Europe – Canada trip.

So today was a good day. We got up in the morning at about 9 o’clock and had breakfast after breakfast we mucked around for a few hours. at around 11 we decided to go out and look at the shops as Claire wanted some jeans. The shops were not amazing and there were cigarette buts everywhere so we headed home. At 12:30 we left to pick up to pick up the mother of a man named Peter who is a good friend of the people we were staying with. So after picking her up we left for his work place the car ride took around an hour and a half and was uneventful. Now what I haven’t told you is that the place where Peter worked Is the largest and main centre on space research, astronaut training, and the head control centre for the rosette mission (that one the landed on an astroid). It also has serval other facilities for research and communication (e.g. with the ISS). And Peter was giving us a guided tour! When we got there we first had to go through serval layers of security and get name tags. Then went to the main control centre for the rosette mission and communication centre for communicating with the ISS. Peter showed us around and talked about the how everything worked. It was very interesting when he showed us a scale model of the rosette probe and talked about where it landed on the asteroid. He also told us why the probe landed in the wrong place and what went wrong. After we were done we went to this huge building that was the main centre for research on ho space and space travel effects the human body. In there we were shown a short arm centrifuge, which is an experimental way of simulating gravity in Zero G, so that the astronauts can exercise properly in gravity. We were also shown and MRI scan that they use to study the effects of Zero G on the human mind, apparently being in space makes you less intelligent because of something to do with the fluids in your brain. After leaving research centre we walked down to the astronaut training centre, yes where they train real astronaut. In there we first went to see a 1:1 scale model of the American, Russian, and European. This are the models that they use to train the astronauts and show then what it be like inside the ISS. And we went in side the american and Russian bits (not the European because it was set up for an experiment). We spent a long time in there taking photos and exploring, not that it was very big inside. We then headed over to the big pool that had a 1:1 model of the European part of the space station. we were not allowed inside that part of the building but we did get to take some photos. After that it was time to leave. So we went out to eat at a Germany buring house which had good food, and we then headed home. For the record we were only able to have this tour around the space centre because Peter is one of the head people there and it is not normally open to the public, so a big THANK YOU to Peter.