The Day an Astronaut came down to Earth

What a day!

From as long as I can remember I’ve loved stories about space, whether that is the real life Moon landings and Space Shuttle, or the fantasy of Star Wars and Star Trek. If you follow Twitter one of the phenomenons of 2013 was the account of the International Space Station’s (ISS) Commander Chris Hadfield. Regularly tweeting updates from the ISS with outstanding photos of our beautiful Earth brought us closer to the space exploration taking place above us. Depending on their orbit etc you could often look out in the evening and watch the night sky as the ISS passed across, and one night they were even doing a spacewalk as they came into view. You can see it now in the December night sky.

When the Space Shuttle was finally retired it was as if we had given up on space exploration, forgetting that we had built this big space station on which so much is taking place every day of the year. Through the power of social media Commander Hadfield was able to bring us closer to their work, and provide us with a view of our planet that only a small fraction of our population has ever had the privilege of. As I said to him today, he put the cool back into space exploration and inspired people with its possibilities.

Today I went to Cardiff with my good friend, Helen to meet Commander Hadfield and get him to sign his book “An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth.” What a genuinely nice guy! He had time for everyone, even though he was booked there for three hours, and was happy for photographs to be taken and he even sang Happy Birthday to one lucky person. Sadly he didn’t give us a rendition of ‘Space Oddity’ like he did before he left the ISS. I must say I was really excited about meeting him and did a few of my obligatory “whohoo’s”, although I think I did mess my words up when I met him and shook his hand, I may have talked gibberish. Lol!

It was an honour to meet him and a highlight of 2013!