Move over OK Go: This is what real astronaut training looks like
The inventive band OK Go scored another viral hit this week for its new weightless music video “Upside Down and Inside Out”, but check out how the original zero-gravity gurus do it.
This week, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson shot her own video, without music, while training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where she’s preparing for a spacewalk and undergoing zero gravity training underwater.
Whitson, who made history in 2007 as the first female commander of the International Space Station (ISS), will return there later this year for Expedition 50/51, according to NASA.
10 Oct 2007 USSR launched Soyuz TMA-11 to ISS with NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson first female space station commander http://bit.ly/bQOOua
— Ray Plumlee (@SpacemensLuck) October 11, 2010
She first traveled to the ISS, which orbits 400km (250 miles) above the Earth’s surface, as a crew member of Expedition 5, a 184-day mission in 2002 spent expanding the football-field-sized station and carrying out scientific research.
Way out in the great expanse, where weightlessness can wreak havoc on astronauts’ bones and muscles - not to mention their minds - the incredible speed of the ISS means it is able to orbit the Earth every 90 minutes.
Commander Whitson is no doubt pushing her body to the limit in advance of the trip, but how does the US space agency prepare people for months on board ISS as it spins around the world at speeds of 17,500 mph (28,163kph)?
