To the shock of no one, being an astronaut is amazing. So says Lombard native Daniel Tani, who's currently on his second mission in space. Tani's living in the international space station, building and repairing ... stuff, and taking spacewalks that make him think about how fragile the earth is. You can watch some video updates here. We recommend the Thanksgiving one — wait until they go through all the different astronaut food they eat. It's really cute.
When he's not busy doing astronaut stuff, Tani likes to stay updated on the Cubs, telling the S-T, "I think we've got a really good team. Hopefully, we'll go into 2008 with a winning team and end up as the team of the century." Cubs! In! Spaaaaaaace!
When we started tracking down a photo of Tani, we came across a hi-res version of his official NASA shot and realized that you can see the reflection of the photoshoot in his shiny, shiny helmet. That's enlarged for your viewing pleasure after the jump. For some reason, we find this fantastic. Tani is standing there in a freaking space suit, and there are like, interns milling about.


Weekend Diversion: Night Of The Ponies


He'll have some additional company soon, as the Shuttle is scheduled to launch in less than a day. Also, you can see the International Space Station here in Chicago over the next few days fairly well--here's a list of them.
He'll have some additional company soon, as the Shuttle is scheduled to launch in less than a day. Also, you can see the International Space Station here in Chicago over the next few days fairly well--here's a list of them.