Commander Hadfield does Major Tom and wins the internet today, hands down.

Commander Chris Hadfield handed over the reins to the International Space Station overnight to Pavel Vinogradov , and will be climbing into the Soyuz capsule together with Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko for a wild three-hour ride back to Kazakhstan later today.

Prior to his departure, he tweeted the following musical number. What else, but David Bowie's Space Oddity! And like so many of his posts, it created a social media sensation! Understandably: this was an outstanding post. Enjoy!



I found myself thinking that his singing voice was not what I expected—a lot higher pitched. But then I remembered that the ISS atmosphere is thinner than on Earth, noticably changing vocal pitches.

I do wish the one scene where he sang:
"Floating in a most peculiar way..."
was flipped 180 degrees so he was hanging from the 'ceiling'.

Nice to see towards the end that the guitar was caught just before it crashed into anything. That is going to be one incredibly valuable guitar once it's back on Planet Earth!

Hadfield's return to Earth will bring to an end what I'm sure was the most shared and publicly followed six months in ISS history. When I started following him on Twitter while he was still training for this mission, he had a few thousand followers. As he is leaving the ISS he has an amazing 777,000 followers!
With music, soundbites, demonstrations and more, Hadfield has endeared himself to people from all walks of life. I sure hope that ISS astronauts who follow in his footsteps continue this amazing outreach. Starting with Karen Nyberg @AstroKarenN, and Luca Parmitano @Astro_Luca.

Speaking of demonstrations, how about this amazing  experiment: what happens when you wring out a wet cloth in space.



Thanks Commander Hadfield: it's been a great ride!