On Wednesday, I got paid to hang out with Twitter people and tell them about how cool NASA is. It’s days like that that I LOVE my job! The event was the latest NASA Social at JSC. I’ve helped out with other tweetups in the past, but this was the first time it was a “targeted” get together — the whole event focused on astronaut health, fitness and rehabilitation. The next US astronaut to head to the ISS is Mike Hopkins, who’ll be launching in September. He’s a former college football player and really into Crossfit, so it made sense for him to pick fitness as his thing to promote during his increment. (All crewmembers are given the opportunity to tailor some sort of outreach plan centered around things they are personally interested in. It helps reach portions of the public who might not otherwise realize what’s going on, and by tying it to something the crewmember has a personal interest in, it makes it more fun for them too.)
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The day started out with tours of some JSC highlights like the ISS and Soyuz mockups in building 9, and the ISS and Apollo mission control rooms. Doug Wheelock, an astronaut who spent several months on ISS a few years ago, took my group into the Node 3 mockup which everyone enjoyed.
At lunch, the JSC food lab brought space food for dessert — chocolate pudding cake, lemon curd, and mocha pudding. I tried the first two, and the lemon curd was definitely the better one since the chocolate pudding cake was a little gummy. I deferred on the mocha pudding since it just sounded like a weird combo, but I heard it wasn’t bad.
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Right as lunch wrapped up, all the guests got to watch the “premiere” of the video above — the official kickoffs to Mike’s Train Like An Astronaut campaign! He’ll be posting workout tips and other information about fitness in space every week during his mission and even once he gets home and starts rehabilitation.
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From there, it was over to the news briefing room, where all the guests got to participate in the Soyuz 36/Increment 37 crew news conference with Mike Hopkins and his two Russian crewmates. After that, it was on to a quick tour of the astronaut fitness equipment lab (home of the COLBERT treadmill) and short talks from two health and human performance scientists about some of the experiments being done on the astronauts in orbit to see how living in space really affects the body.
The day ended on a more lighthearted note at the NASA gym, where Mike and three other astronauts were playing games with a group of kids spending the week at a summer camp. The Houston Chronicle posted some really cute photos from that portion of the day.
If you think that seems like a lot of different activities in a single day — IT WAS. I was totally exhausted by the time I left to go get Emma from daycare, but the good kind of exhausted. I love helping out with these events because it always reminds me that there really are a lot of people out there who think NASA is cool…and they’re right. When you work a job day in and day out for years, sometimes it’s hard to avoid feeling a little beaten down and cynical. But that always goes away when I get to spend a day like Wednesday.
Yay for NASA!
