Wednesday, September 2, 2009

First Swede in Space Getting Ready for Spacewalk


December 2006. 10 years after being selected to train as a Mission Specialist for NASA Space Shuttle missions, Swedish astronaut and physicist Christer Fuglesang made his first spacewalk on a mission for the International Space Station, becoming the first Swede is space. This Friday, Fuglesang will make his second-ever spacewalk, his first of two spacewalks from Space Shuttle Discovery this time around. The Stockholm native will retrieve scientific experiments from the International Space Station and prepare the ISS for the arrival of a new module for upcoming experiments.

Wikipedia says Fuglesang is "projected to be the first astronaut outside of the United States or Russia to participate in more than three spacewalks."

When I found out Fuglesang has a Twitter account I was hoping to see messages from space. But so far, he has not tweeted from his latest space adventure. His last message on Twitter posted shortly before liftoff of Discovery. Hopefully Fuglesang will have access to his Twitter account while in space with time to update us while he’s up there. Astronaut Mike Massimino became the first person to tweet from space in May. Some of my favorite tweets from Massimino, aka Astro_Mike, (which I saved) included "From orbit: We see 16 sunrises and sunsets in 24 hrs, each one spectacular as the sun lights up the atmosphere in a spectrum of colors," "From orbit: Getting ready for bed, sleeping in space is cool, tie down your sleeping bag and float inside of it, very relaxing" and "From orbit: At the end of my spacewalk, I had time to just look at the Earth, the most awesome sight my eyes have seen, undescribable."

(image of Fuglesang's first spacewalk courtesy of Wikipedia)
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