When astronaut Karen Nyberg attended her 25th high school reunion, she didn’t just bring photos of her husband or child — instead she was able to show her classmates a view of Earth from 200 miles above its surface.
Nyberg, 42, is in the middle of a six-month stay on the International Space Station and managed to attend her reunion at Henning High School in Henning, Minn., via video link.Nyberg gave her former classmates and their families a tour of the space station and even a glimpse of the sun rising over the earth in space.“This is my favorite part of the job,” Nyberg said as she flipped upside down and continued the interview.
However, even astronauts in zero gravity can be surprised and delighted by big news from a classmate during a reunion.“Tracy and [her] fiancé? Congratulations, I guess I didn’t know that,” Nyberg said to a former classmate.Her classmates said they were happy to see Nyberg again, even if she was going to be residing above the atmosphere for the next few months.
“They kind of become your extended brothers and sisters, and in that respect Karen is like our family,” Andrea Rogers, a classmate, told ABCNews.com affiliate WDAY-TV in Fargo, N.D. “For her to be able to join us sort of completes our family reunion as much as it is a class reunion.”Nyberg started training with NASA in 2000 and went on her first space flight in 2008. She launched with the Soyuz TMA-09M for a mission to the International Space Station on May 28. – ABC
