Brad Pitt on Monday traded laughs in a call to the International Space Station with a NASA astronaut, who somersaulted during the zero-gravity interview ahead of this week’s release of the actor’s new film, the space thriller Ad Astra.
Pitt peppered astronaut Nick Hague with dozens of questions about what life was like in space from NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas.
“Most important question: Who controls the jam box?” Pitt asked, referring to the space station’s music.
Photo: AFP / NASA TV
“We have a rotating playlist, we take turns. And it’s nice because we have the international flair as well,” Hague said. “Getting to hear some traditional music from Russia over dinner is a nice change, exposure.”
In Ad Astra, Pitt plays astronaut Roy McBride, who travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father, confronting a mystery along the way that threatens humanity’s existence back on Earth.
NASA was given an early copy of the movie’s script to provide visual and technical expertise, NASA film and TV liaison Bert Ulrich said.
Detailed images of Mars from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory informed the film’s recreation of Martian landscapes, he said.
“The script did not have a NASA storyline, but there were ways that we could still help them,” Ulrich said in an interview, adding that the film shows some parallels to NASA’s Moon-to-Mars Artemis program, such as the way characters use the moon to travel further to Mars.
After asking questions such as how realistic his zero-gravity movements were in a studio environment — as Hague performed one for him — Pitt said he had one last question “and I need to call on your expertise.”
“Who was more believable, [George] Clooney or Pitt?” the actor asked, referring to another actor who played an astronaut in the 2013 film Gravity and has starred with Pitt in a number of other films.
“You were, absolutely,” Hague replied.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and