Astronaut Jessica Meir talks space and nature
"We are one humankind. We are one species on this planet. We need to protect it."
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Jessica, you're a scientist.
You have Ph.D. in Marine Biology from the one and only Scripps.
Your research focuses on animals in extreme environments.
You studied Emperor Penguins, which meant gently tackling them and then putting cool scientific research backpacks on them in order to monitor them as they were diving deep into the cold, cold water.
You raised a flock of bar-headed geese so that they could trust you enough to study them to understand how they were able to migrate in low-oxygen environments over the Himalayas.
You were a professor of anesthesia at Harvard University, and your postdoctoral research looked at comparative physiology. That was to try and understand what we can learn from animals in extreme environments to help inform intubations for humans, and understanding what it looks like to put them under in ways that are less taxing on the human body.
You like cycling, hiking, running, skiing, backcountry skiing, and scuba diving.
It's an understatement to say that you're really into nature…
But I'm not done yet, because I'm talking to you.
There's more, clearly.
You went to space camp as a kid. And I have to tell you that all of us are still quite jealous about that. [Laughs]
You know how to fly planes, including Navy T-6's. You also know how to fly rockets. Also, you know how to fly rockets, in Russian… no big deal. [Laughs]
You have a Master's Degree in Space Research.
You've gone on underwater missions off the coast of Key Largo at Aquarius, as a NASA aquanaut.
You've explored caves in Italy.
And in 2013, Jessica, you were chosen to be an astronaut in class 21.
As a flight engineer for Expeditions 61 and 62, you lived aboard the International Space Station for 205 days, conducing experiments with your fellow astronauts, who are, at this point, lifelong friends.
You were up there from September 2019 to April of 2020, and part of the first space walk that included only women. Women had been out there before, this was the time when only women were out there…
You know what it's like to look down on the plant from a metal can above it, and you also know what it's like to dive underneath Antarctic ice.
All right Jessica, welcome back to Earth, first and foremost.
My first question for you is this:
Are we doing enough to stop climate change? And how do you feel about it?
Well, thank you so much, Jenna. It's wonderful to be here speaking to you today.
That is a great question to start out with. And to sum up all those things that you said, and our mutual interests, and perhaps one of the main reasons why we're talking today is, as my mom always said and still says, "Nothing beats nature."
That is certainly a philosophy that I live by, and something that has actually absolutely cured me in coming back from space to this completely changed planet, given the pandemic that we found ourselves in when we came back--
When I launched, we didn't know what COVID-19 was. So we really did come back to a different place.
And in adjusting to that, and just really adjusting to being back on Earth from any space mission, let alone with that on top of it, it's been sort of difficult.
After I fulfilled those first post-flight obligations in Houston, I spent the last couple months immersing myself in nature and curing myself that way.
So I've been doing a lot of hiking and camping, water activity and lakes, and now the ocean. And so I'm starting to feel better.
But about that first question: Are we doing enough?
You know, I think that we definitely need to do more, all of us need to do more.
I actually was on another podcast relatively recently, exploring that-- which really delves into these themes. And that podcast is called Outrage + Optimism. I really like how Christiana Figueres has captured that sentiment of, "Yes, we should be outraged at where we are right now, and the state that we have found ourselves in. But we also have to be optimistic."
If we don't have any optimism, then it's really not worth doing anything, of course.
I really like how she combined it in those ways. And I think it's a good way to explain it to say, "Yes, we need to do more, but we need to also remain optimistic in that it is doable if we do try to enact these kinds of changes in our daily lives and in our higher scale governmental and corporate decisions, then we can make a difference."
Let's talk about that optimism a little bit.
Other astronauts in their space diaries have mentioned that looking back on the planet changes how you look at the world and humanity as a whole. They have said things like, "It gives you empathy and love, and makes you feel more connected to others."
I'm wondering if you can share with us the experience of when you first landed at the Space Station in September.
On day one, as you got out of the hatch-- you looked around, you met your fellow colleagues, and then you looked out the window… can you just take us to that moment? What was that like?
I will never forget that first view once I arrived on the Space Station and floated over to the cupola. That's that iconic viewing area, which you may have seen photos of. You're surrounded by windows, literally on all sides. So six windows surrounding you, and then one facing straight down towards the Earth.
Of course I've seen that image so many times from other astronauts' photographs, from video inside the Space Station. But seeing it with your own eyes and the way that our brain interprets images from our own human eye, it was actually quite different in a way that was just even more pleasantly surprising and filled me with even more awe than I would have already had.
I think one of the reasons for that is because you do have this immersive 3D view. Any photograph or even a video camera, is pointed in one direction out one window. But when you, yourself, as the human, are there in that spot, you're looking in all different directions and out different windows.
To me, it made the Earth feel even closer than it looks in photographs. We are only about 250 miles away. So we're not that far away. You know, it's not as if we can see the whole Earth. We just see-- a small portion of it.
The other thing that really struck me in that first view was how the atmosphere looked. I don't think this is something you can see well in photographs, either.
You know, the thing that astronauts say a lot, and I do, as well, of course, is that it's so striking how thin and tenuous that band is.
In the theme of environmentalism, like we were talking about, there’s that need to protect it. I felt that before I went to space, but I felt it even more strongly after seeing that-- how thin and fragile that blue band that is our entire atmosphere appears.
The other thing that I don't think you can see in photographs is that you can actually see this whole gradient of blues. It's not just one blue line. It's darker blue, and then lighter blue, this whole hue as, of course, the air gets thinner and thinner and thinner with altitude. You can see that in the color of blue as it fades out into the blackness of space.
That was something that just really struck me in how that looked with my own eyes, more than anything I had seen in a photograph before.
And the atmosphere at night, as well, when you're looking back at the sky at night, you see the cities-- city lights, of course. But you still see the atmosphere. You see a band. And it's sort of an orange, sometimes greenish band-- that's the air glow that you see. And then you can actually see a little bit further out of the atmosphere. It looks even thicker than it does when it's that blue color in the daytime.
Those two things really stuck out the most.
I felt closer to the Earth. It just looked a little bit different-- more three-dimensional. And then the atmosphere, and how that looked.
It really does change you as a person. Frank White wrote about it as the Overview Effect of what that does to the human consciousness, to you as an individual, to look back on the Earth from above with your own eyes. And it really is life-changing.
From the environmental perspective, I had thought of that so many times in terms of how pivotal that was in the Apollo missions, when Bill Anders took that first iconic Earthrise photo the first time human eyes had looked back at the planet from the outside.
That was, of course, quite pivotal in shaping the environmental movement, because people realized, "Wow, this Earth is beautiful and special and fragile. And we need to protect it." And I had thought a lot about that before flying. But it resonated even more loudly when I saw it with my own eyes.
