Charlotte Kelly: Thinking of My Dad in Space

I am on summer break from school right now, but before school ended, my dad was able to set up a video conference with my class. All of the kids really enjoyed seeing him and asking him questions about space. I don’t care how many times I see it, I still have to laugh when I see him flip around in zero gravity and eat floating M&M’s.

Two nights ago, my mom and I went to a beach party with my classmate Joe and his family. Just around 9:10 p.m., we were all able to look into the night sky and see the International Space Station fly over. It looked like a bright star just moving across the sky. For those four minutes we were all watching, I couldn’t help but miss my dad.

Today is Father’s Day. My sister and I were able to do a video conference with our dad at the same time. She was in Houston, I was in Virginia Beach and my dad was flying over us! Really! He was actually flying over us. He put his video monitor in his window and took a picture of us with Virginia Beach in the background.

TIME will be covering Kelly’s mission in the new series, A Year In Space. Watch the trailer here.