NASA Astronaut Frank Rubio: A Year of Science in Space

Oh, it’s good to see you.
It’s good to see you man.
-Man, it’s good to be here. -Welcome to space.
It still doesn't feel real
Wait for five months. It still won’t feel real.
What do you think?
It’s amazing.
Oh, man, look at that.
It is the most beautiful thing.
That's my favorite thing about being on the space station.
Not just the people we work with, but also the things we can do.
What we are doing here most importantly is science.
Good morning, Frank.
How do you read me?
Morning. I have you loud and clear.
There's these amazing experiments.
That get sent up to the space station on behalf of teams from universities
or research centers throughout the world, and we get to perform those experiments
for the scientists.
So my favorite experiment is one where we're growing tomato plants.
I love working with that little plant and just seeing it grow and develop.
So it has helped us learn how we can better manage the water,
the nutrients, and using different methods like hydroponics to grow plants.
Because one day when we go to Mars, we'll need to be able to grow our own food.
The International Space Station provides a really unique platform where we can
study kind of the hardest part of space exploration, which is human presence.
Unfortunately, we are pretty complicated to keep alive in outer space.
We've been living here for over 20 years, and as we transition to the moon
and even further, we're going to need all those 20 years of experience.
So it's pretty exciting times.
You know, I think at heart all of us as astronauts are explorers and scientists.
And so being a part of this incredible team that gets to make this happen
is pretty special.
It really is with great pride to be a part of a large community,
of many Hispanics who can inspire our future generations
and especially with a team that can inspire young ones to find science.
I think the thing that I'll remember the most are my crewmates.
I've been lucky enough to fly with four different crews by the time I leave.
The teams that we've worked with on the ground have been phenomenal.
So like a lot of things in life that have tremendous experiences,
what you end up really remembering the most are the people.
And that's been the case absolutely up here.
Of course it's amazing to be in space, but more than anything
you feel very proud to do things that will help all of humanity.