Chris Hadfield: 'Space was too good not to share it'

 

 

 

If you ever need a definition for the word “meander”, this river in Bolivia ought to take care of it. A commenter on Hadfield’s Facebook page was able to track it down. The Sun is well off to the right (the cloud shadows give that away), and so the glowing orange color is most likely due to the rising Sun reflecting off the water in the river.

 

Frigid currents carrying ice swirl off the coast of Japan, forming delicate and lovely patterns in the ocean.

 

This is the volcano Mount Okmok in the Aleutian Islands. Covered in snow, half-hidden by clouds, it took some sleuthing to track down its identity once Hadfield tweeted the picture. It’s about 12,000 years old and erupts every couple of centuries.

 

OK, so I’m slipping a video into this list of photos. But how could I leave this out? A couple of school kids asked Commander Hadfield what happens when you wring out a wet washcloth in space, so he demonstrated.

 

From space, many signs of humanity are visible. Here, a lone airplane cuts its way across the Tatra mountains in the Carpathians.

 

When water, land, and air interact, the results can be delicate and gorgeous. These swirls are called von Kármán vortices, formed when air blows past an obstruction like Isla Soccoro off the Pacific coast of Mexico.

 

 Canada’s mighty St. Lawrence river.  The circular feature to the right: the huge Manicouagan crater, formed when an asteroid or comet

 

As clouds flutter past the tiny island of Saint Helena in the south Atlantic, they form a herringbone pattern. Together with the island, that takes on a literal meaning: it really does look like a fish skeleton!

 



Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has said his life in space had to be shared on social media, in his first public appearance since returning to Earth. Cmdr Hadfield, 53, said his experiences in space were "too good" to keep to himself. He landed on Tuesday.

With nearly 1 million Twitter followers, Cmdr Hadfield said he was pleased with the interest in his work. He had been on the International Space Station since December 2012 and in command of the vessel since March.

While in space, Cmdr Hadfield tweeted about his life at the space station, sharing striking images of the Earth from space.

"There is beautiful imagery, there's poetry in what is happening, there is purpose in what is happening," Cmdr Hadfield said of his work on the space station. "There is a beauty to it, there is hope in it and it's an international thing."

 

His social media activities included singing a song with children around the world and filming a cover of David Bowie's hit Space Oddity. But Cmdr Hadfield insisted his social media activities were secondary to his main functions at the space station.

He said life in space was extremely busy, with no spare time to be idle. At his first news briefing in Houston, Texas, where the astronaut is undergoing rehabilitation, Cmdr Hadfield described the physical sensations of being in space and landing on Earth.

His first sensation of Earth was the smell of spring after landing in the Kazakh steppe on Tuesday, he said. Emphasizing the differences between life in space and "reality" on Earth, Cmdr Hadfield said he was "readapting to it physically and mentally".

Cmdr Hadfield added that upon his return to Earth he noticed the weight of his tongue and lips and was remembering how to speak under the force of gravity, while his neck and back felt sore from having to support his head again.

"It feels like I played a hard game of rugby yesterday or played full-contact hockey yesterday and I haven't played in a while," he said. "My body is just sore and I'm dizzy, but it's getting better measurably by the hour."