-Matt

ISS Commander and Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield has only been on earth a short while and we’re already missing his regular awesome communications from orbit. Seems that I am not the only person feeling sentimental about the end of Chris’ time on the station as I’ve discovered this video  which provides a 90 second highlight reel to commemorate his incredible journey. Definitely worth a watch and features Chris’ song written and performed with the Barenaked Ladies.

Keep Chasing!

-Matthew

Today marks the day of Chris Hadfield’s return to Earth after service as Commander of the International Space Station since March of 2013. Hadfield departed for the ISS in December 19th of 2012. Live footage, as of the time of this post, is available right now!! The link is below.

Being a station astronaut is remarkable in and of itself. But in addition to living in space for half a year, Hadfield has helped make space cool(er). Hadfield’s outreach to engage the public with all things space has been extraordinary. His updates from space, thoughtful tweets about the borderless world he floats above, and the fragility of the Earth  have helped to make Chris Hadfield perhaps as well known as Neil Armstrong. And whether rocking out with the Barenaked Ladies or speaking live with William Shatner, Chris has made space main stream.  To top it all off, he left us with  his “Space Oddity” Video recorded on the ISS as a final send off. The video even received a retweet from David Bowie himself.

Chris was our first Chasing Atlantis interview. Personally, being able to sit down with him was the initial validation I needed to show that our film was on the right track. We came out of that interview in a daze. “We just interviewed Chris Hadfield…” I recall repeating to Paul “…and he invited us to watch his band.” which we did at a local Space Coast pub shortly thereafter. Chris described his experiences in space and the perspective that the experience creates to put humanity and our planet in context; a fragile blue marble in the heavens. I don’t think we could ask for a better ambassador of humanity in space.

Below is a highlight of several of our  interviews with an opening narration by and segments of our interview with Chris Hadfield. Below is a link to the live feed of Chris’ landing which, at the time of this post, has just begun!

LIVE FEED TO HADFIELD LANDING VIA THE CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION and NASA TV

-Keep Chasing!

-Matthew

Just updated our cast page to reflect some of our more recent interviews. If you haven’t seen the cast page yet or want to check out the updates, just hit the “Cast” tab above or click here. 

If you are at FanExpo Vancouver today, be sure to come and find us at table 54 in Artist’s Alley. We are sharing a booth with our friend Peter Chiykowski from the Web comic Rock Paper Cynic. Pete designed out Chasing Atlantis Buttons and you can find his awesome comic on “constructive cynicism” at rockpapercynic.com

Chasing Booth at FanExpo Vancouver

We shot 10 YouTube Challenge videos yesterday right at our booth. If you’re unfamiliar with the challenge, we are getting people on camera sharing their “Atlantis” with us; third dream calling or passion, that we are filming and sharing with others to encourage them to do the same and publicly share something awesome that they are into as well. I’d you’re around the convention, come visit us and not only could you end up in the film, but you could win an awesome Lego space shuttle set! Hope to see you!

Matt

Tomorrow marks the start of Fan Expo Vancouver running both Saturday and Sunday. If you are headed to the convention, be sure to come and find us. You can:

1) geek out about space

2) pick up a sharp looking Chasing Atlantis Tee

3) win a sweet limited edition Lego space shuttle set

4) end up in our film!

So we hope to see you there. Just look out for one of us in a booth wearing a Chasing Atlantis Tee!

Shuttle Trainer at the Seattle Museum of Flight

To celebrate the event, the Chasing Atlantis team participated in two “Yuri’s Night” parties in Toronto and Seattle. Paul hit up Hotel Ocho on Toronto’s Queen street joined by fellow space geeks and enthusiasts while I attended a parallel party in Seattle at the Museum of Flight. Yuri’s Night is actually a not-for-profit movement that not only commemorates our civilization leaving its Blue Marble, but also promotes space education and awareness. We were honored to be part of this very cool event that spanned 350 individual parties across over 50 countries and….TWO worlds as the Mars rover Curiosity joined in the party from about 360 Million KM away (at the time of this post...Mars and Earth are in different orbits)

Paul and Wife Stephanie at Yuri’s Night Hotel Ocho in Toronto

Paul’s Chasing Atlantis Table Setup at Yuri’s Night Toronto

The Museum of Flight in Seattle has recently acquired the mockup shuttle that was used to train shuttle astronauts. It is a full size replica and recreates the payload bay as well as cockpit. The cockpit wasn’t open for the evening (as there were drinks etc), but we are hoping to get a crack at playing around in there on film in the near future. The staff was eager to have us return with a camera and quite frankly I was giddy at the proposal. It’s basically the world’s biggest toy spaceship (but a serious toy). If you have never been to the location before, I highly recommend you check it out. The enormous room housing the shuttle trainer is adjacent to a retired Concorde jet, and a former Air Force One plane and this represents less than a quarter of the entire complex.

Matt in Shuttle Trainer Payload Bay at Seattle Museum of Flight

Huge thanks to Ryan Kobrick at Yuri’s Night for helping us get in touch with Hotel Ocho and the Museum of Flight. Our gratitude to both locations for letting us crash your party and promote the film and finally our sincerest appreciation to those of you at both events who approached us during the evening to geek out and talk about Chasing Atlantis.

