Welcome Back To Earth, Andreas!
17 September 2015
Andreas Mogensen is back on Earth! Andreas landed safely in the early hours of Saturday morning after a short 10-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
Andreas was launched into orbit on 2 September, becoming the first astronaut from Denmark. Although his mission was short, it was cram-packed with exciting scientific experiments.
Andreas tested a special new water filter, designed to turn dirty waste water into clean drinking water using no energy at all. This new technology will be useful on both the Space Station and Earth if it proves successful.
Another experiment included Andreas wearing a so-called SkinSuit. The tight-fitting suit is designed to stop astronauts’ spines from stretching in zero gravity. Because there’s no gravity pushing down on an astronaut’s spine in space, it can stretch out by almost 8 cm!
But believe it or not, his most impressive achievement was putting a peg into a hole. This might not sound difficult, but Andreas did it using a robot controlled remotely from thousands of kilometres away! The rover was located in the Netherlands, while Andreas was 400 kilometres above the Earth on board the ISS.
In the future, these techniques practised by Andreas could be used by astronauts orbiting other planets to perform experiments using robots on the surface.
Cool Fact: Andreas captured the first pictures of blue jets bursting out of storm clouds from the ISS. Check out his video of a lightning storm above India here.
