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Outer Islands

Cmdr. Hadfield wants to walk around Kalau

Nuku'alofa, Tonga

'Eua Island, seen from the International Space Station. Photo courtesy Chris Hadfield/NASA.

A beautiful picture of Tonga's 'Eua Island seen from space on a clear day was posted by astronaut Chris Hadfield in his twitter account recently.

Hadfield, the commander of the International Space Station asked "Do you see the face in Eua Island, Tonga? I want to walk around the tiny dot island!" 12 April.

The tiny dot islet is the uninhabited Kalau.

Matangi Tonga Online reader Justin Lewis, who shared the Hadfield tweet, said that since Hadfield launched to the Station on December 19, he had been posting one-of-a-kind photos of places across the world.  "He has gained considerable public interest online and tweeted with his followers, William Shatner and other celebrities." Hadfield's son Evan oversees his social media. The half-year mission to the International Space Station has made Hadfield the most famous astronaut since Neil Armstrong.

Hadfield has returned to earth after 144 days onboard and landed safely southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan at 02:31 GMT on Tuesday May 14 along with American Tom Marshburn and Russian Roman Romanenko aboard a Russian Soyuz-TMA capsule that had left the space station earlier Tuesday morning, mission control said.

Hadfield, an engineer and former test pilot from Milton, Ontario, was Canada's first professional astronaut to live aboard the space station and became the first Canadian in charge of a spacecraft. He relinquished command of the space station on Sunday.

On Monday, Commander Hadfield published the first music video shot in space, a zero-gravity version of David Bowie's hit, Space Oddity . He has tweeted from the space station at least 1,500 times, capturing remarkable images of many corners of the world.