Orbiting the Earth is not all fun and games. But when it is, the astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour passed the time during their 16-day mission in March to the International Space Station doing flips in zero gravity and filling balls of water with chocolate candies, its pilot confided Tuesday in Tokyo.
"We take time to do fun games like somersaults," Endeavour pilot Gregory Johnson told junior high and high school students at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, responding to a question from one of the 169 youngsters about how the crew dealt with stress and boredom during the mission.
"It's a very small confined space that we are inside," Johnson said of the compartment in ISS where the seven Endeavour crew members stayed.