Chris Hadfield Launched Into Space One Year Ago Today

And we have liftoff … for a social media sensation! Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield rocketed into orbit a year ago today (Dec. 19, 2012) accompanied by NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut  Roman Romanenko.

Hadfield was a part of the Expedition 34 crew, then took command of the station during Expedition 35 in early 2013. While running an extremely productive science mission, he did tons of public outreach, ranging from singing to humorous space-y how-to videos to chatting with numerous celebrities before landing in May.

The Canadian Space Agency invited folks on Twitter to share their reflections under the hashtag #hadfield1yr, which is already producing a lot of thoughtful responses (a few of which you can see below the jump). What was your favorite part of the mission? Feel free to share in the comments.

While Hadfield is retired as an astronaut, he remains very busy. He’s in the middle of a multi-country book tour and will begin teaching at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada in fall 2014.