99s Have Lunch with Astronaut Julie Payette from the Canadian Space Agency

by Akky Mansikka

Thursday the 4th of November, the First Canadian Chapter of the 99s had the opportunity to have lunch with Julie Payette and the crew of the Shuttle Endeavor -  The Endeavor came back from docking with the space station two weeks ago.

On this mission Julie took drops of water from the Great Lakes, the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic Oceans to space and brought them back to present them to The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, where the luncheon was held. It will be part of an environmental display there and a reminder of the fragility of our planet with its limited resources. The crew took turns describing what was happening in a video taken on their journey and some of their experiences living in space with zero gravity. 

I was particularly moved by Julie’s words describing the working together of nations on the space station. It did not matter what language you spoke growing up, it was all one team working together in space and that when you looked down on planet Earth you cannot see where one country ends and another starts. No borders are visible. We are all in it together on the planet.