ST. JOHN’S — It’s tough to sleep and brush your teeth in space and the food is mostly liquid, but Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk said Monday that he is nonetheless having a blast. Kutryk beamed into a science centre in St. John’s, N.L., to answer a few questions from children and adults about his adventures aboard the International Space Station, where he has been living for more than a month. “The work is challenging, sometimes it’s tedious, but it is a lot of fun being in microgravity,” he said. “It’s like when you were a child and you dreamt of flying. That’s your life up here.” He did a backflip to demonstrate his weightlessness, and the crowd on Earth in eastern Newfoundland applauded. “I’m having the time of my life,” he said. Kutryk and his fellow crew members took off for the space station on Oct. 1, as part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission. They are expected to be in space for six months. The 44-year-old from Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., told the crowd of mostly schoolchildren that he prepared for space by learning to live and work with people in extreme conditions, including under water. The International Space Station is fairly comfortable, but it’s taken some time to get used to the food, he said. “You end up, in many cases, almost drinking it out of a bag,” he said. “It’s hard to sometimes draw the same satisfaction out of the food as you might on Earth.” In his spare time, he reads books on his Kindle or rides an exercise bike, just like he would at home. There’s even a treadmill the astronauts can chain themselves to, he added. Kutryk conducted two spacewalks in which he exited the space station and performed maintenance work on the structure. As he worked, the Earth was a “giant globe of blue,” spinning 400 kilometres away, he said. “Earth from space is just so stunningly beautiful,” Kutryk said. “All you can think of when you look at it is this desire, this interest in trying to take care of it better, to look after it more.” This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2026.
