Washington - Astronauts aboard the International Space Station painstakingly displayed their national flags from the United States, Japan and Russia in zero gravity Monday as they prepared to address the world in a news conference. The 10 astronauts shared their experiences living aboard the ISS, one day after completing a third spacewalk that included preparations for bringing the Japanese research module Kibo on line and a retinue of other maintenance and inspection tasks.
Addressing the world in both English and Japanese the astronauts bobbed in a weightless environment as they shared descriptions of spacewalks, what they will miss from life in space and what they look forward to enjoying once back on Earth.
"What I'm going to miss most is floating," said Garrett Reisman. "(It is) really like flying to be able to do that every day as you are commuting to work, it is unreal."
Reisman said he looks forward to eating pizza because astronauts don't get to enjoy food that leave crumbs floating in the space station. But he won't be celebrating with his favorite foods immediately because it takes time for astronauts to reacclimate to earth's gravity on the human body before eating typical foods.
"Even though I have a vision ... of a giant t-bone steak that is not going to happen," Reisman said.
Other challenges astronauts described were sleeping with velcro and bungee cords to help simulate lying in a bed and cleaning up metal shavings that could impact the functionality of a starboard rotary joint used to access solar power.
"What you'd like to use is a shop vac but that is not going to work for obvious reasons," said Mike Fossum, who said the clean-up sollution would likely be grease and terry cloth.
