MONTREAL — Montreal-born U.S. astronaut Greg Chamitoff said spending six months in outer space orbiting around the earth made him realize just how isolated we are in the universe.
Montreal-born astronaut Greg Chamitoff talks to UTT students about the six months he spent in space.
Gazing out at our colourful planet from the International Space Station every day, Chamitoff developed a feeling of oneness with Earth and a greater sense of responsibility toward its welfare.
“I didn’t return more or less religious than I was before… But it left me with a sense of aloneness, a sense that you and I are floating in the middle of nowhere. That this [Earth] is what is keeping us alive,” he told students at United Talmud Torahs, during a visit to the Snowdon campus.
“I realized that there is nothing to protect it, and only we who were put on the Earth can look at it [from this perspective] and be amazed and appreciate it.
“Basically, it was a confirmation of my beliefs about the universe. It was like seeing the truth for the first time.”
Getting into space was the fulfilment of a 40-year dream for Chamitoff, who is Jewish. He trained for the mission for 10 years. Chamitoff, 46, who grew up in Chomedey, is a NASA flight engineer and science officer. He was aboard the space station from May 31 to Nov. 30, 2008.
He was in his hometown to look after some family and professional business, dropping by the Canadian Space Agency in St. Hubert and catching up with his relatives. One of them is his cousin Rhonda Shlafman, whose daughter Jacqueline is in Grade 2 at UTT.
He also spoke at Crestwood Elementary School in Laval, which he attended as a child.
His advice to a UTT youngster who wanted to know what he had to study to be an astronaut was “focus on math and science, but you can’t ignore things like English and history. You have to be good at everything to do this.”
After receiving degrees in electrical and aeronautical engineering, Chamitoff earned a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He joined the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Tex., in 1995 as a software developer, and was selected for astronaut training in 1998. Through slides and video, Chamitoff showed the kids how he spent his 183 days in space, from the time of his launch in the space shuttle for the two-day trip to the space station. He spent the first 4-1/2 months on the station with two Russian astronauts, and the remainder with two fellow Americans.
The children were especially delighted to see him floating like Superman through the corridors of the space station, juggling balls, doing magic tricks, trying to shave and brush his teeth in zero gravity, and the crew cutting each other’s hair.
He shows off the bagels that he brought with him from Montreal’s famous Fairmount bakery owned by the Shlafmans (18 sesame seed ones, which he said didn’t last long).
He also is seen playing guitar to a recording he made with his late father Ashley “Al” Chamitoff of a song they used to play together.
Chamitoff, now based in Houston, said he wanted to be an astronaut from the time he was six, when he and his family went to Florida to see the launch of Apollo 11, the first manned mission to land on the moon in July 1969.
His mother, Shari, and brother, Ken, now live in southern California.
“It was a lot of fun. The hardest part was saying goodbye to my family [he and his wife have four-year-old twins],” Chamitoff said off his half-year sojourn.
“I thought the launch would be more violent than it was… The launch is like a controlled bomb. Enough power is expended to run Montreal for many months.”
The space station is about the length across of two football fields. Both it and the shuttle are travelling at 17,000 miles per hour, so docking was tricky.
The main job of this mission was to attach a Japanese-built research lab module to the side of the space station, and Chamitoff operated a giant robotic arm made in Canada. The rest of the time he performed experiments related to life in zero gravity, not only on humans but also on insects and plants. They had two spiders on board who spun webs and the crew members were able to grow lettuce. Ultimately, the goal is to enable more people to live on the space station at one time and for longer periods.
Chamitoff’s duties also included taking many photographs of the Earth, and he was continuously awestruck by its beauty and the variety around the globe. “It is more beautiful than anything an artist could paint,” he said.
In their spare time, he introduced his Russian comrades to the Star Trek and Star Wars movies that had fed his imagination as a boy. He had contact with his family by phone and e-mail, and once a week, they communicated via a two-way video conference call. He even voted in the U.S. elections in space. But during Hurricane Ike, all communication was lost with Earth except for the voice of the mission control.
Exercise was extremely important throughout his time in space to maintain bone and muscle mass, Chamitoff said. Nevertheless, after returning to earth, he couldn’t- stand up and remained in bed for four days. It was a week before he could walk any distance or carry anything. “It was sad to leave. I had a great time.”
He hopes to return in a few years.
“It’s addicting. I really, really want to go back into space. But Earth is home. My family in on Earth, we are all part of Earth, we can’t separate ourselves from that.”
One of the family duties he had while in Montreal was attending the naming of Rhonda Shlafman’s new baby daughter at Congregation Shomrim Laboker. It was especially emotional for Chamitoff because she is called Ashley after his late dad.
