homehome Home chatchat Notifications


Record setting astronaut says floating around in space is "priceless"

Sunita Williams is an Indian-American astronaut who currently holds the record for longest space flight time among female space travelers (over 200 days). She recently declared she’s not missing gravity at all and that she finds the experience of floating around in imponderability priceless. “I love being up here and I love floating around,” 47-year-old […]

Mihai Andrei
October 23, 2012 @ 6:47 am

share Share

Sunita Williams is an Indian-American astronaut who currently holds the record for longest space flight time among female space travelers (over 200 days). She recently declared she’s not missing gravity at all and that she finds the experience of floating around in imponderability priceless.

“I love being up here and I love floating around,” 47-year-old Williams, who is currently commanding the International Space Station’s Expedition 33 crew, said. “I think the mindset really is you know it is not going to last forever, so I think you take an advantage of flying around as much as possible,” said Williams, who is in space along with Flight Engineers Yuri Malenchekno of Russia and Akihiko Hoshide of Japan.

Sometimes the mind plays tricks on you when you’re in outer space, she explains.

“Still, every now and then, you take a bag of nuts and go like this, holding it up in the air to have them fall in your mouth, and that’s not going to work.”

Williams is the space station’s 33rd commander, but only the second woman to hold this title since the first crew took up residency 12 years ago. The current crew is expecting three more members: astronaut Kevin Ford and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, who are set to arrive on the ISS later this week.

share Share

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Spotted Driving Across Mars From Space for the First Time

An orbiter captured Curiosity mid-drive on the Red Planet.

Japan Plans to Beam Solar Power from Space to Earth

The Sun never sets in space — and Japan has found a way to harness this unlimited energy.

Giant Planet Was Just Caught Falling Into Its Star and It Changes What We Thought About Planetary Death

A rare cosmic crime reveals a planet’s slow-motion death spiral into its star.

This Planet Is So Close to Its Star It Is Literally Falling Apart, Leaving a Comet-like Tail of Dust in Space

This dying planet sheds a “Mount Everest” of rock each day.

We Could One Day Power a Galactic Civilization with Spinning Black Holes

Could future civilizations plug into the spin of space-time itself?

Elon Musk could soon sell missile defense to the Pentagon like a Netflix subscription

In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring missile attacks the gravest threat to America. It was the official greenlight for one of the most ambitious military undertakings in recent history: the so-called “Golden Dome.” Now, just months later, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and two of its tech allies—Palantir and Anduril—have emerged as leading […]

Have scientists really found signs of alien life on K2-18b?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We're not quite there.

How a suitcase-sized NASA device could map shrinking aquifers from space

Next‑gen gravity maps could help track groundwater, ice loss, and magma.

Astronomers Say They Finally Found Half the Universe’s Matter. It was Missing In Plain Sight

It was beginning to get embarassing but vast clouds of hydrogen may finally resolve a cosmic mystery.

Trump’s Budget Plan Is Eviscerating NASA and NOAA Science

Science is under attack.