Going 17,500 miles per hour, shooting through the atmosphere and boldly launching into space. For NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, that’s all just part of the job. And when this NASA astronaut visited school, this was a huge hit for students.

Kelly stopped by Alanton Elementary School to talk about his time in space – he has made three trips to space so far and will return for his fourth journey next March.  Kelly’s daughter, Charlotte, is a fifth-grader at the school, and he took time to answer questions from fifth-grade classes.

For the record, Kelly has never had astronaut ice cream in space, Hollywood took a lot of license with the movie, Gravity, and, as for being in zero gravity, according to Kelly, it has its ups and downs.

“Floating is fun,” Kelly said with a smile. “It also makes most things harder.”

For example, looking around the school’s library, Kelly asked the students to imagine trying to get work done while all the books were floating around the room at that moment.

And there is a lot of work getting done in the space station.

Kelly said that while in space, NASA will have about 150 experiments going on. These experiments test how humans live/work in space as well as further study astronomy and microgravity.

Kelly himself is a walking experiment.

He has an identical twin brother, Mark, also a NASA astronaut. Due to their matching genetics, NASA will also perform some experiments comparing the effects of space from brother to brother.

“It’s great,” Kelly said. “It’s a real privilege to be able to do this as a job.”

The greatest perk of his job, though, is shockingly not the adrenaline rush of orbiting space, the historic missions or even the intergalactic views. The best part of his job is the challenge and the rigor that come with his work.

“Choose interests that challenge you,” Kelly said. “The harder it is, the prouder of yourself you should be when you master it.”