To the Stars: Women Spacefarers' Legacy [2 ed.] 303119859X, 9783031198595

Table of contents :
Foreword
Preface
Stereotypical Beginnings
Prejudices, Stereotypes, or Gender-Diverse Obsession?
What of the Near Future?
Introduction
Women in Space: A Soviet Record
The Right Stuff14 but the Wrong Sex
FLATs (Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees)
NASA Opens to Women
The Long Road to Integration in the East
Full Integration in the West
“Female Quotas” Are Rising
Women, Space, and Philately
Sources for the Biographies
Contents
Acronyms
1: The First Ladies of Space
1.1 VALENTINA TERESHKOVA: THE ALL-SOVIET GIRL
1.2 SALLY RIDE: AMERICA’S PIONEERING WOMAN IN SPACE
1.3 HELEN SHARMAN: THE FIRST BRITON IN SPACE
1.4 CHIAKI MUKAI: JAPAN’S FIRST FEMALE ASTRONAUT
1.5 ROBERTA BONDAR: PIONEER OF SPACE MEDICINE RESEARCH
1.6 CLAUDIE HAIGNERÉ: ESA’S FIRST FEMALE ASTRONAUT
1.7 KALPANA CHAWLA: UNABLE TO VISIT HER HOMELAND OFFICIALLY
1.8 YI SO-YEON: KOREAN “SPACEFLIGHT PARTICIPANT”
1.9 LIU YANG: FIRST FEMALE TAIKONAUT
1.10 SAMANTHA CRISTOFORETTI: THE FIRST EXTRATERRESTRIAL TIKTOKER
2: Performing Science and Engineering in Space
2.1 ANNA LEE FISHER: THE FIRST MOTHER IN SPACE
2.2 MARGARET RHEA SEDDON: THE FIRST WEDDING OF NASA ASTRONAUTS
2.3 SHANNON LUCID: AMERICA’S FIRST FEMALE LONG-DURATION ASTRO-COSMONAUT
2.4 BONNIE DUNBAR: THE FIRST FEMALE ASTROCOSMONAUT
2.5 MARY CLEAVE: FLYING AT AGE 14
2.6 ELLEN BAKER: AN INTERNIST PHYSICIAN ON THE SHUTTLE
2.7 MILLIE HUGHES-FULFORD: THE FIRST FEMALE PAYLOAD SPECIALIST
2.8 MAE JEMISON: OUR LIMITS ARE THE STARS
2.9 ELENA KONDAKOVA: THE FIRST FEMALE LONG-DURATION MISSION
2.10 DOROTHY METCALF-LINDENBERGER: FROM SPACE CAMP TO SPACE STATION
2.11 ELENA SEROVA: THE FIRST RUSSIAN FEMALE COSMONAUT ON ISS
2.12 KATHLEEN RUBINS: LABORATORY MICROBIOLOGIST TURNED ASTRONAUT
2.13 SERENA AUÑÓN-CHANCELLOR: PHYSICIAN AND ASTRONAUT
2.14 JESSICA WATKINS: THE FIRST BLACK WOMAN ON A LONG-DURATION SPACE MISSION
3: Outside the Spacecraft
3.1 SVETLANA SAVITSKAYA: TWICE IN SPACE; A SECOND SOVIET “FIRST”
3.2 KATHRYN SULLIVAN: THE “MOST VERTICAL PERSON IN THE WORLD”
3.3 KATHRYN THORNTON: THE “SPACEWALKER MOM”
3.4 LINDA GODWIN: PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY
3.5 TAMARA JERNIGAN: AN ASTROPHYSICIST AMONG THE STARS
3.6 TRACY CALDWELL DYSON: LEAD VOCALIST FOR MAX Q
3.7 NICOLE STOTT: A STEADY FLYING PASSION
3.8 WANG YAPING: FIRST CHINESE WOMAN TO WALK IN SPACE
3.9 CHRISTINA KOCH: A NEW SPACEFLIGHT DURATION RECORD
3.10 JESSICA MEIR: FROM THE SEA TO THE STARS
4: Madam Robotics Expert
4.1 JUDITH RESNIK: THE SECOND “SHUTTLENAUT”
4.2 MARSHA IVINS: ASPIRING ASTRONAUT AT 19
4.3 NANCY JAN DAVIS: GROWING UP WITH THE SATURN ROCKETS
4.4 ELLEN OCHOA: “REACH FOR THE STARS AND LET NOTHING LIMIT YOUR POTENTIAL”
4.5 JANICE VOSS: VISITED THE ISS AS A CYGNUS CRAFT
4.6 MARY ELLEN WEBER: FROM SKYDIVING TO STELLAR STRATEGIES
4.7 JANET KAVANDI: THE REWARDS OF PERSEVERANCE AND TENACITY
4.8 JULIE PAYETTE: “TO ASSEMBLE A SHIP IN THE OCEAN DURING A STORM”
4.9 SANDRA MAGNUS: SOARING TO NEW HEIGHTS
4.10 STEPHANIE WILSON: “MADAM ROBOTICS EXPERT”
4.11 JOAN HIGGINBOTHAM: AN UNPLANNED ADVENTURE
4.12 BARBARA MORGAN: “I’LL FLY WITH THE EYES, EARS, THE HEART AND MIND OF A TEACHER”
4.13 KAREN NYBERG: MARATHON RUNNING ENGINEER
4.14 MEGAN MCARTHUR: 50TH BIRTHDAY PARTY IN SPACE
4.15 NAOKO YAMAZAKI: ASTRONAUT FOR 4,088 DAYS
5: The Right Stuff
5.1 EILEEN COLLINS: THE FIRST FEMALE “SHUTTLENAUT” IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT
5.2 SUSAN STILL KILRAIN: THE SECOND FEMALE SHUTTLE PILOT
5.3 PAMELA MELROY: THE LAST WOMAN TO COMMAND A SHUTTLE
5.4 PEGGY WHITSON: NASA’S MOST EXPERIENCED ASTRONAUT
5.5 SUNITA WILLIAMS: FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA TO THE HEIGHTS OF SPACE
5.6 SHANNON WALKER: A DRAGON SPACEFARER ON FALCON WINGS
6: Military Women Astronauts
6.1 SUSAN HELMS: THREE-STAR GENERAL
6.2 NANCY CURRIE-GREGG: A PASSION FOR FLYING AND A CONCERN FOR SAFETY
6.3 WENDY LAWRENCE: THE US NAVY’S FIRST FEMALE ASTRONAUT
6.4 CADY COLEMAN: THE FLUTE-PLAYING COLONEL IN SPACE
6.5 KATHRYN HIRE: THE FIRST AMERICAN WOMAN ASSIGNED TO A COMBAT AIRCREW
6.6 LAUREL CLARK: FROM DEEP OCEANS TO THE STARS
6.7 LISA NOWAK: THE FIRST FEMALE ASTRONAUT EVER DISMISSED BY NASA
6.8 HEIDEMARIE STEFANYSHYN-PIPER: FROM DIVER TO ASTRONAUT
6.9 ANN MCCLAIN: FROM EAGLE TO ASTRONAUT
6.10 KAYLA BARRON: A PIONEERING SUBMARINER TURNED ASTRONAUT
7: Spaceflight Participants
7.1 CHRISTA MCAULIFFE: “NASA TEACHER IN SPACE”
7.2 ANOUSHEH ANSARI: THE FIRST IRANIAN SPACEWOMAN
7.3 BETH MOSES: THE FIRST WOMAN TO FLY ON A PRIVATE SPACECRAFT
7.4 SIRISHA BANDLA: FROM GUNTER TO THE EDGE OF SPACE
7.5 WALLY FUNK: NO ONE HAS WAITED LONGER
7.6 HAYLEY ARCENEAUX: THE HOPE ON INSPIRATI④N
7.7 SIAN PROCTOR: ASTRONAUT BY LOTTERY
7.8 YULIA PERESILD: THE FIRST ACTRESS IN SPACE
7.9 AUDREY POWERS: THE FIRST ATTOURNEY TURNED ASTRONAUT
7.10 LAURA SHEPARD CHURCHLEY – THE FIRST DAUGHTER OF AN ASTRONAUT TO FLY IN SPACE
Appendix I: Women Spacefarers in Order of First Mission
Appendix II: Extravehicular Activities
Appendix III: Military Astronauts
Appendix IV: Women Spacefarers Married to Astronauts
Glossary
Index

