Soccer match leads to close shave in space BY STEPHEN CLARK

SPACEFLIGHT NOW

Posted: June 27, 2014



Two NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station paid up after the U.S. men's soccer team's loss to Germany at the World Cup, allowing their German crewmate to shave their heads after a friendly wager on the final frontier.



The six-person crew on the space station -- three Russians, two Americans and one European -- has watched World Cup matches in Brazil through a television hookup from mission control.



European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, a volcanologist from Kunzelsau, Germany, grabbed an electric razor -- fitted with a vacuum to keep bits of hair from floating away -- after Germany's 2-1 win over the United States on Thursday, shaving the heads of crewmates Reid Wiseman and Steve Swanson.



"Good to know I can work as a barber after [my] flight," Gerst wrote in a post on his Twitter account.



Wiseman tweeted Friday morning: "It was nice to wake up this morning and not worry about my hair. There isn't any."



Gerst, Wiseman and Swanson recorded a video showing how World Cup fever has spread to the space station 260 miles above Earth.



Photos of the shave tweeted by the astronauts follow the video.



Credit: NASA NASA/Reid Wiseman Credit: NASA/ESA/Alexander Gerst