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jetpackexhaust:

Just when you think Commander Chris Hadfield can’t get any cooler, he proves that nothing is impossible for astronauts. That is the entire point of astronauts. 

The world was expecting a fun farewell from the station commander, because we live in a world where a man in space communicating with millions of people on Earth for fun is something we take for granted, but this is beyond anything we could have hoped for. And utterly perfect. 

SOBBING.

Epic. I think what I love best, though, is that it was not my space-obsessed friends who posted this on my dashboard. :-)

(via glorfindel)

Source: jetpackexhaust

The aurora is nothing short of occipital ecstasy. It is always moving, always changing, and like snowflakes, no two displays are the same. The glowing red and green forms meander like celestial amoebas crawling across some great petri dish. One time our orbit took us through the center of an auroral display. It was as if we were in a glowing fog of red and green. Had we been shrunk down and inserted into the tube of a neon sign? It looked like it was just on the other side of the windowpane. I wanted to reach out and touch, but of course I couldn’t. Afterwards, I had to clean nose prints from the window.

Astronaut Don Pettit in Fragile Oasis

I had to excerpt only a small bit of this post, but it is well worth reading all of what Pettit wrote about viewing the Earth from the International Space Station. While you’re at it, check out his other posts on Fragile Oasis; they are all spectacularly worthwhile reading!

Source: fragileoasis.org

Women of the Space Shuttle Era: (left to right) Peggy Whitson, NASA’s Chief Astronaut and U.S. record holder for total time spent in space; Anna Fisher, the fourth U.S. woman and first mother in space; Pam Melroy, second female pilot and shuttle commander; Eileen Collins, first female pilot and shuttle commander; Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, an educator astronaut and the shuttle’s final rookie astronaut; and Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space. (From Shuttlenauts photo essay) #
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Women of the Space Shuttle Era: (left to right) Peggy Whitson, NASA’s Chief Astronaut and U.S. record holder for total time spent in space; Anna Fisher, the fourth U.S. woman and first mother in space; Pam Melroy, second female pilot and shuttle commander; Eileen Collins, first female pilot and shuttle commander; Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, an educator astronaut and the shuttle’s final rookie astronaut; and Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space. (From Shuttlenauts photo essay) #

Source: airspacemag.com