-Matt

PS, if you have yet to see our Yuri’s Night Celebration Video promoting Chasing Atlantis, you can check it out here. 

In celebration of Yuri’s Night, Chasing Atlantis released a new trailer that yesterday was exclusive to those who participated in one of the over 300 parties around the world to celebrate humanity’s entry into the final frontier.

Today we are releasing the trailer online! Be sure to check it out!

Tomorrow the Chasing Atlantis team is getting their groove on for Yuri’s Night: The World Space Party!!

What’s Yuri’s Night? Yuri’s Night is 3 things all wrapped up into one bundle of space awesomeness

1) Yuri’s Night is a date: The date is April 12th which commemorates the first human in space. Yuri Gagarin completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12th 1961. We have had humans in space since that time sporadically and consistently since the construction of the International Space Station. But Yuri was the first! One brave human being, and certainly the first of many steps that led to the moon, shuttle, the space station, and hopefully the outer planets and deep space (sign me up BTW)

2) Yuri’s Night is a party! A World Space Party! As of the time I wrote this blog post, there are 320 parties scheduled across the globe in over 48 countries. Each party will host a celebration in their own way to commemorate the entry of our civilization into SPAAAACE from events like hanging out with Buzz Aldrin under the wing of Shuttle Endeavour to chilling out at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

3) Yuri’s Night is an organization: Yuri’s Night is a not-for-profit organization that promotes space by providing an umbrella structure that catalyzes the Yuri’s Nights parties around the world, running competitions, and cross promoting with other partners with similar goals of advocating for space. You can check out their main page at http://yurisnight.net/ It also has some great information that provides more history on the Gagarin’s flight itself as well as the formation of the organization in 2001 (actually catalyzed through the United Nations. Very cool)

Now on this last point is where we come in. This year we are teaming up with Yuri’s Night and attending two of the parties. I will be at the  Seattle party at the Museum of Flight and Paul will be in Toronto at Hotel Ocho (I hear there is space beer at this party) At these parties, we will be screening some of the new material we shot this past February during our Epic North America Tour (see here for Canada, here for Florida, and here for West Coast), and we will be selling our famously popular Chasing Atlantis T-shirts as a fundraiser for the last leg of the film (I also hear there may be giveaways on some of our swag!). And since the material is going online for Yuri’s Night, you may see some of it even if you are not at one of these two spots! Also, in light of Yuri’s Night, we are doing another round of our Chasing Atlantis YouTube Challenge! (You could be in our film!)

So what should you do?

First, if you are near one of the two locations we are at, you should definitely come and introduce yourself. We’d love to geek out with you. Secondly, if  you are not near one of these locations, but want to be part of the world space party, you should check out the Yuri’s Night website and see if there is a party near you! They are happening tomorrow! Finally, if you can’t get to a party in person, you can be a part of the event online by visiting Yuri’s Night Live http://live.yurisnight.net/ where you can find content being posted live for the event. (Actually if you check that site out now, there is already some awesome stuff on there from events past…including a laser pistol wielding Bill Nye the science guy)

We hope to see you tomorrow and congratulations to Yuri and our civilization for pushing into the final frontier!

-Matthew

We are proud to follow up on the story of our own Chris Hadfield taking the wheel (so to speak) of the International Space Station. We were fortunate enough to have Chris as our FIRST Chasing Atlantis interview back in July of 2011 when he was on the road to the Soyuz launch this past November and subsequent 6 month tour aboard the station, taking command yesterday. Chris becomes not only the first Canadian Commander of the ISS, but the first Canadian commander of any space vehicle.

Though orbiting hundreds of kilometers above the Earth’s surface, Chris has remained highly connected with our Pale Blue Dot in the Universe through social media becoming somewhat of a Internet phenomenon. Articles have been writing stating that Hadfield’s journey and subsequent efforts at engaging the world’s population looking up at the night sky have made him the most recognizable name in space since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Chris’ words always connected with me, even when I was very young, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to interview him for the film. When interviewed or reflecting on this time in space, Chris spoke mainly of Earth, what it looked like from above, its fragility and its unity without borders or colored maps. This was the perspective I wanted to experience as well as share if I ever had the opportunity to become an astronaut; the Earth as small and fragile and shared by many who MUST co-exist. While I may not be able to do this from space directly, I am excited to find other means of doing the same such as sitting down with Chris directly, as well as the multitude of others we have talked to while shooting Chasing Atlantis who proudly carry a message of peace; that we’re all really made of star dust and share this one tiny speck in the cosmos.

You can check out these articles from  space.com and Universe Today about Chris Hadfield’s command transfer below and I’ve also included a snippet of the interview that we did with him prior to his launch to the ISS.

http://www.universetoday.com/100718/o-canada-hadfield-becomes-first-canadian-commander-of-iss/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews

http://www.space.com/20223-canadian-astronaut-space-station-commander.html?cmpid=514648

Keep Chasing!

-Matthew