Chris Hadfield's Journey to Space...

The YouTube sensation Chris Hadfield first reached the headlines in December 2012 when he blasted off into space on board the Soyuz rocket to the ISS (International Space Station), his mission was to last nearly 6 months orbiting Earth at 17,500 miles per hour seeing a sunrise or sunset every 92 minutes. What's even more astonishing is that it only took 8 minutes and 42 seconds to reach the ISS.

Overall Chris Hadfield has spent 166 days in space, and has completed two space walks. He was even the first Canadian to ever walk in space.  Chris Hadfield was first inspired to be an astronaut when he was raised on a corn farm in Ontario, he watched the Apollo moon landing in 1969. At the time Canada didn't have a space agency so Chris went on to gain his glider pilot licence under the Royal Canadian Air Cadets. he joined the Canadian Armed Forces and he earned an engineering degree at the Royal Military College. As part of an exchange programme with the US Navy he also obtained a degree in  aviation systems at the University of Tennessee Space Institute.

In 1992 Chris Hadfield was one of the first astronauts ever to be excepted onto the Canadian Space programme. In November 1995 he took his first space flight to the Russian Space Station, Mir, where he flew as a 'Mission Specialist'. In April 2001 he flew again on the STS-100 and visited the ISS, here he helped to install the Canadarm2. He took his third and final space flight in December 2012 where he joined Expedition 34. In March 2013 he then took over command of the space station as part of Expedition 35. As part of the mission he was in charge of five astronauts and dozens of experiments on board the space station, on many different things including the impact of low gravity on human biology. During the mission he gained popularity by chronicling life aboard the space station. He also took many pictures of Earth and posted them through Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr to many people worldwide. His mission ended in May 2013 when he safely returned to Earth. Shortly after returning he announced his retirement, ending a 35-year career as a military pilot and astronaut


Chris Hadfield has since written a biography titled: 'An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth' about his 4,000 hours he has clocked up in space and a whole lot more.

 

The ISS: "Making the Invisible, Visible"

Currently we are using the equivalent of 1 and a half planets worth of resources in order to survive on earth. With the advancement of medical technology and discoveries, we have an ever increasing population. In the near future we will need to find another planet to live on.   

Previous Expedition 34 of the ISS

The ISS is carrying out investigations, testing out the conditions that humans would have to withstand to live on a planet such as Mars to solve this problem, without having to risk money and human health by sending shuttles to Mars or other prospective planets. Other experiments that the ISS carries out are in various fields, for example biology, human biology, physics, astronomy and meteorology (which is the study of the weather)

The ISS may be circling the earth at 7,706.6m/s at 370km, but the International Space Station does a lot more than that. The ISS was sent into orbit on the 20^th November 1998.The ISS has spent a staggering 5243 days in orbit, 4530 of them have been spent occupied, that’s nearly 12 and a half years.

The cost of construction of the ISS mounted up to a massive 150 billion US dollars. The size of the ISS is approximately the size of an American football field and it is the largest man made machinery that orbits the earth.  The ISS has been visited by astronauts and cosmonauts from 15 different nations

View of a spiral cloud from the ISS (@Cmdr_Hadfield 

The technology onboard the ISS allows pioneering research to be carried out, most of which could very well be put to good use within our lifetime. One of the many experiments is tissue culture. This is where living cells can be grown in an environment where the results are not distorted by the force of gravity. These results could be used to test for treatments of deadly diseases and illnesses like cancer, without risking harm to patients whilst the treatment is still in the production stages. NASA has already developed a Bioreactor device on earth that can be used to simulate these effects that happen in space.  Every so often the ISS needs to be serviced, like a car, to do this a Soyuz space shuttle is sent out to service the ISS and deliver any essential equipment or materials to the station. Recently on the 29^th March the Soyuz shuttle managed to reach the ISS in less than 6 hours, compared to the usual 2 days. This brings forward new prospects of space travel, potentially making journeys to planets such as Mars possibly achievable in a reasonable timespan.

The crew on board the ISS changes regularly. On-board the ISS currently is Commander Chris Hadfield and Flight Engineers Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko who began their stay when they docked their Soyuz TMA-07M which transported the crew to the ISS on Dec. 21, 2012.The crew on Expedition 35 is scheduled to remain on-board until May 2013.

You can see when the ISS passes are online here for June http://www.meteorwatch.org/iss-international-space-station-uk-passes-june-2013/

. Follow @VirtualAstro on twitter for more information on astronomy or  @Cmdr_Hadfield for amazing photos from the ISS