to put it in words.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilmore ended his visit with words of advice for the fourth and fifth graders.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Astronaut Barry Wilmore talks with Loudoun elementary students about seeing the northern lights from space during his trip to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n
Loudoun Now
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\u201cDo you have desires that you want to do in life?\u201d he asked them. \u201cI don’t care what it is, anything you want to do, if you understand mathematics and you understand a lot of things about science, you’re going to open up your opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Students who are diligent in their\u00a0school\u00a0work, even at an early age, will be better equipped for the future, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI encourage you to study, study, study, learn, learn, learn, as much as you can, because what you’re learning now today is building on your foundation of what you’ll be able\u00a0to learn later. So,study all the way through,\u201d Wilmore said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA astronaut and retired Navy pilot Barry Wilmore made a surprise visit to students at Meadowland Elementary School\u00a0in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[526,3,79,193],"class_list":["post-546187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-education","tag-news","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}