Watch NASA’s live chat with Chris Hadfield, ISS astronauts at noon
Streaming video by UstreamThree astronauts who recently returned to Earth after living aboard the International Space Station will answer questions from the public in a live Google Hangout on Thursday.
The online chat starts at noon PDT, and you can watch it live right here.
(The video stream above will switch to the hangout at noon.)
If you’ve been wondering what it feels like to sweat through a heated reentry to Earth in the Soyuz capsule, or how foreboding a normal flight of stairs looks after months spent in zero gravity, now is your chance to ask three men with first-hand experience.
The astronauts participating on the chat are Chris Hadfield, the Canadian commander of the most recent ISS mission and newly minted social media star; Tom Marshburn, who has been to space twice and has logged more than 18 hours of space walks; and Kevin Ford, who commanded the ISS 34th mission before Hadfield took over.
Hadfield and Marshburn returned to Earth together on May 13. Ford returned in March.
All three astronauts are currently in Houston, undergoing rehabilitation, according to NASA.
The men will answer questions about life aboard the ISS, but we hope they will also talk about the challenges of returning to Earth as well.
“1st day on Earth gravity is a magnet that pulls on face, arms, legs, everything. Can even feel the tug between muscle and bone,” Marshburn wrote on Twitter soon after returning to Earth.
Hadfield, who charmed the world with his personable videos and tweets from space, used his popular Twitter feed to chronicle a number of the medical tests he endured after his reentry.
“I love MRIs. Vital science, imaging my eroded spine, learning about the body, all with a few bonus minutes to nap,” he tweeted.
NASA will be hosting the one-hour online chat and has asked the public to submit questions for the astronauts via Google+ or Twitter using the hashtag #askAstro. You can also submit questions through NASA’s Facebook page.
Some of the questions already posed include “Would you take a one-way trip to Mars?” and “Which trip is more scary: Flying into space, or coming back to Earth?”
NASA says the more unique the question, the better chance it has of getting answered by the astronauts.