Also, that feeling of interconnectedness, of oneness with your fellow humans, looking down on all of those boundaries-- you know, you're seeing all of these land masses and oceans. But you're not seeing those geopolitical boundaries that we have self-imposed on ourselves as humans.
You don't see that. Everything is really joined together. It's one planet in this blackness of space around you.
And it's just-- obvious. It just makes clear, really, to you as an individual, that we are one.
We are one humankind. We are one species on this planet. We need to protect it.
All of that echoed true so many times, especially given the pandemic, again, that feeling of being so interconnected and having this global pandemic, which we're all affected by. And that went on even into the civil unrest that has become much more apparent in the eyes of people here in the U.S. in recent months.
You know, we are all in this together. And I just wish that-- that all humans could experience that feeling, could understand how clear that is. And I think it's so easy to get caught up in trivial and superficial things that are right in front of us when we're here on Earth. That's just a human characteristic.
But it does feel different when you look down on the Earth from above.
You spent a lot of time training in a replica of the Space Station at NBL [NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab]. And I'm wondering if there were some surprises that you found in your new home, temporarily, when you were up there-- apart from photos and things.
Sure. So we used the Neutral Buoyancy Lab to train in spacesuits. So anything that we'll do in a space walk on the outside of the Space Station, we replicate that in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. And of course that's the best approximation of what we can achieve here to simulate that weightlessness and how it will feel-- to move around in the spacesuit.
Now, the spacesuit is very cumbersome. You weigh over 400 pounds when you're in it. It's pressurized. You're at kind of an angle like this. So that makes each movement quite difficult in terms of your body position and the fact that the gloves are pressurized, reacting against that.
The Neutral Buoyancy Lab, the NBL, allows us to get that muscle memory.
I have spent countless hours underwater in that pool, using the suit, understanding where all the interfaces are, how to use the tools, and how to move around the Space Station.
And that level of training is absolutely essential to how we do everything in space, because I am now in a different environment, of course, in the vacuum of space, but I have all that muscle memory. I know how to use the tools. I know how to use the suit. And that gives me the security and the know-how to go about doing that job safely.
But there are some pretty big differences, as you were alluding to. When you're underwater, you can offset some of that weight by maintaining neutral buoyancy. And that's what we try to do in the pool.
If you imagine you're a kid holding your breath in a pool-- you're not moving up or down. You're stuck in the middle of the water column because you have the right amount of air in your lungs. That's what we try to achieve in the suit.
But of course, there's still gravity, and things still weigh something. So when I have the heavy drill that we use, it still weighs a lot. And I need a lot of strength to hold that when I'm in the pool. Now in space, of course, you don't-- you don't have that weight. You have weightlessness, so there's a big difference there.
The things that are difficult in the pool might be easy in space. But then you have other things that are difficult in space that you don't have in the pool.
So for example, when you start moving in the pool, you have to get your momentum to get you going because you still have the drag and the viscosity of the water.
In space, it's very easy to get started, because just a little bit of pressure sends you off in the direction you need to go. But in the pool, you'll just stop. So you're used to stopping when you want to stop. In space, you have to counteract that force that you've imparted in the other direction.
When we train, we talk a lot about that before we go, so that you're-- reminding yourselves and expecting which differences there will be. I think that was the biggest one for me during that first space walk, even though I knew in my head stability would be totally different without the water, the water keeps you very stable.
If you're in a work site and you're using a drill, you have some measure of stability just because the pool-- the gravity, first of all, keeping that orientation down, and then in resisting that movement. In space, with any little movement, you will also spin.
You will counteract whatever force is imposed.
That was something that, even though I was prepared for in my mind, it was at such a level-- so different from where we were training in. It was like, "Okay. I need to remember, just like everyone told me I would need to fixate myself, put a tether down here, put a tether down here. Make sure that I'm extremely stable before I start doing anything. Be very careful with your movements."
The learning curve's very fast. At the beginning I felt like I was at a rodeo or something. I'm moving all around like, "Okay, all right, all right, I can do this. I know what I need to do." And then you quickly get used to it. But that was, I think, the biggest difference for me. [Laughs]
That's awesome.
Your father was a doctor and your mother a nurse. And you had to undergo countless physical and mental tests in order to be able to have the job that you have.
I'm wondering if you can describe the fragility of the human body. It seems like we're all a little bit Goldilocks. [Laughs]
As a physiologist I've thought a lot about the human body, about medicine. I find it so fascinating how our body, and how all living things, have evolved under the pressures of this planet, and that we can actually go off this planet and still be okay.
In the '60s and '70s, when we were getting the space program going, we actually didn't know, even the top medical doctors and physiologists weren't sure if we, as humans that had evolved with the gravitational vector this entire time through our entire history of our species, would be able to swallow. Would we be able to digest food? Would all these processes actually work without gravity?
Of course, we know now that none of those things are a problem, and we don't have any problem at all eating or drinking. There are other effects though that are very important-- especially bone loss and muscle atrophy.
That's something that you and I are sitting here right now experiencing. Even though we're not exercising, our bones and muscles are reacting against this gravitational vector, which is actually keeping your bones and muscles healthy. So without that, once you go to space, your bones will start leaching calcium.
They don't receive that loading input. So they actually won't be able to maintain their quality and their density. And your muscles, of course, will atrophy, as well, because you're not using all of those muscles. We're just using our postural muscles just to sit here, that are acting against gravity.
So we have to exercise. Our body is in this Goldilocks state. We’ve got to keep it just right. And we've become very effective in terms of our exercise regime in space.
We have two and a half hours every day to exercise. That's a combination of weightlifting, and then some cardiovascular exercise, either running or bicycling. And we need to do that in order to offset those effects of space flight.
I would say the big one that we still need to spend some more time researching, and that we'll need to understand even better before we make it all the way to Mars, is radiation.
The level of radiation that we receive is much higher than on the surface of the Earth. And so we need to understand what that means for the human body. And that's actually what limits our career as astronauts, our radiation dose.
Yikes.
Sunrise and sunset are a little bit different when you're at the Space Station. I'm wondering how that affects your sense of time. Did it really feel like it was 205 days?
No. It certainly didn't. It went by far too quickly for me. I actually would have stayed longer if I could have, even without this pandemic. It went by way too quickly.
Since we are in low Earth orbit on The International Space Station, we're about 250 miles up, and we orbit the Earth every 90 minutes. That means we are constantly going in and out of sunlight and darkness. So we experience 15 to 16 sunrises and sunsets per day. You’re constantly changing those conditions. But if you're not somewhere near a window, you know, you don't really notice it.
