Running the Haptics-2 experiment on Tuesday I felt like saying ”ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking”, but I was not flying a jetliner: I was testing the telerobotics equipment that was linked to Earth. Despite travelling at 28 800 km/h an hour and orbiting Earth twice I was operating a twin joystick in the Netherlands at ESA – European Space Agency’s site ESTEC.
I could “feel” things on Earth through the joystick! This experiment is testing ways that future astronauts could control rovers on another planet as they circle above. Cool stuff! The team sent me some pictures of the setup on ground. I got to shake hands with some of them, it was a fun moment for me as I haven’t been so close to Earth in two months now.
