Space. The final frontier. Not any more. The final frontier has now been breached, with the general public encouraged to tweet their questions to the astronauts living on the International Space Station, 250 miles up from earth, during Live From Space on Channel 4 last week.

And, as the majesty of the fragile home planet was beamed into our living rooms, with the indigo and azures of the oceans swirling beneath, the viewers did not disappoint with a series of profound queries. Most of them can be summed up as: ‘Er how do you poo in space? Lol! #space’ We found out the answer on Sunday, by the way, when Rick Mastracchio dutifully showed us “the can” which sucked solid matter away and a hose that sucked their pee away to be turned into drinking water. I thought for one horrible minute that he was going to demonstrate the zero-gravity toilet technology, but luckily Channel 4 stopped short of taking people power that far.

Luckily we had pocket rocket Dermot O’Leary presenting this series, which culminated in a 90-minute live lap of our planet on Sunday.

Though very much with his feet on the ground in Houston’s Mission Control (where he lapped up space food and interviewed anyone and everyone going), Dermot was thoroughly adorable throughout the whole transmission and had clearly done his homework, reeling off the numbers and nuggets of space facts, clearly delighted to be involved and exuding charisma.

Which is just as well because astronauts are not chosen for their charisma. Resilience, intelligence, physical strength, yes. Sense of humour and tons of telly-friendly larks? No. Pleasant and inspiring as they are (don’t get me wrong, I’d be the last to be picked to go up to space, so hats off to them) some of the interviews were painful. Americans Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata (plus a cosmonaut, who was not allowed much air time) were shown in the first few episodes in fascinating footage even though they were engaged in everyday activities such as brushing their teeth, pounding the treadmill (to stop their muscles wasting away), Skyping their families and carrying out experiments such as torturing ants in zero-G. It’s “a bit like camping,” says Koichi. Um... really? Later there was a 13-hour space walk to repair part of the space station, which lacked George Clooney's witty repartee, but did provide a chance for the ultimate selfie.

When Dermot took to the mic, it was a golden opportunity to find out what made these spacemen tick. Unfortunately, an inevitable time delay only added to the cringe-worthy chitchat that materialised. Mike Massimino from Mission Control to Koichi: “I had lunch with your son and wife today... [Dermot looks slightly worried as if he’s not sure where Mike’s going with this one] they said hi and you should really try not to screw this up. Koichi: [15 second delay] “Yeah... haha! I will try not to! Haha!” Yup, cutting-edge conversation it wasn’t.

The real mind-blowing magic came with every sweeping vista of planet Earth. It was a joy to see the fleeting angelic swirl of the aurora borealis and the Andes from above – not peaks, but a gorgeous fractal geometry of triangles. We saw an emerald Sicily, kicked by Italy’s boot and the whole trail of geography under the delicate veil of atmosphere as the ISS continued on its mission, which showed the astronauts 16 sunsets and sunrises every 24 hours.

If the beauty looked familiar, the campaign to Go to space with Channel 4 was created by Oscar and BAFTA award-winning British company, Framestore, which created the visual effects for Alfonso Cuaron’s sci-fi space thriller Gravity.

Totally, totally mesmerising.