Standing firm against all unidentified space obstacles, the crew of astronauts at the International Space Station had some light moments when they had video conference chat with the president Barack Obama, several Congress members and several schoolchildren from Washington middle schools, from the White House, on Tuesday.

Obama congratulated the crew of the space shuttle Discovery for its recent work at the International Space Station. The president told them he was “extraordinarily proud of them for their work at the ISS”. He said he wanted know how they installed the new solar panels and how the green power would help the ISS.

Obama said, "This is really exciting! We're investing back here on the ground a whole array of solar and other renewable energy projects and so to find out that you're doing this up at the space station is particularly exciting.”

The half-hour video conference chat was organized when the astronauts were relaxing after the third and final spacewalk Monday. The questions that the ISS astronauts got from the president Obama and school children ranged from, how they live up there, how they exercise up there, how they sleep in a weightless environment, what they eat up there, what they drink up there, how they send e-mail from space, do they play video games at ISS, and have they found any life forms or any plants out in space.

"You guys still drink Tang up there?" Obama asked with a laugh. “As an astronaut, what do you eat? Can you play video games in space? Have you found any life forms or any plants out in space?" the school children asked.

The astronauts replied that they haven't found anything (life out in space) yet. Astronaut Sandra Magnus said, "I think we'll have much more success at finding new types of life and different structures when we go to places like moon and Mars.” The astronauts also answered the other questions asked by the school children. 

Obama also teased Magnus, whose hair was floating above her head in the weightless shuttle-station complex, asking, "Were you tempted to cut your hair shorter while you were up there?"

Bill Jeffs, a NASA spokesman reported that the spacewalkers weren't able to complete the job yesterday, and the astronauts will have to do the job on a future spacewalk. The space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to begin its return flight at 3:53 p.m. EDT on Wednesday. The shuttle is scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday afternoon.