Skip to content
Tech News

Giraffe-Handler, HVAC Repairman, Astronaut

By

Reading time 2 minutes

Comments (0)

The astronauts of Expedition 40 are continuing to have way too much fun. My highlights this week are Reid Wiseman bringing his fluffy giraffe into the cupola, accidentally trying to dump a bag out by flipping it over, and realizing that laughing so hard you cry is tricky when tears don’t fall in microgravity.

For this week’s edition of, “How awesome is Reid Wiseman?”, the enthusiastic astronaut is physically adjusting to space, but psychologically has a bit of catching up to do. Not only that, but geophysicist-astronaut Alex Gerst is getting into the spirit with his own space station photography.

The first giraffe in space gets a great view in the cupola with astronaut Reid Wiseman. Image credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman

But physically adapting doesn’t mean his mind has entirely adjusted to this whole microgravity-thing. But with Wiseman, even fail-moments are adorable:

Although only a few days later, he had a handle on the whole, “Wait a minute, microgravity makes the implausible possible!”super-Hulk moment:

The moon is awfully hard to spot in this next photo, but finding an unimpressed face in the station is downright easy. Is someone playing Vandal Eyes in space? That’s just impressive!

Life aboard the station is busy, with every astronaut playing different roles as the day wears on. On Wednesday, Wiseman gave us a peek at a typical day of working as a scientist, repairman, and photographer at different times:

Of course Reid isn’t in orbit all by his lonesome. Geophysicist Alex Gerst is also having fun, tweeting as @Astro_Alex. Like Wiseman last week, he, too, appreciates that from the space station, it’s easy to see the Earth is round.

https://gizmodo.com/rolling-dice-in-orbit-and-other-adventures-of-a-newly-a-1584473498

He’s also getting the hang of artistic shots, like this one of his home for the next half a year:

And teasing that exercise on the space station is inherently a wee bit surreal:

Running around the world

I’m pretty sure Reid is directly daring io9 to notice his feed with this shot:

while Alex is trolling Jalopnik with this one:

But by the end of the first week, everything was feeling downright normal:

I love the way the river and delta shine, brightly reflecting sunlight:

Of course, volcanoes are always awesome. These ones are picturesque stratovolcanoes, steep symmetrical cones.

Overall, it sounds like they’re having a lot of fun:

If you want to play along with Reid at home, try to spot the space station going overhead at night. They’re mapping your responses.

I’m trying to limit the astronaut-tweet-spamming to once per week, but it feels like the share-worthy tweets never end. What’s your vote? We’ve got six months of Wiseman-in-orbit; are you going to get sick of his delight?

Share this story

Sign up for our newsletters

Subscribe and interact with our community, get up to date with our customised Newsletters and much more.

Related Articles