Citation preview

To The Stars Women Spacefarers’ Legacy

Umberto Cavallaro

To The Stars Women Spacefarers’ Legacy

Umberto Cavallaro

To The Stars Women Spacefarers’ Legacy

Umberto Cavallaro Italian Astrophilately Society, AS.IT.AF Villarbasse, Torino, Italy

SPRINGER-PRAXIS BOOKS IN SPACE EXPLORATION

Springer Praxis Books ISSN 2731-5401 ISSN 2731-541X  (electronic) Space Exploration ISBN 978-3-031-19859-5    ISBN 978-3-031-19860-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19860-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2017, 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover Figures Credits: Anousheh Ansari ©NASA, Mae Jemison ©NASA, Chiaki Mukai ©NASA, Anna Fisher ©NASA, Claudie Haigneré ©ESA, Samantha Cristoforetti ©ESA, Four Women in Space (Stephanie Wilson, Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Naoko Yamazaki, and Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger) ©NASA. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Giampaolo & Paola Per aspera ad astra!

Foreword

As we wait for the first woman to walk on the Moon, it is interesting to ponder how the gender problem has affected the human exploration of space. As a matter of fact, during the relatively short time span that has elapsed since the beginning of the space era, the public perception of female spacefarers has evolved considerably. While, at first, the desire to become an astronaut was considered plainly extravagant for a well-behaved girl, space agencies are now encouraging applications from women. It is an important change of attitude, but one which still reminds us that becoming an astronaut has never been an easy task. This holds true for both men and women, with one significant difference: for quite some time this career was simply precluded to women. The relationship between women and space got off to a glorious beginning with the launch of Valentina Tereshkova, a real Soviet female hero. However, her achievements had no sequel and her primacy remained unchallenged for 20 years. We know that NASA did not want to consider women as candidate astronauts; however, something must also have gone wrong with the Soviet program which waited two decades to launch their second female cosmonaut. From NASA’s point of view, the early requirement to be a test pilot was an easy way to disregard female applications. The situation changed in 1976 with the call for the eighth astronaut selection, which introduced the possibility to apply for the position of Mission Specialist. Moreover, for the first time, NASA was opening the Astronaut Corps to women and minority candidates. Indeed, in contrast to all the previous calls where test pilot experience was mandatory, the Mission Specialist required a scientific background, a prerequisite that women could also fulfil. And women were just waiting to get a vii

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chance. Amongst the 8,370 candidates for the 1976 call, there were 1,000 women, including Sally Ride. Ride was the first American among the 75 spacefarers whose diverse stories of empowerment, often enlightening, sometimes funny, are nicely told in this book. Going through their biographies, it is possible to appreciate both the varieties in their upbringings and their many points of contact. Women astronauts come in two different flavors: those who always dreamed of going to space and those who discovered the possibility by chance, by reading a newspaper or listening to the radio. Sally Ride was a PhD student at Stanford when she read in the Stanford Daily that NASA was selecting scientists as Mission Specialists. Listening to the radio, Helen Sharman learned that a private consortium of UK industries was looking for a volunteer to fly to the Mir station, where she became the first British guest, indeed the first British astronaut, albeit a “private” one. Relaxing after a night of work in intensive care, Chiaki Mukai, a Japanese cardiovascular surgeon, saw an announcement and proceeded to become the first Japanese woman in space. Something similar happened in 2021 during the Super Bowl, when a peculiar commercial announced how Jared Isaacman intended to select a crew to fly with him on the first entirely private space mission. Sian Proctor did not see the announcement, but got interested by the people commenting on it on Twitter and decided to send her proposal to develop a space-related activity. She had unsuccessfully applied twice to become a NASA astronaut, but won the privilege to fly before her fellow candidates who had passed the NASA selection. Indeed, the four-person crew of the Inspiration4 mission had a perfect gender balance because, together with Proctor, Hayley Arceneaux, a cancer survivor with a prostatic limb, also flew into space. Arceneaux established two records: as well as being the youngest American astronaut, she was also the first person with disability to fly, showing that space is within reach for everyone. All in all, 2021 has been a very good year for women in space. The fresh start of suborbital space tourism, as well as the new openings to private astronauts, has marked a significant step forward. We have seen the fulfilment of Wally Funk’s dream. Sixty years after her unsuccessful attempt to be considered as a NASA candidate astronaut, she, at long last, has been able to float in space for few precious minutes. And the International Space Station was transformed into an orbiting studio to film the first actress performing in space. Quite a new way to take advantage of our orbiting outpost. Although numbers are growing, we are not yet anywhere near parity in space. Gender-related prejudices are hard to overcome. While training at Star City, Samantha Cristoforetti was given a pair of pink sneakers while her male

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colleagues got the usual blue ones. Elegantly, she said nothing, but could not help but wonder why. An unnecessary kindness? A childish joke? However, we are seeing improvements: 25% of the applications to the recent call for astronauts by the European Space Agency are from women. Clearly, getting an even number of applications from male and female candidates would be a much better starting point. However, to achieve this milestone it is first necessary to encourage more girls to become interested in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics disciplines, globally known as STEM. For this, the female astronauts are important role models to inspire girls. An astronaut-dressed Barbie doll, looking like Samantha Cristoforetti, has been produced precisely with the goal of helping to make science more familiar and friendly. STEM curricula have never been very popular amongst girls, usually owing to cultural prejudices that consider jobs in these fields to be unsuitable for women. Getting more girls engaged in science is a priority for the U.N.  Agenda for Sustainable Development. Indeed, in 2015, to foster gender equality and equal access to science, the United Nations General Assembly declared 11 February as the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Increasing the number of women in science would, hopefully, also increase the number of female Nobel Laureates, whose percentage is embarrassingly small, far smaller than that of women astronauts. Patrizia Caraveo Research Director at the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) Commendatore dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana Milano, Italy

Preface

During more than 60 years of human spaceflight, the culture among space agencies  – at least in Western countries  – has changed drastically, and has made significant progress from the long-standing “Right Stuff” stereotypes and prejudices to equal opportunities for women and minorities. NASA recently proclaimed that it would put the “first woman and the next man” on the Moon by 2024 (a date later pushed back to at least 2025). The agency has highlighted its commitment to gender equality by naming a team of nine men and nine women to its Artemis Mission to the Moon.

