Visitors treated to Live Q&A from the International Space Station at Russian Science Festival

Those attending the NAUKA0+ science festival were treated to a Live Q&A with ISS cosmonauts

Visitors to the NAUKA0+ science festival in Russia were given the opportunity to speak face-to-face with International Space Station cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Sergei Volkov and Mikhail Kornienko in Moscow on Saturday.

The three men awnsered questions about their day-to-day routine and how they keep track of loved ones despite being 400km above Earth.

Oleg Kononenko says on the video "Good morning! We have an opportunity here to talk to our families, relatives and children quite often. It will not be a big secret, if I say that the school programme is difficult now, and my children are studying in the sixth form. So in the evening, after my working day, I call home and do the homework together with them, including the Maths exercises"

Sergei Volkov then talks about his own time aboard "'Holidays' is a quite difficult notion here. It is more like a day off for us, which we can devote to work again. And about the decorations: here, as on Earth, we decorate the station with the Saint George Ribbons for the Victory Day. If it is a New Year celebration, and it is not a secret that we have a Christmas tree and other necessary adornments on board, we decorate the station [with it]. These accessory comes both from our American colleagues and from the Russian ones, so all this gives us a feeling of home"

Mikhail Kornienko added "The starry sky from ISS looks pretty much the same as from Earth. However, the difference is that the atmosphere doesn’t prevent us from watching the stars. The stars don’t twinkle here, they are bright, look distant as from Earth and cold."