Astronauts Will Take Your Questions Now, SXSW. From Space.

AUSTIN, Texas — A live conversation with two astronauts cruising 250 miles above the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour is the very definition of a high-wire act, but NASA, Skype and the SXSW organizers pulled it off on Saturday.

NASA Mission Control pulled in the Ku-Band antenna transmission from the International Space Station and connected it to a laptop running Skype. The rest worked pretty much the way your own Skype communications work at home. According to John Yembrick, a NASA social media manager, this Internet-assisted direct communication with the ISS wasn't possible until fairly recently. Read more...