Stereotypical Beginnings When Valentina Tereshkova returned to Earth after her Vostok 6 spaceflight almost 60 years ago, Life magazine referred to her as a “blue-eyed blonde with a new hairdo” in its article titled “She Orbits Over the Sex Barrier”. One Texas newspaper came up with the headline: “Russian Blonde Spins around the Earth Toward Possible Rendezvous”, hinting at Tereshkova communicating in space with the Vostok 5 piloted by Valery Bykovsky. Other media described her as “a pleasant-looking, gray-eyed, athletic young woman with wavy, dark blond hair.” Twenty years later the first American female astronaut, Sally Ride, was subjected to questioning that none of her male colleagues had to endure. When she returned from her own historic mission, STS-7, someone tried to hand her a bouquet of roses, which she declined because she was not interested in being treated differently to the rest of the members of her crew. xi

xii Preface

America came to the game late in sending women into space, but certainly made up for lost time: as of August 2022, 65 of the 75 women who have managed to break through Earth’s atmosphere have been American. Today, when a female astronaut flies, we know that she is a test pilot, or a graduate in the Marine Corps, or a scientist. Her sex1 is no longer remarked upon, either by the general public or by the (western) space agencies, and she is treated as an astronaut who merely happens to be woman. The media no longer mentions her hair color or notices her physical attributes anymore. There are no differences between the training given to male or female astronauts, or in the responsibilities they are given on missions into space. In 2012, NASA’s Sunita Williams became only the second woman in history to command an International Space Station Expedition, and this was barely mentioned in the media. It is now more common for female astronauts to fly several times in space, or to fulfill leadership roles, though there is still a long way to go. In 2013, a NASA astronaut intake was equally split between men and women for the first time (four of each in the group of eight). The following NASA group, selected in 2017, included five women among the 12 candidates initially chosen (reduced to eleven when one man left before completing the training). Women also make up five of the 12 new astronaut candidates selected for NASA group 23, announced in December 2021. The two Canadian astronauts chosen in 2017 included one man and one woman, and one of the two new astronauts announced by the United Arab Emirates in April 2021 is also female. The 2022 ESA Astronaut selection, the first new ESA recruits in 13 years attracted 22,523 valid astronaut applications from across its member states. The selection recruited 17 new astronauts. Two of the five career astronauts are women, and there are six females among the 11 astronaut reserves. (The group also includes one astronaut with a physical disability, who will participate in the Parastronaut Feasibility Project as part of ESA’s commitment to enhance inclusiveness and fair representation.) But such inclusivity is not necessarily the case in other countries. All eight of the Russian cosmonauts chosen in 2018 were men, while there is only one woman (whose name is still a secret) among the 18 new taikonauts of the third Chinese group announced on October 1, 2020.  There is often some confusion in this terminology. So far, when NASA has sent individuals into space, it has identified their “Sex” as “the classification of male or female according to an individual’s genetics,” as clarified in a NASA workshop titled “The Impact of Sex and Gender on Adaptation to Space”. In the same context “Gender” is defined as “a person’s self-representation as male or female, based upon social interactions” (see https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/library/events/gender-workshop.html). In their classification, NASA reports make no reference to an individual’s gender self-representation, or to the related matter of sexual orientation – i.e., which sex(es) an individual finds attractive. 1

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 rejudices, Stereotypes, or P Gender-Diverse Obsession? By August 2022, 75 women had flown out of a total of 623 space travelers. Female representation has been slowly but steadily increasing and is now around 11 percent of the total. Though female astronauts still remain in the minority, they are no longer seen as a rarity or an exception. There are currently 15 NASA female astronauts (with three more in training) out of the 44 active astronauts eligible for flight assignment in the Astronaut Corps. That equates to over 34 percent of the total, or one woman in every three astronauts. That is a significant representation, if we consider that, for example, there is one woman in seven in the Police Corps, and one in twenty in the Air Force, in the United States. But this percentage also reflects the present reality of our Western society, in which there are some long-recognized gender imbalances that are part of wider issues that cannot be addressed here2. Research into this phenomenon attributes the continuing gap to the power of stereotyping and to the lack of role models for young children. Encouraging women to pursue STEM careers starts when they are very young, as former astronaut Bonnie Dunbar3 has confirmed: “[My parents] encouraged us [Dunbar and her siblings] to take whatever God-­ given talents we had and use them. I came out of that environment thinking I could do just as well as anyone else… I was very, very fortunate. People gave me good advice at the right time. I had a very supportive family”.

By the time children reach college level, it is much more difficult to sway them toward a new career track. At present, the percentage of female students who select STEM-related fields in higher education remains small in some areas. Women represent 47 percent of the students in biology and 42 percent in chemistry, but two of the most lucrative STEM fields – engineering and computer science – remain heavily male dominated. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 20194, only 21 percent of engineering majors and 19 percent of computer science majors in the United States were women.  See, for example, Corbett, C.. Hill, C., “Solving the Equation - The Variables for Women’s Success in Engineering and Computing”, AAUW 2015, XI + 142 pages, and Gruen, D., Ibarra, D., Ramos, G., “Bridging the digital gender divide”, OECD 2018, 150 pages. 3  See Chapter 2, Bonnie J. Dunbar 4  U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employed persons by detailed occupation, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity,” Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey, 2019. Table 11, 2

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The language used also deserves special attention in this conversation, though it has sometimes perhaps attracted too much attention. In the early 2000s, spirited discussion about the inclusivity of language led NASA to update its style guidelines to include a section on more neutral language and terminology, removing “controversial” expressions such as “manned spaceflight” and suggesting that “human spaceflight”, or “piloted spaceflight”, or “crewed spaceflight” were preferable. In explaining the move away from the use of “manned”, the report said: “Even though that language is meant to represent all of humanity, it does conjure up images of men being the main participants.”5 True parity between men and women in space still remains far away in terms of numbers, but at the present time it is not so much a question of acceptance into the professional arena but rather a consequence of societal transformation, which takes place much more slowly and at a larger scale. As former astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper said:6 “There were more women in every aspect of spaceflight at NASA than in my time in the Navy or even if I look back when I went to school at MIT. I don’t think it’s just indicative of the time change either. I think it’s because at NASA they really wanted the space programs to look like a slice of America. There were many times in the Navy when I looked around and saw no other women in my group. During my time at MIT, I don’t think we had more than 20 percent women in any one of my classes or labs. I grew up with four brothers, no sisters, so this never really bothered me. My role models and mentors were predominately male because there just weren’t that many females in my chosen path. In my dive school class of 27, there were just two women, and two women in the following class that went through. When I transitioned to the fleet and did salvage work, I was the first female Engineering Duty Officer (EDO) diver. Basically, all of my mentors were male, and I never looked at it as a gender issue”.

Yet sometimes, efforts to establish the right balance can also meet with disapproval: when the first all-female spacewalk was postponed7, former astronaut Marsha Ivins spoke out against what she called NASA’s “obsession with gender-­diverse space crews.”

 “The exception to the rule is when referring to the Manned Spaceflight Center (also known as the Manned Spacecraft Center), the predecessor of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, or to any other historical program name or official title that included “manned” (e.g., Associate Administrator for Manned Spaceflight).” (https://history.nasa.gov/styleguide.html) 6  See Chapter 6, Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper. 7  See Chapter 6, Ann McClain. 5

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What of the Near Future? NASA’s Artemis program (named after Apollo’s twin sister, goddess of the Moon in Greek mythology) aims to send women to the Moon in the next few years. Several female astronauts are now preparing to take their first flight beyond Earth. In the few studies that have been done to identify factors in the success or failure of long-duration missions, scientists observed teams that experienced stressful Earth analogs, such as desert survival treks, polar expeditions, and Antarctic over-winters. They found that men tended to excel in shorter-term, goal-oriented situations, while women were better in longer-​term, habitation-­ type circumstances.8 As our global culture slowly changes, perhaps in the near future a separate accounting for “women in space” will no longer be necessary. Villarbasse, Italy December 2021

Umberto Cavallaro

 Drake, N. “Let’s Send Only Women to Space”, National Geographic n° 236 (July 2019) p. 17-20

