Dr Piers is a British-American NASA astronaut and climate scientist. In his space career he made three Space Shuttle flights. He completed six spacewalks, during which he helped to build the International Space Station!
Space is the new frontier. It is to us what the oceans were to sailors a thousand years ago. We have to cross space to get the planets in our Solar System. One day. We will travel to planets around other stars. We hope future space explorers will travel to Mars, then the moons of the outer planets.
Zero-G is great fun. You can float through the air down the big main corridor of the space station. It’s like magic. But the view of Earth is the main thing. From the ISS you can see over 1,000 miles in all directions – beautiful.”
It’s hard to sleep in space. When you close your eyes you feel like you are falling and so you wake up! You can’t shower in zero-G – the water would go everywhere. So you wipe yourself down with a wet washcloth, which works ok. The loo works using an air suction fan to make everything go where it’s supposed to go, and that works fine, too!
The best part of being an astronaut is spacewalking. Being outside the spacecraft you have a beautiful all-round view of the Earth and space.
How do you become an astronaut?
Currently, you have to be one of the following to be a professional astronaut: military test pilot, engineer, medical doctor, or scientist. So study hard on the STEM subjects [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] at school. They are hard to begin with, but fascinating and worthwhile.
Picture Credit : Google
