Hadfield in Space: social media star

Feb 5, 2013 | Biz/Tech

By Kaite Boivin

The first Canadian to walk in space has been sharing his view of the world, to the world.

Seventeen years ago Chris Hadfield, a Canadian Astronaut looked out the window on his first voyage beyond Earth, “beautiful” and “memorized” are the words he used to describe the sight.

But they say pictures speak louder than words so now, almost two decades later he’s back in orbit and sharing his view on social media sites, like Twitter.

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In just over 90 minutes Hadfield, on board the International Space Station, travels around the world.

The perspective he sees could benefit everyone, he said while floating in the capsule, during a telephone interview with Canadian reporters.

“The world just unrolls itself for you and you see it absolutely discreetly as one place,” Hadfield told the Toronto Star.

He said that he was aware of flashpoints like Syria, and said the space mission he is part of is trying to give people a glimpse of the world to understand we’re all in this together.

“This is a spaceship, but so is the world,” he said. “What were doing [on ISS] is fundamentally fascinating.”

On Dec. 19,  Hadfield boarded a Soyuz spacecraft and he will be spending five months on board the ISS.

Since his arrival he has been actively engaging the public, keeping in contact on a daily basis.

He dropped the puck for the Leaf’s home opener game, he live-chatted with grade school students, and on Thursday he will speak via video to legendary Canadian actor, author and former Captain Kirk, William Shatner.

Hadfield who will be the first Canadian Commander of the ISS in March is becoming something of a celebrity with over 300,000 followers on Twitter to date.

He has been posting videos on the Canadian Space Agency’s Youtube, answering questions from students.

He shared how an astronaut washes his hands and clips his nails without gravity.

“If I just cut my fingernails here, fingernail bits are going to fly everywhere. They aren’t just going to fall to the ground and you can’t sweep them up,” he said in the YouTube video.