It’s not every day your classroom reach extends 400km above earth, but for a group of learners, a 12-minute International Space Station flyover turned into the conversation of a lifetime.
Johannesburg, South Africa (06 March 2026) – The littlies of CityKidz Pre and Primary School were in for a real treat recently. Selected from schools around the world, they got to experience a live radio contact with a real astronaut! In Space!
Every time the International Space Station (ISS) passes over South Africa, the astronauts on board have roughly 12 minutes to make contact with those below. And on 25 February, astronaut Chris Williams spent those 12 minutes with the group of primary school learners on Mooi Street in inner-city Johannesburg.
Organised by ARISS, the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station, the curious learners got to ask Williams a bunch of interesting questions like how the station generates power in space, whether there are doctors on board, if tears float and what he’d do if a huge asteroid came his way.
These were not the questions of children who think space belongs to someone else.
CityKidz is not what people expect an inner-city school to look like
Most people who hear the words “inner-city Johannesburg school” arrive with a set of assumptions. For nearly two decades, CityKidz has proved those assumptions wrong.
Founded in 2008 in the Johannesburg CBD, CityKidz is a school built on a straightforward belief: that children in the inner city deserve the same quality of education as anyone else. Today, nearly 900 learners move through its classrooms daily.
Their track record says it all: learners have placed in national mathematics, science, spelling, and general knowledge competitions against some of the country’s most well-resourced private schools.
It is also the only inner-city school in South Africa to have held live radio contact with the ISS, and this did not happen by accident. It required months of preparation and technical coordination across multiple continents. The learners who participated had to be ready, and they were.
“I have always wondered what outer space is like,” said Hope Makgopa, one of the participating students.
“Being able to talk to an astronaut is like a dream come true. This gives me so much hope to dream big and work hard.”
“I had mixed emotions, but mostly I was amazed,” added Darlene Dube.
“One day in the future, I am definitely going to tell my children.”
What an extraordinary 12-minute window for an even more extraordinary group of learners!
Sources: CityKidz Pre and Primary School
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