"Star Trek" Astronaut Reassures Fans After Communications Failure

The son of Colonel Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut who recently made headlines after tweeting from space with a number of Star Trek cast members, has reached out to Hadfield's fans on Facebook this morning following news that NASA has lost communication with the International Space Station. "To those who might be worried - Dad is fine," Evan Hadfield wrote via his father's Facebook page. "Just a minor glitch while upgrading comms." That there was any glitch at all came as a surprise to the elder Hadfield, who wrote on the same site earlier today:

"Good Morning, Earth! Today we transition the Space Station's main computers to a new software load. Nothing could possibly go wrong. "As I transition the Space Station computers, I notice our Houston CAPCOM's name is ... Hal ! The irony, as life imitates art."

HAL 9000, or "Hal" for short, was of course the malicious AI in Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.