Chris Hadfield talks from space to Ontario students

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield spoke this morning from the International Space Station to students at a central Ontario school named after him.

The 53-year-old astronaut was introduced to the cheering elementary school students by the principal of Chris Hadfield Public School in Milton in southwestern Ontario, 55 kilometres west of Toronto.

Hadfield is on a five-month mission at the International Space Station that ends in May.  

Playfully twirling the microphone in the air, Hadfield answered questions from the elementary school for 25 minutes, at times performing weightless space tricks and strumming his guitar.

"The things I'm doing now, it's because I started working at it when i was your age," said Hadfield after being asked how to become a successful astronaut.

Hadfield said that during the question and answer session he was passing over South America.

"The world is this beautiful, big blue curve," he said, promising to snap a picture of Milton once the clouds had cleared. "It's like a gift that suddenly gets opened every time you go to the window."

Canadian astronaut Jeremy R. Hansen, who was in attendance at the school, tweeted that about 800 students were gathered to hear from Hadfield.

Shyly seeking advice on how she could better draw a star, one Grade 2 student asked Hadfield if he could describe the stars he sees.

"From the space station, they look like perfect points of light," Hadfield said, adding that they come in a range of colours from purple to brown.

Hadfield and his team went into space Dec. 19, blasting off from Kazakhstan.

He was born in Sarnia in southwestern Ontario, but raised in Milton.