Of course it's going to affect human body in terms of our circadian rhythms. We depend on the light cycle that we have here on Earth for a lot of our daily functions, and really, just our innate human bodies. So we actually have some different types of light on the Space Station now.
We've upgraded the lights so that we have different settings to help us with those circadian rhythms. You have a brighter setting in the morning, and then we have a dimmer setting after lunch, and then an even dimmer setting for the pre-sleep period. That helps, for sure.
The time passed far too quickly for me. I think part of that was that we were just so busy. And we were very busy in the time that I was up there, particularly busy because we had a higher than normal number of space walks and also visiting cargo vehicles that came. Those things take a lot of time.
Then, you know, of course you have all your personal objectives. And I think one of the biggest things for how you sense that passage of time is whether or not it's your first space mission. I know people that have made more than one long-duration mission. And they notice that the second mission does seem to pass more slowly than the first.
It’s because you're just so excited. Everything is so novel. And that makes the time pass incredibly quickly, far too quickly for my liking. [Laughs]
So you'd definitely go back up there as soon as possible, if you could.
Absolutely... absolutely.
Apart from the food, I'm wondering what you missed about Earth the most. Sailors who spend a lot of time out at sea say that land has a smell, right? I'm wondering what you missed, and what it was like getting out of that capsule and feeling gravity again and putting on sunglasses. What did you miss about Earth?
Actually, I didn't miss anything, even the food. [Laughs]
Made for space.
I am a bit of a foodie. So I was a little bit worried about that. But the food in space these days is actually quite good.
We have a lab at NASA that develops new food all the time. I was actually a subject for a study called Food Physiology.
A lot of the newer foods are healthier and actually more how I would eat anyway. There is now more fish, more vegetables, higher lycopene, more Omega-3's. I was eating things like Turkish fish stew and Indian fish curry, sweet and savory kale, butternut squash, brussels sprouts, all kinds of really good things.
The one thing that you do lack is presentation. As a foodie, that's important. But still, the food was very, very good. And we also have food from the Russians, and from the Europeans and Canadians, too. So we have a lot of variety, which is really the most important thing for a long duration mission.
I actually thought that I was going to miss nature the most. Like I said in the beginning, nothing beats nature. And for me, I am always the happiest and most content, and really feel the most like myself, and calm, when I'm in a forest after a few days hiking and camping, or skiing in the snow, or in the ocean.
I thought, "I'm really going to miss that." Because you have this ironic sense when you're in space that you have the most incredible vantage point. You are seeing the Earth in the most beautiful way. But it's ironic in that you can't experience it.
You can't feel the breeze on your face. You can't run into the woods, and smell the leaves. I thought that that was what was going to be what I missed.
Of course I did think at moments, "Oh, it would be great to be skiing or hiking right now." But I actually didn't miss it. And I think that's because it's such an alien environment. Right?
If I'm here on my couch and I can't go outside for three weeks, that would seem really weird, and I would miss it because that's part of my normal life. But in space, in the mission, you know what to expect. You know that you're living in this isolation. And everything's new. So I didn’t miss things from my previous life, because it's this whole novel, alien environment, and an extraordinary, wonderful one, where I'm experiencing all these amazing things all the time. I think that's why I didn't really miss anything.
But it is an interesting point that you mentioned about the smells. That is something that I really appreciated coming back. Something that I had experienced before, too, coming back from an expedition to the Antarctic or even coming out of a cave from a NASA training mission, which was living underground in a cave for six days.
In both of those instances, you have this heightened sense of smell when you come out. Because you're right, there is a smell of life. And obviously, in your normal life, it's just a background noise. It's always there, so you don't notice it anymore.
If you don't have it at all, that smell of things growing, and pollen, and leaves, and-- really just that smell of life, it is definitely there. So if you come back from the Antarctic and you haven't had it, or you come out of a cave, or you come back from space, and you get that first breath of fresh air, it's extraordinary. You can smell life.
The thing is, you have to remember to appreciate it and notice it, because very quickly, your sense of smell is then overwhelmed, and now it's in the background again. So you have to appreciate it.
The big one I remember was coming back in that first week, after we were in quarantine for a full week. When I got back to my house, I was lying on my hammock, looking up at the trees. And just hearing the breeze rustling through the leaves… that was something that-- is a sound, again, that I think is often in the background for us, because we're just so used to it. But I hadn't heard that sound for so long. And I'm looking up at the leaves, and I'm hearing the rustling. And… it was such a beautiful sound. And feeling that breeze on my face was just-- yeah, it's definitely something that you appreciate a lot when you come back.
How great.
I'd love to know a little bit more about your fellow astronauts that you spent so much time with. And we talk a lot about how when you're looking at the actual Earth, you're not seeing those political boundaries. But I would just love to know a little bit more about-- your space friends.
That's a great question, because it is an incredibly important part of our mission. And it really gets into something that we emphasize at NASA right now, something we even created this buzz word for called "Expeditionary skills."
It's really about how to play nicely with others. Things you would tell your kids, things you would appreciate from people coming on a camping trip with you. And that's actually instrumental these days in how we select astronauts.
If you are a hot shot jet pilot or the talk of your scientific field-- just those merits alone are not going to get you selected if you don't also have those softer people skills. They're just increasingly more important when we're talking about these long-duration missions on the Space Station.
And for the future, we're talking a three-year mission to go to Mars. So it’s really important, not just for happiness, which is, of course-- crew morale and happiness is a big part of it. But I think it’s also just critical for mission success in terms of getting the job done.
I was incredibly fortunate with my crew mates. Like most people-- it can really make or break anything you do, with your coworkers, especially if you're now in a place that is a small, isolated environment, and you're spending a lot of time together.
The big difference with the Space Station, too, is that you never leave your work. In any other setting, you spend your day with your colleagues, and you come back to your home-- your private life, your family. You have a separation between work and home--the environment, the people.
We don't have that on the Space Station, of course. You are living there, and you always have to be ready to react to an emergency. There's no separation there. And that can, of course, get to a lot of people. And just having that close proximity with people always brings out those behaviors that everybody has-- their own little idiosyncrasies and characteristics.
We actually spend a lot of time now at NASA training those things so that we recognize those things in ourselves. We have survival training, we have analog training, living underwater, living in a cave-- all kinds of things that are stressful situations that mimic some of those environmental aspects of isolation and confinement to understand more about yourself and others.
I was incredibly fortunate. When I arrived on the Space Station, there were already six people there. Six people is the normal crew size for the International Space Station, as it has been in recent times. That's a mixture of NASA astronauts, Russian cosmonauts, and then European, Canadian, and Japanese astronauts, as well-- who is represented just depends on any particular time.
