China broadcasted its first live "space science lesson video", which will be viewed by 330 elementary and middle-school children in Beijing.
Sixty million students also watched the CCTV (a state-run television channel) broadcast of the lesson all around China, according to Space.com. Wang Yaping, the second Chinese woman in space, and Nie Haisheng demonstrated weightlessness for the awed children.
"In a weightless environment we are very skillful martial artists," Yaping said.
The astronaut demonstrators also showed the children how water behaves in space. Wang made a bubble out of water and held it between a pair of metal rings.
"Okay everybody, this is where magic happens," she said.
Over the course of the hour-long demonstration, students were invited to ask questions.
"Do you enjoy any view that's different from what you can see on the Earth?" one student asked. "Do the stars twinkle, and do you see the UFOs?"
"From the window, we can see the beautiful Earth and the sun, the moon and the stars, but we haven't seen the UFO," Yaping responded. "As we are now in outer space without the atmosphere, we can see the stars shining brightly, but they do not twinkle."
The astronauts took a 15-day trip to Tiangong 1, China's first space station launched in 2011. The station is only expected to orbit for three more months before it is deorbited or destroyed. China hopes to build a 60 ton space lab in the future, it will be just a little bit smaller than NASA's 1970s Skylab, and about on sixth the size of the current U.S. space station, according to ABC News.
The 10-astronaut launch was China's fifth manned trip to space.
The lesson was "aimed at making space more popular," said Zhou Jianping, designer-in-chief of China's manned space program, according to Xinhua News Agency via ABC News. "The spirit of science among youth is an important drive for the progress of mankind,"
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