8

Introduction

Women in Space: A Soviet Record “Hey sky, take off your hat, I’m coming”! So shouted the euphoric Valentina Tereshkova, the first Soviet female cosmonaut, at 12:29 on June 16, 1963, while blasting off from Baikonur to begin her ride to the stars. At the height of the Cold War, the requirements for Soviet missions were dictated by state propaganda: what was important was to be the first in everything and at any cost. Tereshkova’s 48 orbits around Earth received huge media coverage and she became both an instant celebrity throughout the world and the new symbol of Soviet progress in space. But it would be 19 years before another woman flew in space, and once again it was a Soviet cosmonaut: Svetlana Savitskaya. In the late 1970s, with the progressive deterioration of East-West relations, political scenarios and the will to excel of the Soviet Union once again played a prominent role, with the desire to reaffirm Soviet superiority in space at a time when the USA had launched the new Space Shuttle program and rumors began to circulate that NASA would be opening its selection process to include the first female astronauts. In April 1982, as Sally Ride was assigned to her first Shuttle mission scheduled for the following year, the name Svetlana Savitskaya appeared almost magically in the crew of the Soyuz T-7 mission. The launch of the Soyuz was planned for that August, so Savitskaya would fly before Sally Ride. As in the days of the Cold War, the competition between the two superpowers was again reflected in space. The Soviets orchestrated their missions to overshadow the pre-announced flights of the six female “Shuttlenauts.” xvii

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Propaganda also played a role in Savitskaya’s second assignment, to Soyuz T-12, as David Shayler and Ian Moule outlined.9 Her appointment was announced in December 1983, three weeks after NASA had officially announced the crew of the STS-41G mission. The American crew included Kathy Sullivan, who was due to perform the first “spacewalk” by a woman, and Sally Ride, scheduled to be the first female astronaut to fly into space twice. Valentin Glushko, the former designer of rocket engines who at this point was head of the Soviet space agency, immediately decided to assign Savitskaya to another flight and added an extravehicular activity (EVA, or spacewalk) to her mission. Thus, the Soviets were once again able to upstage the Americans and claim two more space “firsts.” Not that her assignment was entirely straightforward, however. To carry out his “women in space” program, Glushko had to fight fiercely against Georgi Beregovoi, the director of the Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, who used his authority to end the training program of the female cosmonauts on two occasions. Both times, the program was only restored after an arduous struggle between Glushko and Beregovoi.10 The emancipation of women was promoted as a cornerstone of communist propaganda. In all countries of the Soviet bloc, women could study, work, have abortions, and divorce. Women were also admitted into the armed forces (especially in aviation), and this is perhaps the key point. This inclusion of women in the armed forces (who ran the Soviet space program) was the bridge that also allowed them to be admitted into the Soviet space program in the pioneering era, well in advance of their American competitors. In fact, women were well established in aviation in Russia following World War II. Despite this, however, the Soviet Union failed to build on that promising start and, in almost 60 years, only four of the 20 women who have trained as Russian or Soviet cosmonauts have followed Tereshkova and flown into space. A fifth female  – though not a career cosmonaut  – followed recently, in a renewed atmosphere of a “space race”, when actress Yulia Peresild flew to the ISS in October 2021 to shoot scenes for a movie. But enabling progress requires far more than giving one woman a rare opportunity. During the debate following a crowded conference that I attended in Berlin in 2013 – celebrating the 50th anniversary Tereshkova’s mission – in response

 Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space—Following Valentina, p.  219. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). 10  Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 45, 59–60. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). 9

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to the question of why, having sent the first woman to orbit Earth 50 years ago, Russia has subsequently sent so few others, Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Kovalyonok jokingly replied that Russian spacecraft had fewer seats than the American Shuttle and that space was a male domain. The joke – which continues to be repeated – says a lot about the views of the two Cold War ideologies and the distance that remains between them. The Soviets had always accepted, even depended on, women in the workplace, but acceptance did not necessarily translate into respect, much less equality. The Soviet reluctance to fly women was also probably concerned with competition for places. There have always been fewer cosmonauts than astronauts, and fewer seats available for them to fly. With only three seats on each Soyuz, male cosmonauts have been reluctant to relinquish their few places to women.11 “Sexism has played an important role in limiting the number of Russian female cosmonauts”, said Elena Dobrokvashina12 in an interview with the Russian agency, RIA Novosti, during the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Tereshkova’s flight. In the 1980s, Dobrokvashina was selected along with Svetlana Savitskaya to train as a cosmonaut and had followed the same training program all the way, but never had the chance to fly in space. She said: “The Russian [male] cosmonauts are scared that if women were to go into space, their aura of heroism would be lost. It’s part of our mentality. Although they always say that everyone –men and women – [are] equal, it’s no secret that we live in a man’s world, where high-profile professions are reserved to them”.

The chronicles of the period also reflected the opposition that highly decorated cosmonaut Valeri V. Ryumin – a veteran of three Soviet flights totaling 362 days in space – showed for the space missions of his young wife, Elena Kondakova.13

11  Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, p. 137. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). 12  Interview by Makarov, A. “Sexism Limited Female Space Flights,” en.ria.ru (RIA Novosti, June 14, 2013). 13  Kevles, Almost Heaven, pp. 148–149.

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The Right Stuff14 but the Wrong Sex The story of the Mercury 13 (see sidebar: Mercury 13) shows that while the cultural context may have been different in the United States in the 1960s, the time was not yet ripe for American women to venture into space either. Gender-independent access to the final frontier was a long process that would take another couple of decades. During World War II, it seemed that force majeure had opened up new opportunities for women when they were called to the fields and factories to replace the men who had gone to the front. But these doors were closed again after the war when the situation returned to normal. Then, at the turn of the 1960s, 13 talented American women pilots successfully underwent – more or less in secret – the same tests as the original Mercury Seven endured (in some cases, they also outshone and outperformed the male astronauts – 68 percent of the women passed with “no medical reservations”, compared with 56 percent of the men)15. Despite their excellent credentials, however (Jerrie Cobb, who had started flying at 12, had logged 10,000 hours piloting a huge variety of aircraft, twice that accumulated by the most experienced Mercury astronaut, John Glenn), for NASA, the social role of the woman was the stereotype masterfully portrayed by LIFE magazine, which had the exclusive rights on the astronauts and their families: that of the dutiful wife who took care of the house and looked after the children, quietly awaiting the return of her astronaut husband.16 The fact that the 13 women – known today as the “Mercury 13” – never received (nor agreed to) a headline-grabbing designation contributed for a long time to their media (and historical) invisibility. The name itself, “Mercury 13,” was suggested only in 1995 by the Hollywood producer, James Cross.17 Although some of them knew each other, the 13 women never all met together. Most had never met at all before 1986 when one of them, Beatrice Steadman, convened them to celebrate their 25th anniversary. Not all of them attended. In 1994, Gene Nora Jessen, another of the “Mercury 13” and a former president of “Ninety-Nine,” the international organization of women pilots, tried again. This time, it was to celebrate an important event: the appointment by NASA of its first female pilot astronaut, Eileen Collins, who  This expression became a common saying after the publication of the successful book The Right Stuff in 1979, in which Tom Wolfe celebrated the famed Mercury astronauts. 15  More recently, Cady Coleman recalled that, while she was at Wright-Patterson, she volunteered to be a subject in a centrifuge program at the Crew Systems Directorate in the nearby Armstrong Aeromedical Laboratory, which was performing medical trials for NASA. Coleman said: “On several occasions, the five women who were part of the 20-people volunteer panel outperformed the men”. 16  Kevles, Almost Heaven, p. 47. 17  Shayler and Moule, Women in Space, p. 92. 14

