For most of
us on Earth, a birthday typically means another year older and maybe some cake
with friends. But on Saturday, NASA astronaut Michael Fincke will celebrate his
birthday without such luxuries aboard a $100 billion space station 220 miles (354 km) above Earth.
NASA has
opened the gates for the public to send an electronic birthday card to Fincke,
who will celebrate his 42nd birthday Saturday aboard the International Space
Station, far from his wife Renita and their three children.
Instead, Fincke - a
two-time spaceflyer who currently commands the space station - will have only
his two crewmates for company. To make up for it, NASA has set up a portal
for the public to send birthday wishes to Fincke using one of four different
electronic cards.
"There are
four postcards with greetings like 'Hope your birthday is out of this world,'"
said NASA spokesperson Brandi Dean Friday during the agency's daily space
station commentary hour. "The cards will be e-mailed up to Fincke on orbit."
The digital
birthday cards include images of Fincke taken during his two spaceflights.
It's not
the first time Fincke, a
Pennsylvania native, has been stuck in space during family milestones.
In
2004, he was orbiting the Earth as an Expedition 9 flight engineer when his second
child - daughter Tarali - was born. He spoke to his wife by telephone during the
delivery, but had to wait until he landed four months later to hold his daughter
for the first time. More recently, he cheered his beloved Steelers on to victory
in last month's Super Bowl from the space station.
It's been a
busy week for Fincke and his crew.
The astronauts are in the home stretch of
their six-month Expedition 18 mission and are awaiting the launch of NASA's
space shuttle Discovery, which is slated to liftoff on Sunday to deliver new
solar arrays and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata to the space station. Wakata
will replace NASA astronaut Sandra Magnus as a member of the station's crew. Fincke
and Russian flight engineer Yury Lonchakov are due to land in early April.
The
spaceflyers also had
to take refuge inside their docked Soyuz spacecrafton Thursday when a piece of space
trash flew too close to the space station. The measure was safety precaution in
case the debris – later found to be a 5-inch (13-cm) wide remnant of an old
rocket motor – punched a hole in the station and forced an evacuation. The debris
passed the station by without incident and life aboard the station returned to
normal.
Earlier
this week, Fincke and Lonchakov – who celebrated his own 44th birthday last
week – spent nearly
six hours spacewalking outside the International Space Station to add an
experiment and perform other maintenance. Fincke said the views of Earth from
inside his spacesuit was a great way to mark his birthday.
"This
is a great gift for my birthday," Fincke said during the Tuesday spacewalk.
Click here to
send a birthday card to space station commander Michael Fincke.
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