PopSci | From a risky spacewalk to the top of Mount Everest

Retired astronaut Scott Parazynski talks about his life of adventure with Katie Linendoll.

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In the new Science Channel show, “Secret Space Escapes,” astronautScott Parazynski, M.D., recounts one of the most challenging days of his life: a live, fully energized solar panel needed to be repaired in space, and he risked his life on a 90-foot arm to fix it.

The fully energized panel could have given Parazynski life-threatening electrical shocks out-of-reach of any hospital on Earth. For some, that level of risk would have been a segue to retirement. Not for Parazynski. “Best day on the job ever,” he told me recently, during a phone interview. I could hear him smiling.

Read the whole interview on Popular Science.  

Mission Specialists Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock successfully repaired the torn P6 4B solar array during STS-120's fourth spacewalk. The 7-hour, 19-minute excursion wrapped up at 1:22 p.m. EDT on 3rd November 2007. Shortly after the spacewalk began, Parazynski rode the station's robotic arm up to the damaged area of the array.