European astronaut André Kuipers signalled the start of the Mission-X 2013 challenge for participants aged 8–12 joining from over 20 countries during a live webcast from ESA’s ESTEC space research and technology centre in the Netherlands.

André answered dozens of questions from students at ESTEC and via Twitter. From Colombia to Spain, from Japan to the Netherlands, students asked about space food, the calories that astronauts need per day and what it feels like to be weightless

The Mission-X challenge features training modules and healthy activities inspired by those used by astronauts during their spaceflights.