New Delhi:
Facebook Live has reached Space! Marking the first use of Facebook Live in space, the social network giant's founder Mark Zuckerberg chatted live with three space station astronauts on Wednesday. The live-streamed video shows NASA astronauts Jeff Williams and Tim Kopra, and British astronaut Tim Peake talking with Zuckerberg about the experiments in space, fun and new things which they didn’t learn during training, and the true astronaut ice cream.
The video has got tremendous response with thousands of views during the Live chat and 2.6 million as of press time. Zuckerberg read off questions to the astronauts asked by Facebook users and threw a few of his own. The questions included how the astronauts spend their time in space.
Apart from running experiments based on the lack of gravity - "physical science experiments that range from combustion to fluid flow to microbiology," Kopra said. The astronauts said that their existence itself is an experiment that reveals microgravity's effect on the human body. Hence, they constantly exercise and measuring the changes in their physical attributes.
The three astronauts are well prepared for the effects as well as the tasks they are required to complete there. However, according to Peake, some things related to life in space cannot be taught during the training and they learn it in the space itself. Peake has been into his first space mission for about six months.
"As a rookie astronaut on my first flight, there were so many new experiences. The training is phenomenal, and we have a wonderful training team all around the world, in all our international sites. [But] it's the real experience of launching in a Soyuz rocket, seeing that first orbit of planet Earth going through a sunset, seeing a moonrise, seeing a sunrise — you can't put into words how beautiful a planet is from up here,” Peake said.
"And also having the privilege of seeing it change over the nearly six months that we've been up here now already, and seeing the Northern Hemisphere going from winter to summer, seeing thunderstorms at nighttime, the aurora — it's just absolutely incredible. It's all of those kinds of elements that the training just can't prepare you for," he added.
The three astronauts also said that they communicate with other astronauts for which they use English, Russian or a mix of the two. They also talked about the internet service in space, saying it is relatively new, though incredibly useful for being in touch. However, it is much slower than on Earth, they said. They also discussed about the new virtual reality tech that they have been testing out in the space station's halls.
The astronauts also talked about how they have fun in space. Williams, who is on his third mission in the ISS, said he loves viewing Earth from space. "All the different seasons and stuff that goes by, the different lighting conditions and weather patterns, and all the geography and geology and the ocean currents, and thunderstorms, seeing lightning ripple across a weather system — that's a lot of fun," he said. "So we spend a lot of time in the window," he said.
He also said that they play around in microgravity often during their meals for passing time. "We all, from time to time, especially around the dinner table, play with our food in unique ways," Williams added. "We all get to be kids again."
The astronauts revealed that the food tastes slightly different in microgravity. The reason may be the increase of fluid in their heads that make them feel slightly ‘stuffed up’. Because of this, according to Williams, they particularly love spicy food.
Is astronaut ice cream a real thing? Zuckerberg asked, to which Kopra replied: "We know that the astronaut ice cream that you buy in the gift store, that powdery stuff — yeah, that's not real. But we've had ice cream on board. When SpaceX came up, they delivered a bunch of ice cream and a freezer, so that's been quite the treat. I think we're down to our last few bars. We're trying to ration it."
Kopra, Peake and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko will be returning to Earth on June 18, while Jeff Williams, cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka will come back home in September.
Three new team members will join on June 24 - American astronaut Kate Rubins, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi.
