Space station commander gives us all a tour
In her final days as Commander of the International Space Station, Sunita Williams of NASA recorded an extensive tour of the orbital laboratory and downlinked the video on Nov. 18, just hours before she, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency departed in their Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft for a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan. The tour includes scenes of each of the station’s modules and research facilities with a running narrative by Williams of the work that has taken place and which is ongoing aboard the orbital outpost.
After viewing this, I feel compelled to paraphrase the tagline from “Superman,” “You’ll believe a woman can fly.” And I do. She has the best job ever—superhero.
I can’t recall a longer look at non-fictional humans moving through a microgravity environment. Can you? Even with my Internet-depleted attention span, I couldn’t look away from this 25-minute video—watched the whole thing in one sitting. I bet you will too.
Via Andrew Sullivan.