spacewalk selfie

People have been taking selfies since the camera was invented. Astronauts are no more immune to the temptation to snap photos of themselves while they’re on the job than the rest of us are. Here’s astronaut Jessica Meir, who is currently orbiting her home planet aboard the International Space Station, as she snapped a photo of herself that should be on the wall of every kid who dreams of becoming an astronaut some day:

Astronaut Jessica Meir

garble

I’ve passed some time these last two weeks reading the Apollo Flight Journal, an annotated transcript of the transmissions from the astronauts who went to the moon. This is some pretty geeky stuff. The transmissions themselves would be nerdtastic all by themselves, but the annotations are so packed full of detailed moon-shot minutia that I may never stop getting my geek on.

But even if you’re not a space nerd, I thought you might enjoy this line of traffic from an astronaut to mission control about three hours into the flight:

002:56:10 Unidentified Speaker (onboard): [Garble] SECO [garble] gimbal [garble].

Speaking as someone who’s had to transcribe recorded conversations, I can empathize with a desire to get it all down in words, even when it gets crossed up with a frustration at not being able to make out all the actual, you know, words.