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Space oddity, indeed: 18 talks from astronauts, including Chris Hadfield

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Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut who’s become a YouTube sensation aboard the International Space Station, has showed us why tears won’t fall in space and the dangers of clipping one’s fingernails in zero gravity. But he has truly outdone himself with his latest video. Scheduled to leave the space station tonight at 7pm – and to touch down in Kazakhstan hours later — Hadfield has remade David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” (For those not up on their Bowie song titles, this is the song that starts: “Ground control to Major Tom.”) Watch it — it’s truly awe-inspiring.

At TED, we’ve had talks from explorers of the mind, charterers of the polar regions and investigators of insects. Today, we’re taking a look at talks from those who’ve seen the earth from outside its atmosphere. All of these TED, TEDx, and TED-Ed speakers are astronauts, yes, but they also have something else in common: a desire to never stop exploring. We’ll start, of course, with Hadfield welcoming TED to Canada, upon hearing that TED2014 would be held in Vancouver.

  1. Commander Hadfield welcomes TED to Canada
  2. Mae Jemison: On teaching arts and sciences together
  3. Cady Coleman greets TED2011 from the International Space Station
  4. Roberta Bondar: The challenge of change
  5. Lodewijk van den Berg: How a crystal growth scientist became an astronaut
  6. Joseph Allen: A sense of place in space
  7. Yvonne Cagle: The human microscopic
  8. Jerry Carr: Life of an astronaut
  9. Ed Lu: The biggest conversation project imaginable (See also: Changing the course of the solar system and Oceans of robots)
  10. Michael Massimino: Spaceflight
  11. Nicole Stott: The glass floor: Reaching for the stars
  12. Stephanie D. Wilson: My journey to space
  13. Michael E. Lopez-Alegria: Human exploration of space
  14. Ron Garan: The orbital perspective of our fragile oasis (See also: Connecting humanity’s changemakers and his greeting to TED2011 from ISS)