By Miguel Mike Medina
Photo Credit: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)
Being in space is a rewarding experience for two NASA astronauts, Karen Nyberg and Don Pettit.
Nyberg is a retired NASA astronaut. Nyberg lived and worked on the International Space Station for 160 days. The last time she returned to Earth was in 2013.
“Living in space is such a surreal experience, because everything is just different than you experience on Earth; you could almost convince me that I hadn’t gone if I didn’t have pictures I could look at,” Nyberg said. “It’s when other people start talking about it that I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, I did some really cool things.”
Pettit spent almost 600 days in space, including three long stints on the ISS; the last one was seven months. Pettit returned to Earth last April.
“The amazing thing when you come back to Earth is, what are you going to miss from being in space?” Pettit said,
Pettit described flying around the room like Peter Pan. The things that these astronauts feel are filled with amazing observations.
Nyberg had dreams of someday being an astronaut and had that vision since she was a little girl. It’s been her lifelong dream, and she fulfilled it. In addition, Nyberg went into detail about gravity and its strength.
“The pull of gravity is so strong, it’s such a high component of the reaction that’s going on in any experiment, that when you take that away, you can start to understand what other things are happening,” Nyberg said.
Pettit said the daily schedule is like being on Earth. The astronauts are up there to do work and not slack off. The hours are intense.
“We’re scheduled for about 12 hours a day, starting at 7 in the morning GMT time, which is what the station runs on,” Pettit said. “You try to get your 12 hours’ worth of work done in the scheduled 12 hours, and typically things take a little longer to do than the folks on the ground think. You end up working 13 to 14 hours a day, and we work about six days a week, and they try to give us one day a week off.”
It’s a heavy work environment. The astronauts are fortunate to have at least one day off. It’s hard to have some time to do a hobby because the day goes by fast. Some astronauts watch a movie or surf the internet, but some don’t do anything or talk to family back home. The astronauts are 250 miles above the surface of the Earth.
Miguel Mike Medina is the publisher of The MMM Journal. He can be reached at medinamiguelmike@gmail.com and themmmjournal@gmail.com
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