Category: Photography

Sunita Williams gave a video tour of the International Space Station a few hours before her return to earth on November 18, 2012. I found it fascinating because her tour gives a great sense of the layout of the interior of the ISS and what it actually looks like. Also, in a weightless environment, the meaning of up and down have different definitions.

There were a couple of things that were especially interesting to me. When the crew uses the exercise bike, they don’t need a seat because they don’t sit down. They use clip-on pedals to hold them to the “bike.” The pedals look very similar to the Shimano road pedals that I use on my De Rosa. The exercise machines need to be isolated from the walls of the space station so they don’t put any forces into the structure of spacecraft and solar arrays.

When Commander Williams entered the Russian segment where Service Module Central Post of the space station is located, there was a nice assortment of Nikon photography equipment on both walls.