UNDER REPAIR: This weekend, we watched as a hasty spacewalk was conducted to fix a rather alarming ammonia leak on the International Space Station.
Normally, spacewalks have weeks - if not months - of advance planning. This event was different, however, when astros on board the ISS noticed 'snow' floating by their station. The flakes were frozen ammonia coolant, leaking from a pump controller box on the stations' far port truss.
NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy (in the photo above) and Tom Marshburn spent 5.5 hours making the repair. Fortunately, it was successful, and a potentially serious situation was averted.
HOMEWARD BOUND: Monday afternoon and early evening we watched coverage of the return of three astronauts to Earth in a Soyuz capsule. On board were NASA's Marshburn, Russia's Roman Romanenko, and Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency.
Because of his frequent Tweeting, Facebook posts, conferences, amazing photos, downlinks, downloads, musical collaborations, Reddit "Ask Me Anythings" and more, Hadfield has become a superstar during his five months on station.
Yesterday, Hadfield posted a musical video to YouTube that has already garnered more than 3 million views. It's a poignant, slightly tweaked version of "Space Oddity." David Bowie himself gave Hadfield permission to use and re-work the song. In fact, Bowie's team and Hadfield's people started working on it even before Hadfield was on board the ISS.
Apparently Mr. Bowie approved of the final product, since he gushed about it on Facebook, reposting it there, and he Tweeted about it IN ALL CAPS, writing: "CHRIS HADFIELD SINGS SPACE ODDITY IN SPACE!"
If you haven't seen it, you should, and if you have seen it, you probably want to watch it again.
It's amazing - and no special effects needed, other than the zero gravity Hadfield had to work with.
Thankfully, the trio of astronauts had a flawless return to Earth,crashing (mostly gently) down to at 7:31 p.m. our time. Here's a screen capture that says "They've landed!" in Cyrillic.
Rather than watching the standard NASA coverage, we fired up the Canadian Space Agency's Web cast. It was definitely a different take on the event and fun to watch. The broadcast was hosted by CSA astronaut David Saint-Jacques and former CSA Astronaut Robert Thirsk. Thirsk did most of the talking, explaining every step of the descent and what would happen after they landed. He knew whereof he spoke, as Thirsk flew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia in 1996, and was the first Canadian astronaut to serve a long duration mission on the ISS (in 2009)
GAME TIME: We had a lovely Sunday afternoon at Safeco Field for Mother's Day.
Our seats were just 14 rows up from the visitors' dugout, so we got to see the Oakland As pretty darn close up. We watched them warm up ...
stand at attention for the anthem ...
hit foul balls ...
and give up enough walks and hits to allow the Mariners to win. Hooray!
The grounds crew even put on a show for us, dancing instead of grooming the infield in about the third inning.
It was a good day. :)
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