Chris Hadfield

I lost the inagural Canadian $5 bill that they had sent for me to do an event with the Bank of Canada, to unveil it from orbit. I so wished they had sent a second one, and was on the verge of forging one on the ISS printer when I finally found it in an envelope where it had floated, in storage behind a rack. Huge relief, nick of time. But always bring two $5 bills :) Especially if your picture is on it.

To orbit the Earth is an awesome privilege. The work to get there is lifelong and beyond hard, but to then actually be there is on the edge of miraculous. My favourite moment on ISS was once in the Cupola, the huge bulging window facing Earth. We had just crossed Australia at sunset, and were arcing up over Indonesia, when we began to cross a thousand mile storm. The lightning was almost continuous below, lighting up a thunderhead like a flashbulb and then catching across the storm as if it were contagious, a rippling wave of searing white light. Tom Marshburn floated quietly into the Cupola beside me, and we hovered in wonder, too amazed to grab a camera, pointing to the magnificence and speaking in hushed delight. We wanted to go get the rest of the crew to come see, but the spectacle was too mesmerizing to leave. We kept gasping and laughing in wonder, until finally we drove up and past China and the storm fell behind us. We felt like the luckiest 2 guys in the universe. And still do.

My laptop here onboard communicates to a server in Houston via satellite relay, and that server on the ground is hooked through a computer to the internet. The data rate is very slow, not fast enough to watch video, but perfect for things like Reddit and Twitter. We have the data link about half the time.

No Skype, but when we have the right communications links I can directly access the internet in Mission Control, Houston, and Tweet and do this AMA real-time. We have that link many times, every day. It's a great capability to have, really lets the crew keep in touch.

Currently just off the Western coast of Australia in the Indian Ocean.