NASA goes cute when an engineer went an extra mile creating a video in response to a four-year-old's asking for help on a school project.

Four-year-old Lucas Whiteley, with the help of his father James Whiteley, created a video asking NASA three questions which Lucas had difficulty answering.

The father and son team posted the video on NASA's web site.

The tandem got the surprise of their lives when NASA engineer Ted Garbeff made a ten-minute film to answer Lucas's questions. Mr Garbeff even went an extra mile when he included in an email a virtual tour of his Mountain View base in California.

"When I was a kid I wrote to Nasa and got a brochure, so when Lucas was doing a project on space I thought we might be lucky if we sent a video of Lucas asking some questions. What we got back was amazing. Obviously Ted has thought about his audience and gone to a lot of trouble just for them," Mr Whiteley told The Telegraph.

"When I sat down to watch it with Lucas he had a big smile on his face. Ted is a fantastic bloke to go out of his way to do something for someone he doesn't know on the other side of the world," Mr Whiteley said.

Lucas showed the video to his teachers and classmates at Sunny Hill Primary in Wrenthorpe, West Yorks.

Mr Garbeff did not just go all scientific with Lucas, he also offered Lucas life advice.

"It's really a lot of fun being an engineer - you get to play with great toys all day and most importantly you get to learn about the world. It wasn't easy, though, getting here, I had to work really hard. So remember to work hard in school and listen to your teacher," Mr Garbeff said in the video.

Lucas's questions and Mr Garbeff's answers

Lucas: How many stars are there?

Ted: You might see a lot of stars, but the truth is there are more stars than you can even see. There are so many stars that it's really hard to imagine how many there are. So we haven't counted every single star in the universe, that would take a really long time. But instead engineers and scientists are really good at estimating really large numbers.

- he told Lucas there were about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

Lucas: Who came second and third in the race to the moon?

Ted: The US did land the first people on the moon and in fact no other country has made it back to the moon. But Russia did manage to land a rover on the moon to drive around. So I guess I would probably give Russia second place. Very recently, a country called China has landed a rover on the moon so China would have third place.

Lucas: Did any animals go to the moon?

Ted: No. But animals have really helped us understand the way space works and how well humans can live in space. In fact one of the first living things to go into space was a Russian dog named Laika. Laika's now very much a space hero. She was the first living thing to go into space. Nasa also launched animals into space (including) the first primate, a chimpanzee named Ham. But none of them made it to the moon, they orbited around the Earth.