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would go on to become the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle. Nine of the 13 turned up, and seven of them attended the Kennedy Space Center for Collins’s first launch the following year. Eight of them returned four years later, in July 1999, to witness the launch when Collins became the first female commander of a spaceflight.18 America was gripped by space fever in the early 1960s, and the news that women were undergoing astronaut tests soon leaked out. In a conference held in August 1960 at the Space and Naval Medicine Congress in Stockholm, Dr. William R. Lovelace II presented a paper on the performance of the award-­ winning pilot Geraldyn “Jerrie” Cobb, arguing that “females require less oxygen than the average male, and women’s reproductive organs, being internal, are less vulnerable to radiation.” This last point resounded promisingly with the assembled physicians in 1960, as many people were sensitive to the issue of radioactive fallout from nuclear testing.19 The news immediately spread and, in the USA, the Washington Post ran a story entitled “Woman qualifies for space training” on August 19, 1960. Jerry Cobb became an instant celebrity, but in their stories, reporters coined many new words to describe her: astro-nette, feminaut, astronautrix, space-girl…20 The term “astronaut”, it seemed, carried such a masculine connotation that even a potential female candidate for space travel necessitated a new definition.21 By mid-1961, two Americans had flown in space, in suborbital flights of only a few minutes each. This provided too little data about what was really important from a physical point of view, so candidates had to endure every possible medical test, however uncomfortable. Donald Kilgore, who was conducting the tests at the Lovelace Clinic, reported that women performed very well, and that they complained far less than their male colleagues did: “Women are more tolerant of pain and discomfort than men”. But this door, too, was firmly closed in September 1961, two days before most of them were scheduled to start their final tests at Pensacola military naval base, when a telegram from Lovelace arrived announcing the suspension of all tests with immediate effect. Despite Janey Hart, one of the “Mercury 13”, being the wife of a powerful senator from Michigan, and Jerrie Cobb – the first and only female astronaut candidate to complete all the tests successfully – knowing many of the big names in government, the women did not succeed in making contact with President John F.  Kennedy. Cobb did manage to meet with Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had heavily promoted the space race in the late 1950s. As she later reported in an interview, Johnson, with some embarrassment, told her:  Bush Gibson, Women in Space, pp. 10–11.  Kevles, Almost Heaven, p. 11. 20  Bush Gibson, Women in Space, p. 21. 21  Weitekamp, M.A. Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America’s First Women in Space Program, p. 78, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD (2006). 18 19

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“If we let you or other women into the space program, we’d have to let blacks in, we’d have to let Mexican-Americans in, we’d have to let every minority in, and we just can’t do it”. 22 Mercury 13 The Mercury 13 program was almost ambiguous and covert, begun on the initiative of some researchers at the Lovelace Foundation who had carried out the medical tests for the selection of the male Mercury candidates. In 1961, 25 female pilots went through many of the same three-phase tests (physical, psychological, and space simulation) as the Mercury astronauts. Scientists were interested in testing the women because they were smaller and lighter than men, weighed less, and breathed less oxygen, and they speculated that women might make good occupants for cramped space vehicles. Thirteen of the test subjects passed the exams, soon after the original Mercury Seven astronauts. The project was far from being sponsored by NASA and had no official status. It was all based on a “bootleg” effort, the private project of a few of the medical experts who had tested the Mercury astronaut candidates and had hinted that, if women did especially well, then NASA might consider some of them as candidate astronauts.23 In fact, this would never have crossed the minds of NASA managers. First of all, social attitudes of the time would have frowned upon the introduction of women in the space program. Mostly, however, NASA had already decided that its candidates needed to meet some quite specific qualifications. Having prepared a draft public tender to recruit the first astronauts, NASA had second thoughts and, with the approval of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, decided to select candidates for the Mercury program only from the ranks of military test pilots. Spaceflight, especially in the Mercury spacecraft, was clearly not going to be much like flying an airplane, but test pilots in particular were already doing vaguely similar work: high-risk testing of new advanced airplanes. They were physically fit, they already had NOS security clearances, and many of them had strong engineering backgrounds. Most importantly, there were only a few hundred active-duty military test pilots and the first stage of the selection process could be completed by just going through their military records. This looked a lot easier than sorting through thousands of applications from the public. When President Eisenhower approved this pragmatic change of plans at the end of 1958 there were no female military test pilots, so the question of whether to accept women as astronauts was academic. The good test results obtained at the Lovelace Foundation project were irrelevant and the exclusion of women from the early space program was mostly an

 “Women Astronaut Predicted,” New York Times (June 26, 1962), quoted in Bush Gibson, Women in Space, p. 33. 23  Spencer, H. “Why NASA Barred Women Astronauts,” newscientist.com (October 8, 2009). In her article “The Gendered Anniversary: The Story of America’s Women Astronauts” (p. 153), wrote: In making the arrangements for all of their tests, Randy Lovelace had been deliberately vague and ambiguous with the women about their chances to move on to NASA. Why he chose that approach it remains a mystery. (Lovelace and his wife died in a private plane crash in 1965.) But it is realistic to assume that because NASA had not given him any encouragement or financial backing for the experiment, he made his message to potential test subjects purposefully unclear to prevent the women from rejecting the invitation to participate as a frivolity and a waste of time.” 22

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accidental side effect of NASA’s selection criteria: there were no female military test pilots, so there would be no female astronaut selections. The “Mercury 13 Program” never involved NASA and, in NASA’s History Program, is referred to as “Lovelace’s Woman in Space Program.”24 When the medical testing of women started to attract too much media attention, pragmatically, the project was abruptly ended. In context, it was unlikely that NASA could accept female astronauts as equal partners to the male astronauts, while the political token of launching the first woman in space was also not in NASA’s vision. That idea died completely when the Soviets launched Valentina Tereshkova in 1963. As later groups of astronauts were recruited for Gemini and Apollo, the criteria were eased, but the choice of military test pilots as the first astronauts had set the pattern. After all, nobody thought that launching the second woman in space was a worthwhile political gesture. No gender requirement was explicitly indicated in the subsequent selections of “scientist-astronauts” in 1965 and 1967, but the applicants were informed that they had to attend a US Air Force jet pilot training course (and the USAF only began recruiting women in 1976). A few women applied but were rejected in the preselection phase, so the problem was sidestepped once again.

FLATs (Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees) NASA continued to refuse to consider the idea of including women in the space program until the late 1970s. President Eisenhower’s original decision to choose the astronauts from the ranks of the best military test pilots had limited the selection to only a small minority of white men, without worrying whether this would threaten some basic principles of democracy. Many complained that, in setting aside the “Mercury 13” operation, America had missed an incredible opportunity and a “potential check mark in the ‘win’ column for the United States against the Soviet Union in the space race.”25 In fact, while some of the best test pilots at Edwards Test Pilot School – proud soldiers with crew cuts – were reluctant, in their arrogance, to become “spam in a can” in a Mercury capsule, most of the first 73 astronauts selected between 1959 and 1967 were military or former military – typical WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) – and the space program remained a men’s club for those with the “Right Stuff.” At that time, women were not able to fill the roles that they do today in the US armed forces, and this is why they were not even considered as astronauts. For decades, no one ever questioned the role of men in space or men on the Moon, long before Armstrong set foot there. President Kennedy’s statement in 1961 solemnly pledged America would put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade and return him safely to Earth. Modern-day sensibilities

24 25

 http://history.nasa.gov/flats.html.  Foster, Amy. “The Gendered Anniversary: The Story of America’s Women Astronauts.” P. 153.

