Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jack says Earth inspires never-ending sense of awe-

During his first days in the microcrafity of space, David Saint-Jack was transported back to his childhood, the Canadian astronaut told reporters Monday.

It was not the feeling of being in the sky in wonder he was talking about but the feeling of hanging backwards at a playground as blood rushes to your head.

"I'm a little congested here, as most people are, because gravity is not there to pull blood down into your legs," Saint-Jack explains Monday over a video link between the International Space Station and the Canadian Space Agency headquarters.

"Your body has to adjust to that, so you have a child of a big red puffy face." Do you remember how a child hangs from the monkey bars in the park, as your head puffs up? That's the way you feel Constantly initially, and then it normalizes. "

The astronaut, who arrived at the International Space Station on December 3, had a lot of choices. The first sunrise of Orbit after he and young astronauts an MCCELAIN of NASA and Oleg Kononenko of the Russian space agency, Roskosmos, blasted away is "quite an emotional moment," he said.

"I looked out the window and this little blue crescent began to get brighter and brighter and I realized," That's actually the curve of the earth, " He said. "So that first sunrise on Orbit, I'll never forget, it's very moving – just so beautiful."

In his first news conference from the space station, he said that he was trying to learn as much as possible from the occupants who were there since June and were scheduled to return to Earth on December 20th. They were Serena Aunon-Chancellor of NASA, Alexander Convert from the European Space Agency and Sergey Prokopiev of Roskosmos.

He said he began to "dabble" in the ground photography, including photos of his hometown. Saint-Jack was born in Quebec City and raised in the Montréal suburb of St-Lambert.

"It's just a never-ending sense of awe-looking look at our blue planet – this thin blue line in the atmosphere, what color, that lightning is blue – it's just unbelievable," he said, adding that he was passed by The beauty of sunrise and sunsets and the sense of earth's size.

"It is very touching, and it is very humbling, and it makes you want to go back to the ground and help make it better."

Saint-Jack has nothing in the intensive training astronauts undergo can prepare them for the sense of weightlessness.

"So I do the typical rookie mistakes, try not crashing anywhere, and my colleagues are showing how to fly," he said. "The other thing we notice about our bodies, of course, is that you lose a sense of orientation, and initially it's easy to get lost, but we'll get used to it."

Saint-Jack was naughty during his exchange with reporters, spinning his Mike in the air and at one point let him fall and continue to talk as it floated in place. When the session ended, he said goodbye and disappeared from the picture.

At the station, the 48-year-old doctor will carry a number of science experiments, with some focus on the physical effects of the microgravity astronaut experience in orbit and other than providing long-distance medical care.

The last Canadian astronaut to visit the space station was Chris Hadfield, which was on a five-month mission completed in May 2013.