Canada’s newest space traveller has gotten a bigger perspective on life over the past nine days.
Astronaut David St-Jacques, who was launched into space on Dec. 3 aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, told media that having the chance to look down at a planet filled with 7 billion people has put human life into a new context for him.
“I look at the earth and it’s evident that we are all human beings, the same species on the same planet. The fact that we’re Canadian or American or Russian is a cultural detail but not fundamental to who we are.”
On a smaller scale, it’s been an adjustment getting used to an environment where up and down have lost all meaning, but he’s starting to figure it out.
“None of the training we get prepares you for weightlessness so I make the typical rookie mistakes of trying not to crash anywhere,” he said. “My colleagues are showing us how to fly. It’s easy to get lost, but you get used to it.”
There are other challenges: with fellow astronauts Oleg Kononenko and Serena Aunon-Chancellor coming back to Earth shortly, St-Jacques and his fellow crew members have been rushing to learn as much as possible in three weeks.
“The procedures, there’s an entire lifestyle onboard which passes from one crew to another,” he said. “The most important challenge is to assume the station as our working environment.”
While Saint-Jacques has been busy with scientific experiments since leaving Earth, he has had a time to reflect while staring at the planet we all call home. He’s had several emotional moments – seeing the blue line of the Earth’s horizon from the Soyuz capsule during his first sunrise in space and meeting his colleagues at the ISS after the docking. Being one of the handful of human beings to ever leave the planet leaves him with a wonder every time he looks out the window.
“It’s just a never-ending sense of awe looking at our blue planet,” he said.