And the typical duration is about six months. Usually you have six people. So three people will go home, and then there's just three people left on the Space Station, and then three more will launch to make it six again.
Usually you don't have more than three or six. Sometimes, if we do what's called a direct handover, we have nine people up there for a short time. So when I arrived, we had nine people up there, an incredibly diverse international crew. One of my fellow crew mates was Hazzal Ali AlMansouri, who was the very first astronaut from the United Arab Emirates. So it was even more international than our usual Space Station crew.
Having nine people up there was a lot, and kind of unusual. That period was only about eight days. And the other thing that was really special for me was that there were a lot of my classmates. That was something that we never envisioned would happen.
When we were selected in 2013, usually the complement is more of a mix of some people with experience, and some new guys. You usually don't expect to be up there with all of your fellow classmates. And that's even more special if you are, because they're really like your family.
These seven individuals that I started with in 2013, they are-- equivalent to my brothers and sisters. So when I arrived, there were three of my classmates on board, which is, you know, three out of only the eight of us. So there were four of us there together. Half of our class was up there for those first eight days. That was so special.
Luca Parmitano, the Space Station commander, is an Italian astronaut. I've known him for a long time, too. He was in the class picked before mine. We know him really well. And the cosmonauts were people that I had worked with and trained with, for the most part, quite extensively. So you already know each other. Especially with that connection of background with my classmates, it was extraordinary.
Then three of them left after those first eight days. So then there were six of us. But still two of my classmates. And Luca, who I knew well, and my Russian commander, and then the other Russians I actually didn't know quite as well because I hadn't worked with them, but got to know them very well.
We just have this incredible family dynamic. With my classmates particularly, we knew each other so well. We already knew people's little idiosyncrasies, how to work well with each other. And that just really enhanced the mission for us.
I think we knew each other very well already, and we also all were able to communicate. That's the most important thing up there. That, for me, meant so much.
Then I had the experience of going down to only three people.
I experienced the Space Station with nine people, then with six people, and for the last two and a half months, it was just three of us, my classmate Drew Morgan, my astro brother from my 2013 class, and then our Russian commander, Oleg Skripochka.
Of course that really changes the dynamic and the human relationships. And actually, a lot of astronauts will say their favorite time on the Space Station is when there are only three people.
Of course it's a pity, because we're not getting as much science done with only three people. But it just slows down the pace of life. Because it's a little bit easier logistically to balance between usage of exercise equipment, that kind of thing.
If you're only with one or two other people, you tend to have more meaningful conversations and connections just because of that dynamic. So it was really wonderful to experience all those different phases. They were already people that were like my brothers and sisters.
And, now, we have even more that will really connect us forever.
And there were only three of you when news about COVID-19 hit, right? That must have been completely wild, knowing that you're the only three people that didn’t have to deal with this.
It was very surreal, actually. You know, we knew of COVID-19 before the other three people left, when there were six of us. But at that point, nobody really understood how bad it was going to be, or even that it was going to be bad in the United States.
After they left, in the beginning of February, that was when things started building. And we were watching it… it was difficult for us to process, because we were really busy.
We were going about our normal day. Nothing changed for us. But the whole world was changing. When we looked at the window the Earth looked equally as stunning as it had the day before, but we knew it was pure chaos down there. And to think that there are seven and a half billion people on the planet, and really, everybody on the entire planet was affected in some way or another, except for the three of us.
It was almost the start of a really bad science fiction movie, you know, where there's three humans out there in space, and now the entire population is wiped out. And it's up to us to repopulate the entire planet. [Laughs]
Thank God that didn't happen. [Laughs]
It was was very surreal for us to experience. When Chris Cassidy and his crew came up at the end, just about a week before we left, he said, "You know, guys, think about this. You're going back to a different planet. It is strange down there. And you've been up here for seven months." He tried to help ease us into it. But it was definitely a transition for us.
Jessica, you spent most of your time as an adult being constantly tested. Being an astronaut is not an easy job. And you're constantly being interviewed, tested, tested again. As a scientist, you're testing phenomena. You're also being tested yourself, making sure that your research is up to par.
In many talks about you, you’ve constantly gone back to telling people that it's really important to be passionate about your dreams, and that by being so passionate about what you do, you were able to do what you do today, which is to be an astronaut.
My question for you is… it might be a little bit strange. But I'm wondering, what serendipities happened along the way? What were some happy accidents, some little blessings that were… fun little presents? Like “here's a thank you for all the hard work that you've been doing,” something that wasn't a result of all the incredible work that you've done?
Wow… hmm… I'll have to think about that one.
There were just so many along the way. Things that you don’t expect, and things that might be the most pleasant outcomes of anything that you're doing, that you weren't really planning on.
It’s just the way life works out, you know?
One thing that I've thought about in terms of serendipity in my life, is that time after my undergrad, when I went to the International Space University in France.
I really loved living in Europe. I wanted to stay there for a while. But as an American, it was difficult for me to try to get a job. I didn't even end up pursuing that, because of what I would have had to do. Interestingly, a few years later, I ended up getting my Swedish citizenship because my mom is from Sweden.
Even though I was born in the U.S., both my parents were Swedish citizens when I was born. Of course that made me Swedish my entire life. I could have had a passport my entire life, which, if I had realized that and done it, the whole course of my life might have been different.
I might have stayed, in France, or elsewhere in Europe after that, instead of going back to the U.S. When I did go back to the U.S., that was when I took my first job at NASA, working as a scientist.
Little twists and turns like that just seem to, as some people say, "work out for a reason."
Aside from that, when I was working at NASA, in that first job as a scientist, I had an incredible experience there and amazing opportunities. I did an analog mission called NEEMO where I lived underwater in a habitat with two other astronauts and a flight director. I wasn't an astronaut then, I was a scientist.
I got to ride on the Vomit Comet several times, doing scientific experiments. That's where we experience weightlessness for about 25, 30 seconds. I had a lot of really cool experiences, but I had always thought about doing an advanced degree. I just didn't know what.
Did I want to go to medical school? I'm really interested in physiology and medicine. Or did I want to do a Ph.D.? I didn't have any clear direction.
I started looking online, and reading about different research. I came upon this diving physiology research pioneered by Gerry Kooyman at Scripps Institute of Oceanography. And the work that Paul Ponganis was doing with Gerry in working these extreme animals.
All of it just seemed so appealing to me-- even though I probably would have never put it all together had I just, you know, tried to come up with something. I had my scuba certification. I loved being underwater. I had just done this underwater mission at NASA.
I wanted to spend more time in the ocean, but it was combined with this real physiology, hardcore physiology, which is also hard to find in the animal physiology world. I thought, "Wow, this just seems remarkable." And it combined with my passion for exploration that I'd always had my whole life, because they're doing work in places like the Antarctic, where there is still more of a pristine and untouched environment, and fewer people have been.
