Science in the city

For Dave Williams, the excitement of being in space never fades.

The Canadian astronaut, surgeon and scientist flew on two NASA space shuttle missions, in 1998 and 2007. On the second, he made three walks in space totaling nearly 18 hours, setting a Canadian record.

He also lived in and directed in an underwater NASA lab on the ocean floor off the coast of Florida.

He has seen our planet from above and below and the more he sees, the more fascinating the world becomes.

“I look at myself as a scientific explorer,” he says. “For me, the definition of exploration is relentlessly seeking knowledge with passion.”

Observing Earth from space was for him the realization of a dream he’d had since boyhood, and now he considers it his happy duty to share not only what it looked like, but how it felt to be there.