Wimbledon 2018: Astronaut and tennis fan Drew Feustel watches matches from space and talks to the hosts

Astronaut and tennis fan, Drew Feustel spoke to Mats Wilander while flying over the eastern United States heading out over the Atlantic ocean, where he has been in space for about three months and approximately 90 more days to go. He and his team are on a mission that involves everyday operations related to science and maintenance to keep up the space station. During this busy space trip, he occasionally finds time to watch his favourite sport, tennis live from space.

He posted a video of him watching a Roger Federer match late at night.

...watched late night @Wimbledon tennis on @Space_Station with some friends! pic.twitter.com/fBHelRfElC

— A.J. (Drew) Feustel (@Astro_Feustel) July 5, 2018

While talking to Wilander, Feustel showed a coin floating in front of him, which is a medallion to be used as a coin toss next year for the Wimbledon finals and said that they would bring it back to earth after their journey and return it to All England Lawn Tennis Club.

For him, "Wimbledon is about iconic tennis, it really serves as one of the foundations for tennis around the world."

He also continued that it's a great inspiration to watch tennis not only for him but also for his wife and her family as they are huge fans of tennis and are very active in the sport. And that's what got him to enjoy watching Wimbledon. To him watching Wimbledon is just an annual ritual.

He also said that they are planning to have a tennis game in space with some very small tennis rackets which is being coordinated by USTA and hoping that they can pull off the game at some point. But, without the assistance of gravity, it is going to be tough.

He likes to see the Canadian player Milos Raonic play and hopes he does well this week. He said that, so far he has watched five games in space as they have the ability to uplink some live TV channels. They also watched replay of a few games, and he is hoping that he can watch the action live this week and see how it unfolds.

They are also watching the World Cup whenever they are free and following live updates. They are a crew of different nationalities so they are following football as well as other games.

He said that the Wimbledon t-shirt he was wearing has been presented by the All England Tennis Club to create an interest in sports and science as the game of tennis itself involves a lot of physics in it, which is interrelated to the spaceship's principles of physics, but only differs in the application.