NASA Astronaut Takes You On A Guided Tour Of The ISS

I want to go to there.

By David Wharton | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

I’ve seen a lot of great videos on the topic of space exploration in my time here at GFR. We all thrilled to the gripping footage of Curiosity’s descent to Mars this past summer, and we’ve seen how people such as Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson can speak with a passion and eloquence about our universe that borders on poetry. But of all the videos I’ve run across while writing for GFR, I think this one may be my favorite.

This past November, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams was about to depart the International Space Station and return home to Earth. But in the hours before she boarded her ride back to the surface, she decided to give space junkies like us a wonderful, gift: a guided tour of the entire space station. She provides tons of fascinating insights into the work that goes on aboard the ISS, as well as all the day-to-day life of astronauts and cosmonauts on the station. It’s completely worth setting aside 25 minutes of your time to watch the whole thing. And not just because her hair looks awesome in zero-g. Take it away, Commander Williams…

In her final days as Commander of the International Space Station, Sunita Williams of NASA recorded an extensive tour of the orbital laboratory and downlinked the video on Nov. 18, just hours before she, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Flight Engineer Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency departed in their Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft for a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan. The tour includes scenes of each of the station’s modules and research facilities with a running narrative by Williams of the work that has taken place and which is ongoing aboard the orbital outpost.