That combination of things, which I really just-- happened upon in an internet search, is what led me to pursuing my Ph.D. at Scripps. It was just one thing after another where I think, you know, maybe it was all serendipity the whole way, just to give you that blend of experiences.
I would say the other big thing that comes to mind for that is that I had this-- this dream to be an astronaut since I was five years old. And people used to say to me, "Well, you're so lucky. You know, you have this thing that you want to do. You know exactly what it is. I wish I had something like that."
And I agreed with them. But, at the same time, I also thought, "But what if it doesn't come true? There's such a small chance of that happening. Will I ever actually be content and happy?" And so I had that worry, knowing that it was just such a small chance.
It was… not likely that I would become an astronaut. I accepted that.
Then I found, in an internet search, this whole other field, and I became a comparative physiologist, studying animals in extreme environments. In diving animals, and in high altitude animals later on for my post-doc.
And I was so content. I had found another field that fulfilled me. I felt so fortunate, because I knew there was such a small chance of becoming an astronaut. And then I thought, "Well, maybe this is a better life for me than being an astronaut. Maybe I don't even need to apply again to be an astronaut. I found this other career that's so fulfilling."
I felt very fortunate for that. And in the end, I couldn't not apply for the childhood dream job. But, as you started off the question, by following your passion and making sure that you're doing the things that interest you and drive you… nobody would have probably predicted that a biologist-- or, you know, marine biology or being in the ocean studying animals, would lead to a career being an astronaut.
People think, "Oh, I need to be an engineer, or I need to be a jet pilot." And that is true for most people in the office. They do have backgrounds in engineering. But the bottom line was, to me, that biology was the most fascinating subject.
I wanted to be in nature, doing something that helped me understand more about our natural planet and the ecosystems and animals.
That still led me to this same dream goal in the end. I think that that's why I like to point that out to people.
You know, it's not just some kind of recipe. You shouldn't treat your life like a-- checking boxes of things you think you're supposed to do. You really need to follow your passion, and your heart. And if you're doing so, I think that's when you really can excel. And that's when you're going to be happy.
One of the many reasons that I was excited to speak with you is that you have such a 360º view on-- the planet, on Earth.
You have a deep nature background. And you also have this kind of stars experience as an astronaut. I just think that's so cool. There are a lot of different paths that one can take to become an astronaut, as you say. And you just have such an earthy way of looking at it, tight?
It's so cool to me to think that you go camping in your spare time. You know what it's like to ride a motorcycle and to be literally mother to a flock of geese. Then you were in an environment where there is no wind, looking down on the planet. And you can fly rockets.
I just thought that was really so incredible, that you… architected your life that way.
Thank you. You know, I think that's just what happened for me. That happened to be the path that really fulfilled me, and made me happy. It just kind of all worked out that way… but it's all connected, right?
It really all is part of nature, whether it's on this planet or beyond, in terms of the solar system and of our universe. We're really all combined with that. That's where our planet came from and is part of, of course.
So perhaps that's really all in all of us.
How was it watching the SpaceX shuttle come to the Space Station? And what is it like knowing there are going to be a lot of other people, hopefully, in the future that can experience what you all have experienced?
The SpaceX vehicle with the crew on it actually came after I departed, but it was wonderful to see that. We were hoping it would get there when we were still up there. We really wanted to greet our colleagues and have that new vehicle there. But they were a little bit delayed. And they got there in the end. And that is a huge success, of course.
I think it's a great example of what we can do when we decide to work together and get there.
We hadn't launched from the U.S. since 2011, since the shuttle retired. I launched with the Russians in the Soyuz Spacecraft. And I wouldn't change that for anything. We will continue to partner with the Russians-- in things like the International Space Station and other projects.
I think those international partnerships are absolutely crucial to everything that we'll do in the future of space exploration. But it's really just great for humanity and for the whole planet to have another spacecraft capable of bringing humans to space.
Each of these steps makes space more and more accessible to everybody else, to have another means of getting off the planet, and another means of exploring. It was a huge step in the commercial crew program to send Bob and Doug up to space to do their Space Station mission and bring them back safely.
Now that we have demonstrated that capacity, we'll have future flights pretty soon here. We should be having the next SpaceX launch. So it's just making space more and more accessible for everyone. And I think it's really wonderful for the entire sector.
Space was a complete out-of-this-world experience, no doubt. But what are some of your favorite out-of-this-world places that are on planet Earth? Incredible vistas, or places that you would-- instantly go back to in a heartbeat?
There are two of those that places that come to mind. And then there's a whole other host of places that I want to go after seeing the views that I saw of them from space. And so I think the two that I have been to that are most special --
The Antarctic, like we've talked about. The Antarctic is just such a special place, because it is still pristine. And it is just so extreme. The lack of color on the surface, it's white and austere. And then-- diving beneath the surface of the sea ice, which I had the incredible opportunity to do many times, that's where all the life is.
There is gigantism, which is an adaptation for animals to thrive in the cold water, given the surface-area-to-volume ratios of their bodies. So you have these bright sponges. And you have red sea stars and bright yellow pycnogonids, big sea spiders.
Where I was diving, because we were researching emperor penguins, I had emperor penguins swimming around. I had Weddell Seals coming by. And the diversity in that ecosystem is just extraordinary. Jellyfish floating by with hundred-foot-long tentacles. I mean, it is just amazing.
The Antarctic is such a special place. I haven't been there since 2010. It's been ten years since I've been there. I miss it so much. I really want to go back.
The other extraordinary landscape and vistas that I saw were in a caving mission. We talked a little bit earlier about analogs, what NASA uses for training of astronauts and to test hardware and equipment. The European Space Agency has an analog called CAVES, where we go for about two weeks of intense caving training.
This was technical caving, where you're wearing a harness and using ascenders and descenders, all this very technical equipment similar to rock climbing equipment, but a bit different.
I didn't have any caving experience, nor did my other crew mates. But that was okay.
That was a point, we went there to be trained by these top-notch cavers in Italy and Sardinia. We had about two weeks of training getting ready for our mission.
That mission was an analog to train us, to prepare us, to hone in on those expeditionary skills and what it would be like, really, on a space mission.
This cave was simply extraordinary. We entered through one entrance into 25 kilometers of different branches underground. And I've always talked about scuba diving this way-- that everybody should have the experience of scuba diving. It's this whole world underneath the surface of the water that you don't see otherwise.
