He famously sang David Bowie’s Space Oddity from 250 miles above Earth – and beamed a series of stunning photographs of Scotland to the world.
But astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield was left flummoxed by the routine task of putting on his trainers before using exercise equipment while in orbit.
The 54-year-old – a Canadian with Scots ancestry – took extraordinary shots of the country from the International Space Station. He also made a video of himself performing Bowie’s award-winning track. But he said weightlessness made the mundane task of putting on a pair of shoes very tricky.
Mr Hadfield said: “If you are floating weightless and want to put your trainer on that means you are going to have one foot and both hands busy at one time.
“It is really hard to stabilise yourself just with one toe hooked on to something, so one of the hardest things to do on a space station is put on a trainer because partway through I would be floating and tumbling and banging into things with one of my trainers floating off into the distance.”
Mr Hadfield completed a five-month mission in April.
He has been in space three times and believes a colony will be built on the moon within his lifetime.
He said it was an amazing and humbling experience to be “between the world and the universe while holding on to a space ship with one hand”. “It is like looking into a bottomless well of darkness and the stars are a million tiny perfect points of light, they do not twinkle or shimmer,” he added.
Mr Hadfield landed back on Earth in a Soyuz spacecraft in Kazakhstan and described the journey as a “really violent way to come home”.
“Soyuz spacecraft come down sideways and hit the ground and tumble end over end,” he added.
Mr Hadfield said he was still recovering.