When was Michael’s last space mission? How long does basic training last?

Interviewer:  Good morning. Today, I’m going to be asking some questions to our guest, Michael Todd, an astronaut.
Michael: Good morning.
Interviewer: How long have you been an astronaut and how many missions have you flown?
Michael: I’ve been an astronaut since 2002 and I’ve flown on 3 missions.
       The last one was in January and lasted for 9 days.                 Q11
Interviewer: What do you need to do to become an astronaut?
Michael: Well, you know I asked that very same question when I was a
       kid and I actually went to an astronaut and asked that question
       and I got an answer that I think was a very good one, which is
       basically stay in school. You study hard. You study mathematics     Q12
       or science so much that you really become a real expert in
       that field and then you are valuable as someone who has a real
      talent that can be used in a space program.
Interviewer: How much training do you have to go through?
Michael: Every two years or so there’s class of astronaut candidates
       that come down to the Johnson Space Center. You go through
       about one year of basic training courses. It’s actually a pretty          Q13
       exciting year, because it is an opportunity to learn all that you
       can imagine about the space shuttle. You study every single
       switch. You study what it does and what it means to flip that
       switch, when are the right times to push it and when are the
       wrong times to push it. After that, we get an assignment to fly
       in space, and we spend another year just studying about that
       particular space flight.
Interviewer: There’s been a lot of talk about sending people to Mars. What are the challenges of a manned mission to Mars?
Michael: The first challenge is constructing a spacecraft to get there.
       The trip to Mars could take as long as a year. When you are in
       space that long, your muscles get kind of weak because you          Q14
       haven’t been using them to walk around. You also need to find
       ways to pack enough food, water and air. Those kind of challenges
are the sort of things that we are going to be studying
       at the International Space Station in the near future to develop        Q15
       the things that we need to have in order to safely send people
       to Mars and to bring them back.
Interviewer:  How does it feel to wear a spacesuit?
Michael: I did my first space walk on my third flight. We were outside
        for 6 hours, a little over 6 hours. The spacesuit is very big and
       very awkward and in fact because you are outside where there
       is no air and your spacesuit is providing you air, your spacesuit
       is pressurised. So it makes you sort of feel like a balloon. Your       Q16
       arms end up way out to your side if you don’t do anything
       about it. So you have to use some force to pull your arms in.
       When you try to work with the gloves that we have, in order to       Q17
       keep your hands warm and safe from outside, the gloves have
       to be thick—which means that there is no way that you could,
       say, button your shirt, put on a belt, or come close to putting
       on a wrist watch without dropping them. So they are big and
       awkward to work in and we have to use special tools to make
       it possible to get the job done. You can imagine that it can be
       difficult to do and we train for a long time to get good at working
       inside that suit. The suit is an incredible piece of equipment.
       It keeps us safe at temperatures from minus 200 degrees
       to plus 200 degrees. It keeps you safe from a place where there
       is no air and where there is the possibility of small particles     Q18
       hitting you at very high speed like little bullets. Yet, it gives
       you a good view outside and can provide life support for over
       6 hours.
Interviewer:  What’s the most fun part of being in space?
Michael: That’s an easy one. The best part for me was looking back at
     the Earth. The colours of the Earth don’t quite come across in
     a photograph. The depth of the colours are like gem stones.
     There are ruby reds, and emerald greens, and sapphire blues.
     The atmosphere is just a thin blue line. It cuts across the very
     top of the planet, and in that line you can see all different
     shades of blue, layers that go from midnight blue to turquoise
     blue to almost white, it’s such a light blue. The clouds are so           Q19
     white that it is hard to look at them. They’re so bright that you
     have to wear sunglasses to look at them or your eyes will just
     close all on their own. Sunrises and sunsets are particularly
     spectacular, because if you remember we are going around the
     earth every 90 minutes, which means we see a sunrise and 45          Q20
     minutes later we see a sunset and 45 minutes later we see another sunrise.
Interviewer:  Now, our next question comes from one of our listeners ...