Advertisement

Space selfies: ISS astronauts gain geek-cred with out-of-this-world photos

Life on the International Space Station is fairly serious business, for the most part, and astronauts train for years to be included in one of the station's six-month-long expeditions. However, that doesn't mean that they don't know how to have fun once their work is done, and NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Steve Swanson proved this after Wednesday morning's spacewalk.

The above picture, posted on Mastracchio's Twitter feed, is actually one he took of Swanson, as he noted that the spacesuit's arms made taking a selfie difficult. Swanson helped him out though, returning the favour with this cool photo of him in front of the station's Japanese modules.

Although the above two pictures don't technically count as selfies, they are still very cool and evoke plenty of jealousy for the spectacular view they show off. Besides, some other photos that have shown up on NASA's ISS Instagram feed easily fall into the 'selfie' category and score Steve Swanson plenty of geek-cred.

On April 7, while floating in the ISS's cupola — the Star-Wars-esque bay of windows that looks down upon the Earth — Swanson snapped this image of himself, wearing a t-shirt from the science fiction show Firefly.

Then, two days later, on April 9, while having blood taken for a medical test, Swanson had on a different shirt, proclaiming his allegiance to Star Trek's Klingon Empire.

[ More Geekquinox: Strong earthquake and aftershocks shake British Columbia coastline ]

Probably the most famous photographer in space in recent years was Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who made it part of his mission on the ISS to captivate us all with the stunning views they were afforded on the station. Many others have taken up the 'cause' since Hadfield returned to Earth, though. Lately, Masstrachio has been posting pictures regularly to his Twitter feed, as does Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, while Swanson's photos show up on the ISS Instagram feed.

(Photos courtesy: NASA)

Geek out with the latest in science and weather.
Follow @ygeekquinox on Twitter!