This story was updated at 4:16 p.m. EDT
Sneezes can
pack a wallop on Earth, but for an astronaut in a spacesuit they can also make
a mess of things, a veteran spacewalker said Tuesday.
Six-time
spacewalker Dave Wolf, currently flying on the International Space Station,
said astronauts can't stop from
sneezing inside their spacesuits, and there's no way to blow your nose.
"That's a
valid question because I've done it quite a few times, most recently yesterday,"
Wolf said, as he answered a video question sent to NASA via YouTube.
The trick,
Wolf said, is having
good aim, something every spacewalker learns in training. After all, no one wants to sneeze on their spacesuit helmet.
"Aim low,
off the windshield, because it can mess up your view and there's no way to
clear it," said Wolf, who spent nearly seven hours working outside the station
on Monday and will do it again tomorrow. "That's how you do it."
Quizzing astronauts
in space
Wolf's
treatise on space sneezing was part of a high-tech question-and-answer session
by Endeavour shuttle astronauts currently working at the International Space
Station. The shuttle launched to the station last week. The questions were
submitted well in advance to shuttle commander Mark Polansky and his crew via
YouTube and the microblogging Web site Twitter.
Polansky
goes by the name @Astro_127 on Twitter as part of an effort to engage the
public about Endeavour's 16-day
flight to the International Space Station. Questions were sent in from all
over the world from schoolchildren, teenagers and adults alike.
"I'll be
the first to admit that I didn't know a tweet from a Twitter," Polansky said of
his tweeting before flight. "I've learned that there's a whole community out
there that loves this stuff."
He is the
second astronaut to tweet from space, but others have promised to follow on
future flights. Polansky and his crew are working through a marathon flight to
deliver an experiment porch and new crewmember to the space station.
The best
job on Earth
During
Tuesday's question and answer session, Polansky and Wolf were joined by
Canadian astronaut Julie Payette and shuttle pilot Doug Hurley.
Olivia, 15,
from Connecticut asked the astronauts if they liked their job and what it was
really like to live
in space.
"It is
great to be an astronaut. It is essentially is the best
job on Earth," said Payette, adding that astronauts spend most of their
time training and supporting missions from Earth. "When we do get to go, it's extraordinary;
it is a real privilege."
Astronauts
have to put up with living with a lot of people in a confined space - there are
13 people aboard the station now, the most ever - but floating in
weightlessness and the views of Earth more than make up for it, she said.
The
astronauts were also asked if they would ever want to take their families along
for a ride in space if it was safe to do so.
"We'd be so
happy if we could take them with us," said Payette, who has two young sons. "If
it was a possibility, we'd really like to have our kids playing in microgravity
with us and our friends to share and watch the Earth pass by."
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