While space exploration is serious and sometimes dangerous scientific work, that does not mean that there is no room for fun. Something as mundane as a little ball of water can be supremely entertaining.
In a video shared by NASA, Artemis II astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen are seen watching a ball of water floating around in zero-gravity. The water itself is moving around and shaping the light around it in some surprisingly complex ways.
Without any force pulling the water downward, surface tension molds the liquid into a floating sphere. The light then bends inside the bubble, distorting and inverting images. According to retired NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, water like this offers a simple physics lesson and reminder that what see all depends on how we look it.
Wiseman is also no stranger to playing with water in space. During a mission in 2014, he and other crew members aboard the International Space Station (ISS) explored water’s surface tension in microgravity. They even went as far as putting a waterproof camera inside a bubble to get a water’s-eye view of zero-G.
On April 10, the Artemis II crew—Commander Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Koch and Hansen—splashed down after their historic 10-day mission. Along the way, they surpassed Apollo 13’s record for farthest crewed spaceflight and captured breathtaking photographs of the far side of the moon. They also ate a lot of hot sauce and troubleshooted relatable toilet troubles. Their scientific work also will help prepare future astronauts to live and work on the moon, as NASA builds a future Moon Base and looks towards further expeditions to Mars.
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