WARSAW, Poland (AP) — What do a wedding necklace, Polish savory dumplings and a photo of Hungary’s first astronaut have in common?
They will all be among personal items taken by astronauts journeying to the International Space Station in the spring. The date has not yet been set.
The four members of the Axiom Mission 4 hail from the U.S., India, Hungary and Poland and will travel on Space X Crew Dragon spaceship in a joint mission by NASA and the European Space Agency, ESA.
At a news conference Wednesday, three of the astronauts said they were having the time of their lives, training hard for their travel as well as preparing for the medical and technological experiments they will conduct during the nearly two weeks they will spend in space.
“We have to remind ourselves that space flight is a risky and serious business but it’s also fun and, next to space flight, the training for a space flight is the next best thing, so we are having a time of our lives,” the mission pilot, Tibor Kapu, said in English.
Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski said the hardest parts of the training were the “waiting and the uncertainty” as well as being away from home and not having “too much family time.”
ESA head Josef Aschbacher stressed that space research was “strategic” for many reasons, including security.
Crew members will take with them items of national and personal significance.
U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson, the Mission commander, who has a doctorate in biochemistry, is taking the necklace that she wore at her wedding, along with photos of the crew and her family.
Uznański-Wiśniewski is taking freeze-dried Polish traditional pierogi, or dumplings, along with poems by Wisława Szymborska, a Nobel literature laureate; music by Frédéric Chopin; a piece of amber; and some salt from the historic Wieliczka salt mine. He will also have a small national white-and-red flag that Poland's first man in outer space, Mirosław Hermaszewski, wore on his suit in 1978.
Tibor Kapu, of Hungary, said he will take a photo of his country's first astronaut, Bertalan Farkas, who traveled into space in 1980, as well as family photos and the Hungarian flag.
He said his fascination with space came from the Star Wars movies. For Whitson it was the “real-life lunar landing” in 1969 by the U.S. Apollo 11 mission, while Uznański-Wiśniewski felt drawn by the coincidence of his birthdate, April 12, the day Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made the first crewed flight into space in 1961.
The mission pilot, Shubhanshu Shukla of India, could not attend the media event, held at the popular Copernicus Science Center in Warsaw, with the participation of Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
The unique experience of being in outer space forms a bond for crews, said Whitson, who has spent 675 days in outer space, more than any other American, and has also served as ISS commander.
“I find that space is very much a place where you get a different perspective” in which you see Earth “in this vastness of space and you appreciate this perspective of the fact that our planet is basically like spaceship Earth and we need to take care of it. It is very precious to us,” Whitson said.
