SAN FRANCISCO, iNews.id – Thomas Pesquet of ESA and Shane Kimbrough of NASA did their latest spacewalk at the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday last week. Interestingly, before leaving the ISS, Pesquet and Kimbrough did a little dance while wearing spacesuits.
In a Facebook post last Friday, Pesquet jokingly described the sequence as a “spacewalk dance” before offering a fuller explanation of the brief boogie.
“We don’t really dance but cleanse our bodies of nitrogen,” said the French astronaut as quoted from Digital Trends, Tuesday (29/6/2021).
“We breathe pure oxygen and slowly all the nitrogen in our body is replaced by oxygen, which is safer when moving from high pressure (Space Station) to low pressure (space suit). Mild exercise makes us breathe in more oxygen and get rid of nitrogen more quickly,” he said.
Spacewalk dance! Happy to have finished #spacewalk season for the moment with success. Deserves a little dance. ???? We were not really dancing though, but purging our bodies of nitrogen! ???? #MissionAlpha https://t.co/AJ7YPYugPD pic.twitter.com/Ab6pFSVeKB
— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) June 26, 2021
Outlining the procedure, NASA explains on its website astronauts board their spacesuits hours before space travel begins, in suits that are pressurized and filled with pure oxygen.
Editor: Dini Listiyani