I really didn't realize that there was also this whole subterranean world and how special it could be. This was a spectacular cave, it's not as if every cave is like this. But in all those 25 kilometers of branches, in one minute, you might be squirming through a tiny little hole that you don't even think you can fit through, then you emerge into this amazing cavern with a 100-meter wall. It looks like you're in a church, or a huge gallery. And there are all of these naturally occurring [inaudible]. There's one called the Angel's Wing, and it looked as if it had been sculpted out of marble. But, you know, all these things were just naturally occurring.
I could not believe it. It didn't look real. You felt like you were on a Lord of the Rings set. We joked that if we put spacesuits on, we could completely convince people that we were on a different planet.
It just looked so alien. It didn't look like Earth, and it was. This was just this cave in Sardinia. At the time, which was before I went to space, on my crew there were astronauts that had been to space already. And they agreed that it was, "Wow. This is almost as special and remarkable as space. This is really a unique experience."
So I would say those are my two best Earth experiences.
You have a thing for extreme environments. [Laughs]
Was this just growing up in Caribou, Maine? I'm trying to trace back to when that became a thing-- "Yes, extreme environments! Low oxygen, got it. Sign me up!" [Laughs]
Well, the weather in Caribou, Maine can be pretty extreme for people. But that's just where I grew up, so I was used to it. I love winter and snow. And like I said, my mom's from Sweden.
But my dad is from the Middle East. He was born in Baghdad, and then grew up in what was then Palestinian and became Israel. So I guess you have two extremes right there, of the cold and the heat. Maybe that's why-- the blending of those, that's the product here.
I do attribute some of that to my mom when I was a kid, growing up in a remote area with lots of trees.
Swedes generally tend to have a very strong connection to nature. They value it I think a lot more than the average American does. And so perhaps just growing up with my mom and having her teach me things around me, and being outside in the forest, and in the lake… I think that that instilled this love of nature, which then went into wanting to know more about the natural world around me, and this spirit of exploration.
I think that drove me toward these extreme environments, being the ultimate pinnacle of that-- of this extreme world. Those are the things that I was really attracted to the most.
For my Ph.D., for example, I focused on the extreme divers, not just diving animals, but the extreme divers, like an emperor penguin, the best diver in the bird world, or the elephant seal, the best diver of any of the seals. Because, if you start looking at adaptation at that level of the extreme, that's when you're probably going to see the most dramatic results. Then you can interpret from there.
I think the thing that makes me the most attracted to these extreme environments is that they tend to involve both a mental and a physical challenge. That's when I've personally felt the most fulfilled and the most content.
For example, working in the Antarctic, you have a lot of mental and scientific rigor because you've designed a robust experiment that you need to carry out. You're doing it in a hostile environment where, one day, you might not be doing any science, you might be shoveling snow or building a better perimeter for the penguins to keep them safe during a storm.
That physical exertion, combined with that mental aptitude… you know, even just capturing a penguin, that's quite a physical process. I think that being an astronaut is the perfect culmination of that-- it's always that blend of a mental and a physical challenge, like doing a space walk, for example, like we talked about.
That just is when I'm the most fulfilled. I think that's the attraction for me.
You know I'm going to ask you-- how does one capture a penguin? Is there a technique for this!? [Laughs]
There absolutely is a technique. [Laughs] It was taught to me by Paul Ponganis, my Ph.D. advisor at the Scripps Institution Oceanography. And this technique works really well.
Emperor penguins are-- very curious. Now, they don't have any predators on the surface. They have, of course, killer whales, mostly leopard seals, that will be their biggest predators along the ice edge. But that's generally when they're coming back in from the water. So the leopard seals and the orcas are of course in the water. They're not walking around on the ice, like how the penguins do.
When the penguins are on the ice walking around, or going back and forth to their colonies, they don't have a natural predator. So they're not fearful. If you are out on the sea ice nearby some penguins, they will actually come over to you. If you just sit down and they see you in the distance, they'll actually come explore.
If you're quiet and you sit there, they'll even come as far as coming right to you, starting to peck at, you know, your boots, or your tools, or something that you have with you, because they're that curious. They're just not afraid.
We take advantage of that, and we find some penguins that are in a group, but that aren't going directly back and forth from the colonies, because at that time of year, they're taking turns providing food for their chicks. So we wouldn't want to take one of the successful breeders.
Every year there are some animals that haven't bred, so they're just kind of milling around in a different area. So we target those ones. We'll either go out on snowmobiles or land in a helicopter, if it's far away. And we'll take advantage of their line-forming behavior to corral them over to a general area.
We'll have a few people out there, maybe five or so. And so the next step is-- once you get them in an area close to where you want them to be, then you'll surround them, and make yourself big.
You know, with a lot of animals, if you make yourself big and dominant, they react to that.
So we'll form a perimeter, get in a circle around them, and act big. And then they start getting a little antsy. This is because they're like, "Okay, I-- don't have any predators, but-- I am a wild animal. What's going on here?"
Then what we do is you actually have to attack the penguin from the back. You slide in.
We have a shepherd's crook, actually, a big, long shepherd's crook, like if you were going to pull someone off stage. Some people use that.
What you do is you wait, so that the penguin's back is facing you. You take the shepherd's crook, get it around its upper body here, to pull it back a little bit.
You don't want them to get down on their belly and what we call “toboggan away” from you. Then you won't be able to catch them because they're too fast. So you get them off balance a little bit. Then you throw the crook, or if you didn't use a crook, you just dive in. That's what I did. I was fast enough to just dive in on my knees and then bear hug 'em.
The idea is you come in from behind them, slide in, get your arms around their upper body right here. And you have to hold on very tightly. Because they are these incredible divers. So their pectoralis muscle, their chest, is just huge, this big muscle. And their wings are-- you know, like two-by-fours.
So then they start flapping their wings at you, powered by this strong muscle. And they're like beating you, here in your arms with these two-by-fours. Luckily, you have a big parka on, so you're pretty well padded. And you have goggles on, too, because you’ve got to protect your eyes. They have very sharp beaks.
When I'm on my knees, the penguins are almost quite as tall as me here, so I lift my head up a little bit. It’s better if you're a little bit taller, I have been clipped by a beak before. But I didn't let go. [Laughs]
You hold on tight. You grab them. And then we have these specially designed penguin carrier boxes…
Of course. [Laughs]
So you bring them over, and then we put them in the box. Then we put them in the back of the snowmobile, in the sled, or in a helicopter.
I always like that, in the helicopter. I felt they had some vague recollection of, "My great-great-great-grandfather told me about this…"
And then [laughs] of course penguins can't fly. But suddenly, they're flying in this helicopter.
But that is how you capture an emperor penguin.
Thank you. [Laughs] I will apply this-- knowledge in my day-to-day life, thank you. [Laughs].
