Colonel Chris Hadfield is probably the most famous Canadian astronaut ever. And after playing and shooting a music video of David Bowie’s song “Space Oddity” from the International Space Station, he might be the most famous astronaut of our era. But Hadfield’s story is also about farm life in Canada and about the behind the scenes journey to travel outside our atmosphere. It’s all in his new book, “An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth.”

This week marks a year since Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast. One of the problems persisting in New York City is keeping our transit systems from flooding. Many New Yorkers can remember walking from Midtown through a darkened city last fall while the Transit Authority was still assessing the damage — much of it from water. Well, a company has a tech-y solution to this — an inflatable plug that could be blown up to keep water out of a tunnel when flooding occurs.

Our gadget love is fickle. Bits and pieces of the technology are always getting a little bit better. Chips, software, you name it. So companies keep making new phones and electronics and we keep buying them. And throwing them out at a rate of millions of tons per year in the U.S. alone. But there might be some good news. Something called Phonebloks just got buy in from a big phone maker. The idea is a modular phone — almost like it’s made out of Legos — that you can improve with new parts.

In this week’s installment of embarrassing NSA leaks: European leaders are not happy and the Obama administration is scrambling. There’s news of the NSA sucking up information on 60 million phone calls in Spain and there’s the awkward question about whether President Obama knew about the agency spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone. But what about our online devices? Oh, you mean you didn’t know October was Cyber Security Awareness Month?

On Mondays, we often like to talk big ideas on Marketplace Tech. So how about turning war-torn Rwanda into tomorrow’s tech utopia? A new initiative in the country hopes to do just that with various infrastructure projects as well as bringing computing into the country’s classrooms.

It’s time for the Twitter road show — that thing where the social network company tours the country to get investors pumped up about its initial public offering. The excitement over Twitter has the whole tech industry buzzing, and that could be great news for up-and-coming social media companies.

Amazon reports quarterly earnings today. But while the company’s reach is global, it’s not exactly known for profit. And that’s not just a joke about Jeff Bezos buying The Washington Post. For now the company seems happy to keep prices low and ventures plentiful. Is it working? 

Most actors are lucky to play one iconic role over their careers. LeVar Burton has played at least three. Besides his breakthrough role in 1977’s “Roots” and his career-defining turn as Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” for over 20 years, Burton was best known to a few generations of American children as the host of PBS’s “Reading Rainbow.” The series went off the air in 2005, but Burton keeps “Reading Rainbow” alive as an app and an educational company. Plus, a look at the new iPad, and a discussion of why Blackberry Messenger will outlive the Blackberry phone.

If you’re looking for the holiday gift of 2013, no, it still isn’t fruit cake. It’s tablets. Gartner projects tablet sales will rise 53 percent this year, while PC sales will drop 11 percent. Today, Nokia, Microsoft, and Apple are all releasing new tablets — and the stakes are high. What’s one thing people seem to be doing more and more on their tablets and other devices? Hooking up. There’s a new Pew report out on dating in the digital era and research suggests attitudes toward dating online are improving.