Life in orbit: tales from the International Space Station

Reception was surprisingly good on the phone call from space. "We just flew across Canada," said Commander Chris Hadfield, speaking from the International Space Station. "It took about seven minutes." His voice travelled from the reaches of earth's orbit to astronaut Catherine Coleman's mobile, held up to a microphone before a packed hall of University of Toronto students and faculty. An astronaut with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Coleman was at U of'T Jan. 9 to deliver the latest talk in the Lectures on the Leading Edge (LLE) series hosted by the department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry. She called in a favour with her long-time friend and colleague Hadfield to connect her audience with the realities of science in space in the most immediate of ways. "Our labs are humming up here," said Hadfield, explaining that about 100 separate experiments are currently under way.