Important life lessons. [Laughs]
You know, for all the space nerds out there, I have to ask you about Artemis.
The plan, as I understand it, is that we're going to send more astronauts to the moon, and on a few different moon missions. Great-- let's go to the moon again. And then we're going to send crews to Mars.
I would love to know-- what do we expect to get out of those engagements? What are we going to learn there? What's exciting for this next era of space exploration? And why is it important that we explore space?
For the Artemis mission, just as you mentioned-- the first goal is to send the first woman and the next man back to the surface of the moon.
First of all, some people don't understand why we're going back to the moon when we've already done that.
That is true, we've done it. But it was decades ago that we did it, and with entirely different technology. It's not easy to go to the moon, just because we did it.
If you think about the Space Station, that's only 250 miles away. The moon is 250,000 miles away. We're talking a different order of magnitude. It is difficult to get to the moon. And to get to Mars, 39 million miles away, that's even more difficult.
The way that we look at it with the Artemis program is to do that incrementally, to use this proving ground of the Space Station to go to the next step to establish these missions back to the moon, and to establish the gateway program which will be orbiting around the moon, in order to help facilitate landings down to the surface, and then to go beyond to Mars.
It makes complete sense to me that we would do it in that incremental fashion, because we're talking about science and technology-- that's how science and technology work. We build, and build, and build, in increments, and build upon the successes of previous things, add to it, learn from the mistakes, and evolve.
That's how we get to these grand destinations.
Of course, it’s entirely worthwhile for me even just from an exploration perspective. We would not have even explored our whole planet if it weren't for this desire-- this innate characteristic of humans, to look around the corner, to go further and explore.
I think that we need to do that. We need to do that as humans to keep improving ourselves and to improve our society and our knowledge base. It's just natural. It's a natural extension of who we are as humans.
Scientifically as well-- it’s all the basic science that we will learn by going back to the moon and to Mars, so much about our solar system and about our own planet.
Exploring other bodies in our solar system teaches us more about the history of how the Earth and the solar system-- how everything formed. Everything that has gone into the entire history of our solar system, and our role in the universe.
Scientifically, going back to the moon…
We definitely did not even scratch the surface of all of these scientific questions in the Apollo missions. We have so much more that we can gain. We're going to entirely new sites that weren't explored during the Apollo missions.
And getting to Mars, well, that would be the first time we actually get to a different planet. There's so much to learn along the way.
And even if you look at it as a means of stimulating the economy and partnerships-- international cooperation, and the governmental and commercial sectors combining and working together, the outcomes and the products that we will have from this drive to go back to the moon and toward Mars-- we will definitely, just like we have had in the entire history of the space program, have all of these offshoots that will be able to benefit our lives back down on Earth, as well.
We have all these technologies that come out of that. They may have been originally intended for space flight. But we might be able to use them on our planet, as well. So to me, it comes down to the basic science, the exploration, and also, stimulating the economy and furthering technology.
I think those are all extreme benefits of what we get out of exploring space.
I'm curious what you think we're going to uncover in terms of organisms and life on other planets within our solar system, and also, just for the space nerds out there-- sentient life, do you feel like it's even remotely possible?
Everybody always asks, "Do you believe in aliens?" [Laughs]
I think sometimes they're surprised when I say, "Absolutely."
I think you realize it would be incredibly egotistical to believe that this one planet, only this one planet, spurned life.
Statistically speaking, in the scope of the solar system and the universe, there absolutely has to be other forms of life. Whether or not they're like us, they might not even be carbon-based, of course. And whether or not we would-- actually even discover each other, again, based on the dimension of time and space-- that I'm not so sure about.
But it definitely is out there. We know that's been a big driver of a lot of our research in astro-biological studies in terms of what we're looking for on Mars-- and other destinations.
I mean it is definitely there. We're learning more and more all the time. We've learned a lot from our unmanned missions, all the rovers that we've sent to Mars, for example.
So it's definitely out there.
I read a book recently, and I'm now going to-- complete butcher the title… but it was something like The Order of Time, by Carlo Rovelli. And it just blew my mind.
He was investigating how time, at moments, is just entirely relative, and it's really an experience that we all individually have.
Something else that he shared in that book that I'd love to-- gut-check against you and hear about your experience of, is that time goes slower the closer to the core of the planet you are? So if you're on a coastline somewhere, time is going slower, and it's faster at the top of a mountain.
That's completely wild. [Laughs] Obviously, you all are trained in-- how these things work.
I'd just love to know what your thoughts are on the nature of time. Because it seems to rule all of our lives-- and it’s something that factors into your experiments, and no doubt factored into your time in space.
Personally, I'm always battling time. [Laughs] It’s always my biggest stressor-- I hate feeling rushed, but I end up always feeling rushed. I won't say I have bad time management, because I do actually manage my time well, and I'm on time when I need to be on time…
I think I'm overly optimistic with how much I can get done. I'm always just making it or just pushing it, because I think I can get all these things done. And I think that a lot of people suffer from that just in terms of human nature.
You're right. You know, it actually-- I think it comes down to, on a six-month mission, I think I'm a fraction of a second younger, actually, even though I'm farther away from the core of the planet. That's offset by the fact of how fast we're traveling.
There are a lot of interesting things in terms of the role that time plays in the exploration of our solar system and universe. It’s certainly not my area of expertise. But I think it's an interesting thing to think about.
Humans feel that a lot, too, right? The older we get, it feels like time is passing so quickly. And, you know, one of the things for me in space-- it did pass far too quickly.
One of the things that I was worried about, that I do feel a little bit now, you know, when you're up there in space, you think, "Okay, well, for four decades, I've been walking. And now suddenly I'm floating."
But within a few weeks, floating seems entirely natural. And you're almost thinking, "Wow, what is it going to be like to walk again? I can't even imagine what that's going to feel like." And I was thinking, "Well, you know, God, it's going to be so strange going back." Then you think, "Well actually, you're probably going to re-adapt pretty quickly."
And then what I was worried about was that this would all seem like a dream. And it does almost a little bit.
I have to look at pictures and video to remind myself, because even though it was a long time, it was almost seven months-- relative to the rest of my life, it's fairly short.
And it's just so different and alien that it's, hard to-- to remember that-- to realize that it it did happen. It was all real.
What have you been doing since April? How are you spending your time on Earth readjusting? Welcome home, welcome back to the planet. What have you been doing in your time since space?
We landed April 17th. The interesting thing is that we landed when things were pretty bad in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic. It wasn't a normal return, for sure. We haven't been able to have our normal post-flight schedule.
Since I launched with the Russians, we landed in Kazakhstan with the Soyuz. Then we were back in Houston with our NASA jet in about 24 hours. For that first week in Houston, we actually stayed in quarantine at NASA the entire time.
