In Chris Hadfield’s own words, he is, “safely home—back on Earth, happily readapting to the heavy pull of gravity.”
The Canadian astronaut left Earth to live on the International Space Station (ISS) late last December.
He touched down in Kazakhstan on Monday at 10:31 p.m. (EDT), along with two other astronauts who had been on the ISS.
He will now undergo extensive medical testing to help his body adjust to life on Earth again.
In the five months he was living on the ISS, Chris Hadfield changed the way we all relate to space.
He opened up space-life to the ordinary public in a way that no one ever had before.
With the help of his son, Evan, he tweeted messages, took photos of the Earth, answered kids’ questions during assemblies, created music and made astounding videos of his life in space. He even took the time to help one university student with his physics homework!
Was there nothing this astronaut couldn’t do?
Before Hadfield left, he had 20,000 Twitter followers. He now has more than 914,000.
Hadfield, and his son Evan who helped him do much of the tweeting and posting (read our article about that here), worked with the Canadian Space Agency to create a Twitter feed (@Cmdr_Hadfield), a Facebook page, a YouTube channel, a Reddit channel and other “social media” channels.
Now that he’s safely back on Earth, here are some of the coolest and most astounding videos Chris Hadfield created to help us understand–and delight in–space.
What happens when you wring out a cloth in space? (This is really cool – stay with it until the end.) (3:19)
Making a sandwich in space. (2:27)
Chris Hadfield (in space) and Ed Robertson (on Earth) sing a song they wrote, called Is Somebody Singing? (I.S.S.). (5:29)
How does an astronaut throw up in space? (1:49)
A real-life makeover of David Bowie’s famous song, “Space Oddity.” (5:31)
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS
By Paul McGoey
Writing/Discussion Prompt:
Chris Hadfield spent four months with little gravity. In space, when Hadfield let go of something, it floated. His son, Evan, told TKN that when his dad gets back to Earth, he sometimes accidentally drops things, forgetting they’ll fall!
List some of the other adjustments Chris Hadfield will have to make now that he’s back on Earth.
Reading Prompt: Text Features
Text boxes are small pieces of text that explain a picture, chart or a video.
For example, a text box written for the Pixar Short Film, For The Birds, gives a short summary of the video:
This is a short video where one big bird tries to be friends with some smaller birds, but they make fun of him and poke him. Due to the weight of the big bird, the wire they are all sitting on bends really far down and snaps back up when the big bird falls off it, causing all the small birds to get shot high into the air and lose their feathers.
With your teacher’s or parent’s permission, watch three or four short videos online. Write a textbox for each that is approximately one or two sentence and explains what happens.
Primary
Identify a variety of text features and explain how they help readers understand texts (OME, Reading, 2.3)
Junior
Identify a variety of text features and explain how they help readers understand texts (OME, Reading, 2.3)
Intermediate
Identify a variety of text features and explain how they help communicate meaning (OME, Reading, 2.3)
Grammar Feature: Apostrophe
To show ownership or possession, you can add an apostrophe and then an s to a noun (‘s). If the word is plural or already ends in an s, you usually just add an apostrophe at the end.
Notice the difference in these two sentences:
1. “In Chris Hadfield’s own words, he is, ‘safely home—back on Earth, happily readapting to the heavy pull of gravity.'”
2. “With the help of his son, Evan, he tweeted messages, took photos of the Earth, answered kids’ questions during assemblies, created music and made astounding videos of his life in space.
