Astronaut day

This morning we had the best lecture ever: 4 hours of Astronaut and Cosmonaut lectures about Living and Working in Space. We were like kids in a candy store. Nobody wanted to leave the auditorium for the lunch break. The faculty almost had to kick us out of the room ;) We had 4 hours full of anecdotes, pictures, movies and... dreams. I know I'll never flight onboard of the Shuttle, Soyouz or the CEV (unless I have a few millions $$$$) but videos of space flights still produce the same effects on me as when I was 9 years old. So today we had the privilege to meet Steven Smith, from NASA, who flew 4 times with the Space Shuttle, Pedro Duque, from ESA, who flew once with Soyouz and once with the Space Shuttle and finally Dr Mukai, from JAXA, who is teaching us Life Sciences here at ISU and who flew twice onboard of the Shuttle (including the flight with John Glenn).

I put a few pics below. Sorry for the quality but we were in the dark most of the time. Click on them if you want to have them larger.

Steven Smith, Chiaki Mukai, Pedro Duque and Nikolai Tolyarenko at the beginning of the lecture:

The Space Shuttle experience with Steven Smith:

The Soyouz and ISS experience with Pedro Duque:


Steven Smith, Chiaki Mukai and Pedro Duque answering the thousands of questions we had ;)



But tonight, I have to come back to some more realistic thoughts... Anin is currently in surgery. We should hear from the hospital later in the evening or in the night. Keep praying.