Astronauts usually don't do that. They can go home after the first night if they want to. But one of the hallmarks of space flight is the dysregulation of the immune system, so they wanted to make sure that we had time so our immune systems could recover, because we were essentially immunocompromised.
They didn't, of course, want to expose us to any viruses, including COVID-19. So we were in quarantine for a week. And those first few days and weeks in particular are really important-- in terms of all the physiological experiments and medical data before you start re-acclimating again to the 1G environment.
A lot of that time is spent doing data collection for experiments, going to different medical appointments, scans and imaging-- that kind of thing. And then we also start doing some debriefs, so that we can capture the moments to help, you know, really, every branch at NASA in terms of the space walks and everything that we do up there, so we can pay it forward and make sure that we continue to improve.
And then we start doing some interviews. Every day, in that first period, we also have our time in the gym with our reconditioning, it’s a rehab to get your body used to being back in gravity. So that whole period of all those things lasts for about two months.
Then after that, you do a lot more PR. So you're usually traveling around a lot, doing a lot of interviews and talks to people, different organizations. Obviously, all that has been dramatically affected-- given the fact that, you know, nobody's really traveling right now.
Usually those next four months are combination of those PR activities and then also just time off and, you know, time to get back to the things that are important to you and your family, and take some vacation. So that's what I've been doing. I was-- in Houston-- taking care of all those obligations initially.
Then I left Houston, and that's when I had the need to really re-immerse myself in nature. I've been on vacation doing some PRs and interviews, like this one, in between hiking and camping in Colorado with my sister and spending a lot of time in The Rockies until they all recently started burning.
That's really-- sad news with all the wildfires right now.
I was there hiking before all the fires started. Then I spent some time at a friend's lake house in Wisconsin-- that lakeside atmosphere. Now I'm at my brother's in Malibu. So lots of ocean time, surfing and paddle boarding.
I've been pretty fortunate to have some time out in nature to-- get back to things. And then I will be back at my job in the office in about the middle of October. So we have about six months from when we land until we resume our operations in the office again.
I have to ask something on behalf of all the women out there.
People made such a big deal about the first all-female space walk. And until very recently, it was kind of odd to see a female astronaut. Obviously, there are many who walked before you.
It's really inspiring. And I think-- we're still in a world where identity is something that we all carry. But it's also something that-- everyone else recognizes and takes note of.
I'd love to know about the experience of being a female astronaut. What is it like, talking to all the engineers, and teaming up with Christina, for instance?
It's an added layer to your experience that I would love to know a little bit more about. How do you view it? Is it - "Oh God, I wish that people would just stop asking me because I'm just a professional doing my job?” Or is it-- "You know what? No. This is really important."
I'd just love to know about-- in general terms, what it’s like being a female astronaut.
It has been a blend of all of those things for me.
I've thought about it quite a bit differently since that space walk than I did before.
In the beginning, when we were selected in 2013, we were the first class that was 50% female and 50% male. That was a big deal. It got a lot of attention.
But on one hand, it's like you said before-- Why are we talking about that so much? We all got here on our own achievements, and shouldn't we be focusing on that? So there's sometimes two ways of looking at it. And I was actually incredibly fortunate throughout my entire career prior to becoming an astronaut, where I actually didn't feel that.
I never did anything-- even though I was sometimes in some groups or activities that were underrepresented in terms of women, I never felt that-- I never received that input from somebody else that I couldn't do something because I was a female.
And, you know, maybe some of that just came from myself and-- in how I grew up with three sisters and-- a brother and my mom. And I don't know if that was part of me, or just really my circumstances, but I think probably all of it.
For us at NASA, when we came in 2013, the makeup of our class was 50/50. And we all were held to the same level of training. We all accomplished the same objectives. So on one hand-- no matter who I went out of the hatch with that day, I felt equally competent to anybody's skills. It didn't really matter if it was a female or male. We all had the same training. And those gender differences don't make a difference when you're in the spacesuit.
So on one hand, it was just that Christina and I happened to be the crew members on board, and we happened to be the ones going out to do our job that day.
On the other hand, I think what I've thought a lot more about since that -- it really did have a big impact. Like you said, it was the first time that two women had been outside the Space Station at one time. Women and minorities have been underrepresented in the astronaut population, like in many other especially technical fields.
Things are different improving and moving in the right direction. I think right now about a third of our office is female. So we're still not half, even though my class was half. But part of it is a really positive thing.
Christina and I happened to be two females up there. And NASA didn't do it intentionally, but it was our turn to do a space walk.
I think it's a wonderful thing that now that's just normal. Now there are enough people up there that we're choosing from that now that we're going to send two women out the door this time, and a man and a woman next time, and, you know, whoever is the right person to get the job done.
Everybody up there is considered to be equal. And that shows how far we've come.
I think that's how Christina and I really felt. It didn't reflect anything about our personal achievements. It was just our job, and I was trained like everybody was also was trained to do that job.
It is so much more about the generations of women and minorities that came before us.
You know, yes, we still have a ways to go in many fields and in many areas. But we have come so far. And that is thanks to those women and those minorities in those generations that they didn't have a seat at the table, and they fought for it, and they pushed the boundaries, and they broke those ceilings.
That's what enabled Christina and I to do the space walk that day. It was nothing about our own successes. It was all of the hard work that they put in that got us where we are today.
I think now that I look at it, you know, I just feel so privileged and proud to have played a part in that for them. You know, not for me, but for them. And for so many other people.
To be honest, I was complete overwhelmed by the outpouring of enthusiasm and support. I didn't think that it was going to be a big deal. Most people don't even know that there's a Space Station up there right now, let alone which day they're doing a space walk. And people don't generally pay that much attention. But for whatever reason, they did. And it inspired people, it touched people.
It's great for NASA because people are paying attention to what we're doing. It's just, I think, a wonderful thing on so many levels. We both received so many emails and notes and messages about inspiring kids, young girls and adults all the same.
That just became so inspiring for us. Because it was really, and still is, overwhelming to see how much it touched people. And it's an important, historical event. And, again, I think it just means the most for those people that got us where we are now.
Thanks for chatting, Jessica. Really, it's been-- such an honor. And, you know, it's really inspiring. I'm excited because even more people will be able to hear your story and your message. So thank you for taking the time on your vacation, no doubt. [Laughs]
I hope that you get straight back to all of the waves.
Thank you, Jenna. •
Created & hosted by Jenna Mari Matecki
This episode was co-produced with Natalie Holt
Special thanks to Natalie, NASA, The Scripts Institute of Oceanography, Steven Bennett, Carine Bijlsma, and Wesley Verhoeve.
Photo by NASA