Photo by: AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky

U.S. astronaut Michael Hopkins, a member of the next mission to the International Space Station, waves after a news conference in Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on Sept. 24, 2013. The start of the new Soyuz mission was scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 26.

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Mike Hopkins' days as a human "guinea pig" aboard the International Space Station are over for now, but he hopes to wind up in space again someday.

After six months in space the NASA flight engineer is back home in Houston, reunited with his wife, Julie, and their two sons and working at the Johnson Space Center.

He's spent the last two months re-adapting to "life in a 1G environment" and undergoing tests by scientists who studied the astronauts while they were still in space. Scientists want to collect as much data as possible when the astronauts land to measure the effects of space travel, he said.

"We're guinea pigs while we're in orbit. We want to understand what happens to a human body in a microgravity environment," Hopkins said.

Hopkins, 45, also went through a debriefing about the space station with systems experts to discuss any problems and "ways we can make things easier for the next astronauts coming up."

In advance of this weekend's commencement activities, Hopkins talked with The News-Gazette about the future of space travel, the challenge of sleeping in orbit, phone reception on the space station and his favorite space food (and movie). He also reminisced about his harrowing first practice as an Illini football walk-on.

How long did it take you to adjust once you landed back home? Did anything surprise you?

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Q&A with astronaut Mike Hopkins