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were virtually unheard of at that time and no one objected that Kennedy had not spoken about putting a person on the Moon or talked about his/her healthy return. When people thought about astronauts, they simply thought of men, and perhaps WASPs. In 2008, a letter written on February 26, 1962 (a few days after the historic mission of John Glenn), by O.B. Lloyd – who was NASA Director of Public Information from 1961 to 1979  – appeared on the Reddit.com website in response to a letter from an unidentified “Miss Kelly” of the University of Connecticut. In a few words, he bluntly stated that NASA had no place for women: “Your offer to go on a space mission is commendable and we are very grateful. This is to advise that we have no existing program concerning women astronauts nor do we contemplate any such plan”. Only 16 months after this rejection, the USSR gave the USA a more resounding slap and grasped another record: having sent the first man into space in 1961, they sent the first woman into space two years later (see sidebar: Every Country Has Its Own Astronauts). During her presidential campaign of 2009, Hillary Clinton claimed that she had received a similar rejection letter from NASA (although it has been highlighted that there is no record of such letter, and the political context in which this claim was disclosed would raise some doubt).26 Traditionally, in the USA, women could expect to work as teachers, nurses, or secretaries at best, without aspiring to important positions, and were almost totally excluded from the “STEM careers” dealing with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. NASA’s attitude eventually had to change, however, albeit very slowly. In 1970, former Mercury Seven astronaut Deke Slayton, the legendary “unfathomable” boss of the Astronaut Office, wrote to Marsha Ivins, who would later become an astronaut herself (see Chapter 4), saying: “I do not envision needing additional astronauts for a number of years”, and, in this, he was right: the next selection was made in 1978. But he did add: “The exact time when we would seriously consider women is indefinite, but I am sure it is inevitable” (Fig. 1). Slayton concluded: “We will publicly announce a program for the selection of additional astronauts, and if you meet the criteria you should apply at that time”.

26  Oberg, J. “‘We Don’t Take Girls’: Hillary Clinton and Her NASA Letter,” thespacereview.com (June 10, 2013).

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Fig. 1.  Marsha Ivins’ letter from Deke Slayton. This letter was found in the JSC History Collection, UHCL Archives (University of Houston-Clear Lake), and was first published on neumannlib.blogspot.it in October 2011. The letter was in reply to the letter sent by Marsha Ivins (see Chapter 4). Figure Credit: ©UCHL Archives. Reproduced with permissions. All rights reserved.

Every Country Has Its Own Astronauts The term “astronaut” derives from the Greek words ástron (ἄστρον), meaning “star,” and nautes (ναύτης), meaning “sailor.” The first known use of the term “astronaut” was in Voyage dans la Lune (Journey to the Moon, 1657) by French poet, Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655).27 The term is referred to as a spacecraft in the science fiction novel Across the Zodiac by Percy Greg (UK, 1880). In the modern sense, it is found in Les Navigateurs de l’Infini by Josephi Henri Honoré Boex (Belgium, 1925). The word may likely have been inspired from the 1897 science fiction novel Auf Zwei Planeten (On Two Planets) by the German philosopher and writer, Kurd Laßwitz, which refers to the first encounter with a highly advanced Martian civilization. The term itself may have originated from “aeronaut,” an older term for an air traveler, which was first applied to balloonists in 1784. One of the first uses of the term “astronaut” to refer to a human traveling in space was in Neil R.  Jones’s short story The Death’s Head Meteor28 published in 1930  in the

 Wells, H.T.; Whiteley, S.H.; Karegeannes, C.E. “Origin of NASA Names,” The NASA History Series, SP-4402, Washington (1976), p. 200. 28  Neil R. Jones is a little remembered American author who worked for the state of New York. The short story may be found online, see, e,g, https://fantasticworlds-jordan179.blogspot.com/2012/08/reprintdeaths-head-meteor-1930-by-neil.html. An accurate reproduction of the text with original drawings can be found at http://famous-and-forgotten-fiction.com/writings/jones-stories/jones-the-deaths-headmeteor.html 27

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American science fiction magazine Air Wonder Stories. An early use in a non-­ fiction publication is Eric Frank Russell’s poem The Astronaut, published in November 1934 in the Bulletin of the British Interplanetary Society. The term was used liberally during the infancy of the rocket plane, as in a New York Times article that opens with this sentence: “Evidently the astronauts who dreamed of kicking themselves from the Earth to Mars were not mad”.29 The term then became part of the official name of the International Astronautical Federation, which has held a yearly International Astronautical Congress since 1950. The term and concept also became popular thanks to Man in Space, created by Walt Disney in 1954. The term came into mainstream use at the beginning of the 1960s when it was adopted by NASA, and eventually by the European Space Agency (ESA), though at the beginning it was not welcomed very much by the “Mercury Seven” astronauts who, as test pilots, preferred the term “spacecraft pilot.” According to journalist James Scheftern,30 the name was picked by Bob Gilruth (the first director of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center, later renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center). The Russians also diversified in this respect from their American competitors and coined their own term for their space explorers: “cosmonaut ” ( Кocмoнaвт). The word “кocмoc” (from Greek κόσμoς) has a wider meaning encompassing the concepts of “universe,” “order,” and “organization.” Whereas “star” is imbued in classical Western mythology with references to “divine” and “celestial,” the Soviet “кocмoc” is more secular and refers to the order of the universe. To refer to a Chinese space explorer, in the West, we use the phrase “taikonaut,” a hybrid expression combining the Greek word nautes and the Chinese tàikōng (meaning “space”). It was first used in 1998 by a Malaysian newsgroup. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, 太空人 (tài kōng rén meaning “spaceman,” a concept very similar to “astronaut”) is often used. This word is not used in China, however, where they instead prefer the term 航天亮 (háng tiān yuan, meaning “space navigating personnel”) when referring to Chinese space travelers and the term 宇航亮 (yu háng yuán, with very similar meaning) when they refer to American astronauts or Russian/Soviet cosmonauts. While no nation other than Russia (previously the Soviet Union), the USA, and China has launched a manned spacecraft, several other nations have sent people into space in cooperation with one of these countries. Other synonyms for “astronaut” have entered occasional usage in the different countries. In France, for example, the term Spationaut or “space sailor,” encapsulating the Latin term Spatium, is often used. It is easy to predict that more terms with similar meanings will appear in the future, such as the term Vyomanaut – coined from the Sanskrit word for space – that has already begun circulating in India. The media have occasionally used terms like “Austronaut” during the flight of Franz Viehböck, the first Austrian astronaut, or “Afronaut” during the flight of Mark Shuttleworth, the South African billionaire who was the first astronaut from that continent. With the rise in space tourism, NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency agreed to use the term “spaceflight participant” – which was applied for the first time for the “Teacher in Space” mission – to distinguish such space travelers from

 “The Rocket Plane Is Here,” New York Times (January 8, 1944), 12—quoted in Dickson, P. A Dictionary of the Space Age, pp. 26–27. Johns Hopkins University Press (2009). 30  Quoted in ibid., at p. 27 29

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their professional astronauts. The same name was eventually even adopted by Russians, who translated it as Учacтник кocмичecкoгo пoлётa (učastnik kosmičeskogo polyota). In the USA, a candidate becomes an “astronaut” after completing 20 months of basic training, while in Russia he/she only becomes a “cosmonaut” after his/ her first successful spaceflight of at least one orbit. It is the same in China.

