Problem Solved: The IISE Podcast

One of the last days we were on the space station, we've been up there almost two hundred days at this point. And this has kind of naturally happened, and we didn't plan on this. Like a lot of times, oh, if you know when Aurora's gonna come by, well, hey, the whole crew will kind of get around or get some cameras and take some pictures. But it was kind of nighttime when the lights roll out and all of our crew just kind of migrated to the cupola, which is this module with all windows. It looks at earth all the time.

And so, you know, we're all heads down in it. If you want think of it that way, there's no up or down in space. But, you know, we're all we all kind of just migrated in there, all seven of us, and it only fits about three, right? But it's all seven of us are in there really close to each other. And we just look out and there's this most magnificent aurora going on, stars everywhere, of course.

And so normally, again, we would grab a camera, get video, all this, but nobody did anything. We all just soaked in that moment. The four of us on my crew, we realized it was probably the last time we'd see something like this. And it just, again, it was organic moment. It was emotional for all of us in different ways, but it was just really cool to, you know, there were Japanese, French, Russians and Americans in that coupla together just all appreciating this incredible view that we had.

And seeing our, of course, our planet that we're about to come home to was, for me, that was probably the most emotional thing that we certainly we did as a crew. It's pretty amazing.

Astronaut Shane Kimbrough joins Problem Solved on September 14, ISE Day. Join us.