Earth looked like 'absolute paradise,' astronaut tells Maine South students

Michael Massimino, a former NASA astronaut, described the view of Earth from space as "paradise" to students at Maine South High School in Park Ridge Friday.

Massimino, who also is an author and has made many TV appearances, twice went into space, including on the fourth Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission on the Space Shuttle Columbia, where he completed two spacewalks totaling nearly 15 hours.

He also was on the final Hubble servicing mission on the Space Shuttle Atlantis. During that mission, he became the first person to use Twitter in space.

When a student asked him what his best memory of space was, Massimino replied that during his final spacewalk, he was able to take 10 minutes to view the Earth, and that he was in awe.

"It's like looking into an absolute paradise," Massimino said. "The spacewalk view is much different than looking out the window (of the shuttle)."