Astronaut Runs "Marathon" in Space

宇航员在太空玩“马拉松”

Astronaut Sunita Williams started her version of the Boston Marathon on Monday, running on a treadmill 210 miles above Earth. Already travelling at 17,500 mph, Williams started the race on time at 10 a.m. EDT with race No. 14,000 taped to the front of the treadmill. Two laptop computers were on either side of the treadmill so she could watch a live feed of the race from Boston and keep track of where the international space station was flying. Restrained to the treadmill in a harness so she wouldn't float away and wearing Boston Red Sox socks, Williams ran at a brisk pace at the start of the 26.2-mile race. Williams' sister, Dina Pandya, and NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg were running in the race on the ground. "Just want to let you know the team here is cheering for her and by our calculations she already has completed her 26 miles," Mission Control told her crew mate, Michael Lopez-Alegria, a few minutes into the race. The 41-year-old Williams qualified for the Boston race by finishing the Houston Marathon in January in 3 hours, 29 minutes, 57 seconds. More than a half hour later, after the space station had circled Earth once since the start of the race, Williams radioed down to Mission Control: "It's coming up on 9.5 miles now and it looks like we've gone around the world. Nice statistic." Williams joked that she was hoping the station's treadmill would hold up since it has had its share of breakdowns. "Marathons are hard on the body," she said. "It's hard on the machine. I hope both of us survive." (Source: Associated Press)
宇航员苏尼特•威廉斯于周一展开了波士顿马拉松，她在太空中利用跑步机完成了210英里。威廉斯于美国东部时间上午10点在一台编号为14000号的跑步机上准时开始比赛，当时她已经是以每小时1.75万英里的速度在太空运行。跑步机的两侧各有一台笔记本电脑，这样她就可以在看到从波士顿比赛现场传来的信息反馈的同时跟随国际空间站飞行的路径。在比赛刚开始的26.2英里，穿着波士顿红袜的威廉斯步伐非常轻快，为了避免飘出去，她被固定在了跑步机上。威廉斯的妹妹迪娜•潘德亚和美国国家航天局的宇航员凯仁•耐博在地面上跟她同时比赛。任务控制中心在比赛开始几分钟后告诉她的同伴迈克尔•洛佩斯•阿里格利亚：“经计算她已经完成了26英里，我们只是想让你知道这里的人正在为她欢呼”。41岁的威廉斯以3小时29分57秒的成绩完成了一月份在休斯顿举行的马拉松赛而获得了波士顿赛的参赛资格。比赛开始半个多小时以后，空间站已经绕地球一周，威廉斯呼叫任务控制中心：“现在已经9.5英里了，看起来我们好像已经环绕了整个世界。太棒了。”威廉斯开玩笑说：“因为空间站的那台跑步机当时出了点机械故障，真希望它能坚持下来。马拉松对人来说是个极大的考验，对机器同样如此，希望我们都能完成任务。”