NASA Opens to Women Although NASA was formally established as a civilian agency, it suffered an internal conflict with its military roots from the beginning. Not only were the astronauts military, but many of the administrative and technical staff and their bosses were also military or former military. So was the language (an astronaut went on a “mission”) and the command chain. The organization and habits were also borrowed from the military world. The US Navy began to accept women for their first pilot training courses in 1974. The US Air Force opened up to women two years later, in 1976, but did not accept women as test pilots until 1988. Once aviation became more readily available to women, even NASA threw in the towel. On the one hand, the agency had to take into account the Equal Employment Opportunity Amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was enacted on March 24, 1972 and put into place nondiscrimination regulations. On the other hand, the new Space Shuttle would provide opportunities for a different breed of astronaut, not just fighter pilots. The Mission Specialist category was introduced; a researcher with a deep technical or scientific background. At this point, there was no reason exclude women from selection, particularly since the percentage of women with technical and scientific university education was growing significantly in the late 1970s. In its 1977 call for astronauts, ten years after the previous one, NASA finally opened the Astronaut Corps to women (and ethnic minorities) – overcoming substantial internal resistance to do so. One of the fiercest opponents of the new policy was Christopher C. Kraft, the Director of Human Flight at the NASA Manned Space Center in Houston. The authoritarian Kraft, together with Deke Slayton, had been one of the stars of NASA’s golden age in the days of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, and was the architect of the Mission Control Center.31 Ironically, it fell to Kraft to manage the new deal and to pave the way for the selection of women at NASA.  During the NASA golden age, as head of the Mission Control Center, Chris Kraft played an important role in deciding who would not fly anymore. The exclusion of Carpenter from future missions and of the entire crew of Apollo 7 was attributed to him, as reported by Walter Cunningham in his book The AllAmerican Boys, p. 191. iBooks, Inc., New York (2004). 31

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In response to the much-anticipated announcement for new astronauts, NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., expected to receive a flood of applications from female candidates, but after six months there had been only 93. At every astronaut public appearance up to this point, people had wondered why the space program did not include women and minorities. Now that NASA actually wanted to recruit them, it seemed that neither women nor minorities had come forward. It was embarrassing. The public, especially women, had lost interest in the space program, so NASA headquarters asked Kraft to develop a plan to recruit women and minorities. He had to establish an Astronaut Selection Board and the first suggestion he got from this committee was “not to ask female candidates questions that were not asked of men,” especially questions about their marital status or family plans: the tactics of recruitment were targeted by feminists. In an effort to drum up interest in the Astronaut Corps among “non-­ traditional” applicants, the committee sent thousands of letters to various public agencies, and traveled to university faculties to meet with students in science and engineering departments. They delivered special addresses to potential female applicants, targeting technical and scientific associations, especially where female scientists and engineers were working, such as the Society for Women Engineers (SWE). Kraft also asked for help from Nichelle Nichols, the successful African-American actress who had played Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek, with NASA awarding US$49,900 to her production agency, Women in Motion, to publicize the new campaign. After six months, applications had increased from 1,500 to 8,000, including 1,000 from women. From these, for the first time, NASA selected “nine strange people”, including three black astronauts and the first six women ever to be integrated into its Astronaut Corps (Fig. 2). By the time the women arrived at NASA, the Mercury astronauts had gone, but several Gemini and Apollo astronauts were still there and crowds of girls would run after them as if they were movie stars. The women found a different welcome, with no crowds of boys chasing them. In fact, the fatal attraction of the male astronauts with girls did not work on the female astronauts with respect to boys, who instead seemed to suffer from what Mary Cleave called “PWS” (Professional Women Syndrome): men who were not astronauts saw them as unapproachable and were scared off.32 The women found it easier to socialize with their fellow astronauts, though not all of them. As Carolyn Huntoon, the “mother hen” for the women of Group VIII recalled, some of the old guard greeted them well, while others  Kevles, Almost Heaven, p. 71.

32

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Fig. 2.  The first six women astronauts selected by NASA. From left to right: Shannon Lucid, Rhea Seddon, Kathy Sullivan, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, and Sally Ride. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

viewed them with annoyance, and experienced a number of difficulties in dealing with the incoming women astronaut candidates. Rhea Seddon remembered: “They thought we would not be able to do things well and thought we [had taken] the place of some other guy. On the other hand, some did not even know how to deal well with women who came to be at their same level”.

At first, the newcomers also had to face the hostility of the old astronauts’ wives. These were military wives who, as part of their status, had accepted remaining in the background and playing a supporting role. When Patricia Collins, wife of Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, was offered a regular column in a local newspaper, NASA recommended – or rather, ordered – that she should not accept. These wives felt threatened by the presence of women who would now be training, working, and flying with their husbands at the same level (especially considering the unruly reputation that had always accompanied some of those men).33  One of the most realistic and truthful testimonies of the atmosphere at the NASA Astronaut Corps during the Gemini and Apollo era is found in the aforementioned book by Walter Cunningham, The All-American Boys, which was judged by Los Angeles Times as “the best of all astronaut books.” 33

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NASA’s management also found it hard to deal with some new situations, as Rhea Seddon, the first astronaut to become pregnant, recalls when she and her husband, fellow astronaut Hoot Gibson, went to announce the news to her bosses: “I didn’t want to be held back on jobs or flight assignments. We went to tell the chief of the Astronaut Office, John Young, and he didn’t seem to know what to say except congratulations. We talked to Mr. [George] Abbey, the head of Flight Operations, and got his usual taciturn response. We decided there might be outside questions about it, so we also talked with our friend and Center Director Dr. Chris Kraft. He seemed pleased and comfortable with my continuing my current career path. We left their offices feeling like: ‘No sweat, they aren’t worried.’ Almost before I could get back to my office, my phone started ringing. The Flight Medicine Clinic called to tell me no more T-38 flying if I was pregnant.” 34

The Long Road to Integration in the East Leaving for Star City in the early 1990s to train for the Shuttle-Mir program, the Americans noticed a cultural division between Russian men and Russian women that reminded them of what had happened in the USA a generation before. On board Mir in the 1990s, there was no great gender discrimination between Russian men and foreign women, but there was a marked division between Russians: male cosmonauts never had high opinions of their female counterparts. Cosmonauts at Star City preferred not to comment on the performance of Valentina Tereshkova, whom they felt was an embarrassing case. Glushko himself did all he could to keep her away from the flight list. When Glushko – already an honorary member of the powerful Central Committee of the Communist Party – took over the reins of NPO Energia in 1974, he wanted to overturn Soviet policy on women in space. In search of new headlines, he wanted to have an all-female crew and started a complex selection for ten candidate female cosmonauts. But he did not want to have to deal with Tereshkova or any of the other women of her era again, so he reduced the maximum age qualification to 33 years. “Tereshkova,” he diplomatically asserted, “is a national asset; flying into space is risky. We must protect her. It’s better that the risk is taken by someone else”. For her part, Tereshkova, who wanted to return to space, showed little empathy for the new class of female cosmonauts: she never paid them a visit

 Seddon, R. Go for Orbit, p. 133. Your Space Press, Murfreesboro, TN (2015).

34

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during their training and did not attend the launch of Svetlana Savitskaya. The official reason for her absence was “due to illness.” At Star City, they even remembered conflicts between Svetlana Savitskaya and her Salyut 7 colleagues, and disagreements between Elena Kondakova and her Mir crew. Prior to Elena Serova’s mission in 2014, only three of the 19 female cosmonauts who had completed all of the rigorous training had actually flown in space in over 50 years. The Russian program, like its male cosmonauts, did not have high opinion of its females.35 Nor did the Soviet female cosmonauts show much appreciation for each other. The relationship between Savitskaya and Tereshkova has already been mentioned, while Elena Kondakova is also very judgmental of Savitskaya, whom she condemns for her “typical American attitude” and for her determination to do everything a man could do on the International Space Station (ISS)  – an “attitude that caused much misunderstanding on Mir.” Kondakova said: “In summary – strong personality but lack of diplomacy. Savitskaya is a good pilot and a good engineer. Nothing to complain about her technical expertise. But when working with men was a typical case of ‘diamond cut diamond’. She wanted to have more responsibilities than men were willing to grant her. One of the most important things in space is to be able to find a compromise.”36

