Frank De Winne, a Belgian astronaut, is back on Earth after six months living in International Space Station (ISS) space working on OasiISS mission. He is the first ISS commander, and has been answering internauts doubts about spacelife by youtube videos and reporting from his blog.

Yesterday morning (7:16 GMT)  the  Russian Soyuz TMA-15 casule landed safely in the steppes of Kazakhstan. Inside there were three astronauts: Belgian Frank De Winne, Canadian Robert Thirsk and Russian Roman Romanenko. They are back from the International Space Station (ISS), after 133 days of hard work: scientific experiments, technological

demonstrations and even an educative programme.

Frank de Winne became the first European to take command of the largest human outpost ever assembled in space. Simonetta Di Pippo, ESA Director of Human Spaceflight.  “With a European astronaut onboard, we can conduct considerably more scientific experiments and increase our ability to exploit the ISS. Europe should have at least one astronaut onboard the ISS every year”.

During the mission, De Winne made several human physiology experiments to find out more about cardiovascular adaptations in space, salt retention in humans and how our three-dimensional perception changes in microgravity. He also performed technology demonstrations and an education programme.

On May of this year, he posted on youtube this video explaining this education programme:

Here you can find some interesting answers of De Winne, for example, how they go to the toilet in space?. It is also curious how they have to wash themselves in space… without taking any shower!!Look here! I also found he is a sudoku-adict!

Sources:

• Here you can find a complete biography of Belgian De Winne made by ESA. It is also available in Dutch and French.
• For further information, European Space Agency

• And this is ESA youtube site
• BBC News has got a good article.
• Also Associated Press

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