Astronaut Don Pettit is nearing the end of his latest stay on the International Space Station (ISS) and it will likely be his last because he’s 69 years old, which is quite astounding. He’s the veteran of one Shuttle flight and two extended stays on the ISS before this one.
The man has a sense of fun, often showing the scientific aspects of a weightless environment via capillary action with liquids, spinning objects – and even pants, as seen in the following video clip.
Astrobuffs are going to especially miss him because of his fantastic astrophotography, of which the following link has quite a few examples, both still and video.
More via this link. I loved the sped-up video of the docking of the latest Dragon spacecraft at the station because he had the same thought as me; that it looked like a scene from Close Encounters of The Third Kind.
I see the date for de-orbiting the International Space Station has now been pushed to 2031, although I’ve seen no explanation for this and it may change back to 2030, or even earlier if the leaks in the oldest parts of it keep getting worse.
When it is pushed out of orbit by Space X’s one-off space tugboat, it will be aimed at a part of the Earth called Point Nemo:
It’s been called the “loneliest place on earth” — a location so remote it would take days to traverse the 1,670 miles (2,700 kilometers) of ocean between this point and the nearest patch of land — which, even then, is just a cluster of tiny islands inhabited only by birds.
Sitting in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, this is Point Nemo, also known as the “pole of inaccessibility.” South of Easter Island, and north of Antarctica, ocean surrounds this point as far as the eye can see, and plunges to depths of over 13,000 feet (4,000 meters).
Also very much east of New Zealand.
No Minister 