Astronaut and planetary scientist Dr Stanley Love has landed in Leicester and is inspiring young minds with tales of robots, space and volcanos filled with salt.
In 2008, Dr Love was part of a two-week mission to install the Columbus Laboratory aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and clocked up more than 300 hours in space - which included two space walks.
The 49-year-old orbited the Earth more than 200 times during his foray into the closer reaches of the cosmos.
And now, Dr Love has been talking to students at the University of Leicester, as well as to primary school children at the National Space Centre, to recount the memories and experiences of his unique journey.
He met space science postgraduates on Wednesday, and among other things, discussed the pros and cons of robot explorers versus manned missions.
Speaking to the Mercury after the lecture, Dr Love said: "There's been this long-running question of whether space is best explored withe robots or with humans and I think getting the right balance between the two gives you the best options.
"You don't get complaints about wanting to come home, or complaints about radiation sickness with robots, but then you get much more versatility with manned missions."
Dr Love has worked for Nasa since 1998 and also piloted submarines for the space agency during an experimental test programme called NEEMO (Nasa Extreme Environment Mission Operations) which was carried out off the coast of Florida.
Dr John Bridges, of the University of Leicester's Space Research Centre, said it was inspirational for the students to meet Dr Love and ask questions about the "exciting" aspects of space science.
He said: "We've got a new MSc here in space science so the students had lots of questions.
"Having Stan here captures the exciting part of space science, it's great to have someone with such a unique experience giving a firsthand account of what it's like to be in space."
The American spaceman, originally from California, said the training he endured before becoming a fully fledged astronaut was tough - and also explained some the tests he faced when he met youngsters at the National Space Centre, today.
"They have to make sure you're okay with confined spaces," he said. "Because they put in these tight space suits and the capsules you're in are not too spacious.
"They curl you up in a tight canvas ball so you can't move and put a heart rate monitor on you and just leave you there - and they don't tell you how long for.
"It's just as physiological as it is physical - I was there for about 10 minutes - I made it."
He did admit, however, to having a slight phobia of heights.
"I struggle getting up a ladder to clean my gutters," he admitted. "But once I'm up in space I'm okay.
"Actually, I did have two fears during the mission.
"One was exploding in a ball of flames during takeoff - there's a lot of power stored in those tanks - and the other was opening the hatch to go outside.
"You open it and all you can see is the Earth beneath you and you've got to hold onto a small ladder and pull yourself round underneath the space station and just hold on tight."
But once in space, Dr Love, whose primary field of expertise is planetary science, said looking back at the Earth was breathtakingly beautiful.
"Some of the night passes we made were stunning," he said. "Seeing all the cities lit up and spreading out across the surface of the planet.
"One of the most amazing things I saw was an atoll, a coral reef, in the Pacific which was a perfect rectangle. It was quite a sight.
"And there was a volcano in the middle of the Sahara desert too which had a brilliant white dried up salt lake in its crater.
"In Siberia, there are four huge vertical line stretching across the tundra - it looked like a giant Wolverine - you know the X-Men character - had got his claws out and slashed the Earth.
"I thought, 'what the heck are they'?
"It turns out the Russians had planted rows of trees to act as wind breaks. Amazing."
But Dr Love was also quick dispel one myth about what you can see from space.
"No, you can't see the Great Wall of China," he said. "In fact you can't see any of China at all. The parts we passed over anyway. There's too much pollution. It covers everything."
Although the astronaut was full of praise for our planet, he seemed less impressed by our closest celestial neighbour - the Moon.
"The Earth is a vibrant, constantly changing place," he said. "And the Moon just looks small and dusty - not very impressive. It's not lit up like it is when you view it from earth - it's just a ball of grey dirt."
Dr Love returned to Earth on the Nasa shuttle Atlantis on February 20, 2008.
The USA ended its manned space shuttle programme in 2011, but plans to have three operational craft going back and forth to the ISS by 2018.
"It'll be nice to have US astronauts flying in US shuttles again," said Dr Love. "It irritates me slightly that we're flying in Russian space craft."
Further down the line there are plans to send astronauts to Mars, but Dr Love said if that was ever going happen political and diplomatic relations between the world's superpowers, such as USA, Russia and China, would have to take an more positive U-turn.
He said: "It going to take a lot of collaboration between everyone on Earth. Mars will have to be a joint venture.
"We'll have to put political differences aside, because if nothing else it's going to cost so much money no one nation is going to be able to afford it alone."
