"Houston, you have a problem: checkmate!"

Chess in Outer Space


How do you play chess in a low-gravity environment, where the pieces could simply float away? Parents who've taken their kids on long car trips face a similar challenge, but apparently the obvious solution, a magnet chess set, wasn't possible for NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff, so he used Velcro. Apparently finding no suitable opponents among his crew mates, he played correspondence chess with colleagues in the control center on the ground.

More from Dylan Loeb McClain in the New York Times.