Three-time American astronaut Andrew J. Feustel, after attending the ceremonial opening of the SpaceBuzz tour, moved on to the University of Defence Club, where he took part in a discussion with students. At the beginning, he addressed questions about his decision to take objects connected with the Czech Republic into space — first a copy of Jan Neruda’s Cosmic Songs (Písně kosmické) and later a figure of the fairy-tale character Krtek, the Little Mole. This choice stems from the fact that the mother of Feustel’s wife, Indira, comes from Znojmo. At the start of his appearance, the American astronaut also spoke about his ties to the Czech Republic, including his friendship with Aleš Svoboda, who is currently preparing for his own space mission.
In the main part of the lecture, Andrew Feustel summarized his three space missions, each of which was markedly different in nature. The first, carried out in 2009 aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis, involved servicing the Hubble Space Telescope. Two years later, during the penultimate flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, Feustel delivered the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the ISS — the final major component attached to the station. He last travelled into space in 2018 aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Today, the former astronaut works for an American company developing the first commercial orbital station.
At the end of the discussion, Andrew Feustel answered students’ questions, often with additional comments from his wife Indira. He explained, for example, that a substantial part of astronaut training involves developing the ability to deal with unexpected situations: “The only way to handle them is to have standard procedures trained well enough so that we can cope with the non-standard ones as well.” Feustel originally trained as a geophysicist, but according to him, in addition to professional expertise, so-called expeditionary behaviour is equally important for an astronaut — the ability to function in a team, cooperate, support others, and live and work effectively in a demanding environment. It is precisely this teamwork, together with an awareness of one’s own strengths, that is crucial to the success of the entire mission.
At the very end, the veteran of three spaceflights answered a curious student’s question about whether he is afraid of heights. “When I’m on the orbital station and have the whole planet beneath my feet, then no. But when I come back down and I’m in a tall building, then yes. Especially when the wind is blowing.”
Author: Viktor Sliva