The Soviet cosmonauts used to treat their women in one way and foreign women – whose countries had paid for the trip – as anyone would treat valued customers. Or at least that is how it happened in space. On the ground, in Star City, more than one had experiences that were not exactly comforting. American Bonnie Dunbar, suddenly thrown into a completely different culture, experienced at first hand the aversion of the Russian space environment towards women. She persevered for over a year, and at the final party held at Star City, she remembers: “Jurij Kargapolov, the head of training there, who had been in charge of training and had been hardest on me in the previous twelve months, got up and, looking at me, devoted me a toast for my perseverance. Then General Genibechov came up to me afterward and said ‘You know, you American women are tough! We would like to have you fly a long-duration mission with us anytime’! … I was

35 36

 Pultarova, T. “Much Ado about Liu Yang,” spacesafetymagazine.com (June 21, 2012).  Kevles, Almost Heaven, pp. 148–149.

xxxii Introduction

glad because, apart from anything else, I had done what I had set to do, which was to finish my job… and who knows maybe they would think a little bit differently even about women in their program!” 37

Full Integration in the West Today, in the Western world, a woman in space has become almost routine – at least far as confrontation with a hostile and risky environment like space can be considered “routine.” Women are now fully integrated as ordinary members of this out-of-the-ordinary club that is the Astronaut Corps. As pilots, doctors, scientists, engineers, single, married, divorced, mothers, they have all tried to reconcile the demands of work with those of family. Some have succeeded better than others, more or less as happens to everybody. Payload Specialist, Mission Specialist, Flight Engineer, Pilot Commander, Mission Commander, Head of the Astronaut Office: there is no position that NASA’s female astronauts have not occupied in recent years, either on orbit in the Space Shuttle and on the ISS, or on Earth within NASA’s organization. Even after the end of the Shuttle era, with the number of astronauts going into space having again decreased, every woman who launches on a mission is now simply mentioned together with her colleagues as an “astronaut,” not as a “woman astronaut.” The launch of a woman into space no longer makes headline news and they have been fully integrated into the space program. If they are to make future headlines purely from the perspective of being a woman, it is most likely to be for milestones such as the first to land on the Moon or Mars, as happened with the first all-female spacewalk in 2019. Men and women work together on the ISS with interchangeable roles: there is no difference in their training, or operations, or in responsibility. 38 Six American female astronauts have flown in space five times: Shannon Lucid, Bonnie Dunbar, Marsha Ivins, Tamara Jernigan, Susan Helms, and Janice Voss. This is actually a record, especially if we consider that female American astronauts only began to fly in space in the 1980s and that the overall record of flights in space, held by the two American astronauts Jerry L. Ross and Franklin Chang-Diaz, is seven space missions.  Interview with Bonnie Dunbar, “Oral History,” nasa.gov (June 16, 1998).  How men and women adapt differently to spaceflight has been investigated by NASA and NSBRI (National Space Biomedical Research Institute). A comprehensive report on sex and gender differences related to human physiology and psychology in spaceflight has been published on the Journal of Women’s Health, November 2014, and is available online in PDF format at the Web site of the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. publisher: http://online.liebertpub.com/toc/jwh/23/11. Although there is an imbalance of data available for men and women, primarily due to fewer women who have flown in space, a long list of differences is reported by the six Sex & Gender Work Groups that participated in the research. A summary of the reports can be found online at www.nasa.gov/content/men-women-spaceflight-adaptation. 37 38

 Introduction 

xxxiii

Susan Helms jointly holds the record for the longest spacewalk in history (8 hours and 56 minutes with Jim Voss), while Peggy Whitson – who was the first female Commander of the ISS and is considered by NASA the most experienced woman astronaut – easily holds the record for a female astronaut in zero gravity, having spent almost two years of her life off the planet – over 665 days – in three long-duration missions on the ISS. In March 2019, Christina Koch launched to the ISS and did not return to Earth until February 2020, the longest single spaceflight by a woman at 328 days. Then there is Sunita Williams, who has spent a total of over 321 days in space on three missions and, for a while, also held the record for the number of spacewalks performed by a woman, with seven EVAs and over 50 hours spent in open space. Women have also paid the ultimate price, with four female astronauts among the victims of the two Space Shuttle tragedies. Christa McAuliffe, the famous “Teacher in Space,”39 and the “veteran” Judith Resnik, who was the second American woman in space and the first American Jewish astronaut, lost their lives in the STS-51L disaster in 1986, when the Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch. Two more died tragically during the STS-107 mission in 2003, when Shuttle Columbia disintegrated in the skies over Texas during reentry at the end of a fruitful scientific mission of 16 days in space. They were Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian astronaut, on her second spaceflight, and Laurel Clark, a US Navy Medical Officer who had initially been assigned to a mission on the ISS that would have led to her becoming the first woman on a long-term mission but was then diverted to this fatal flight. The women who fly into space have an average age of 40 years and have a degree, typically in engineering, though many are also doctors, biologists, biochemists, or physicists. The astronauts of today fly into space to learn, to experience, to investigate; and the most significant research contributions are expected from doctors, biologists, and physicists. Women astronauts often have more than just one degree, although it is difficult to surpass Canadian Roberta Bondar who, after graduating in zoology, pathology, neurology, and neurobiology, among others, was awarded 24 honorary degrees by US and Canadian universities. One of the closest is French astronaut Claudie Haigneré  – who had already completed her university studies in Medicine aged just 20 – who earned the nickname “BAC + 19” among her friends in reference to her 19 university degrees.  Strictly speaking, Christa McAuliffe should not be regarded as an astronaut because the Challenger that was carrying her into space for the first time exploded 73 seconds after launch, at a height of just over 14,500 m, long before it crossed the Kármán line. But we cannot fail to mention her here, since, more than many of her colleagues, the “Teacher in Space” captured the imagination of the USA and of the entire world during her intense preparation, and provided a major boost to the revival of interest in the space program.

39

xxxiv Introduction

Several have married fellow astronauts, though not perhaps in the same way as the “space marriage” of Tereshkova and Andrian Nikolayev, which was personally sponsored by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev for propaganda purposes. Many are also mothers. Anna Lee Fisher made history in 1984 when she became the first mother to fly in space, leaving at home a daughter just a few months old. The emblem of her mission featured six stars – five representing the crew and the sixth for the newborn. Often, they are civilians, but a few are also military pilots, with impressive career records. I recently met the astronaut Kathryn Hire, who was the first American woman to be assigned to a combat aircraft, and participated in the Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom Operations between 2001 and 2003. But she is not the only one. Susan Kilrain is a former US Navy pilot with 3,000 hours of flight on 30 different fighter jets, as is Sunita Williams who also racked up 3,000 flight hours and operated as a combat helicopter pilot in the Desert Shield Operation in 1992. Perhaps one of the most well-known is Colonel Eileen Collins, the USAF pilot who became the first female instructor for the T-38 and other high-performance fighter jets, and later a test pilot. At NASA, she was the first female to pilot the Shuttle (on which she flew four times) and the first female Shuttle Commander (twice), including the responsibility of the Return-To-Flight mission of STS-114, the first after the Columbia tragedy. Pamela Melroy participated in the Gulf War with more than 200 combat hours, and also became a military jet test pilot, with a record of over 5,000 hours on 50 different types of aircraft. After joining NASA, she became the second woman to command the Space Shuttle. Even the Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti is a combat-certified military pilot.

“Female Quotas” Are Rising NASA currently (2022) has 16 active female astronauts who make up about 35 percent of the entire Astronaut Corps of 4440: indeed, they constitute one in every three astronauts. That compares to about one in every five in the USAF and one in seven in the US police force. With the end of the Shuttle era, the NASA Astronaut Corps sharply decreased from 149 astronauts in 200041 to less than one-third of that number today, but the percentage of women has grown. Fifty percent of the astronauts selected by NASA in the June 2013 selection were women: four out of the eight  – the highest

 See “ astrobio ” at www.jsc.nasa.gov.  Rhian, J. “How Many Astronauts Does NASA Need?,” universetoday.com (December 7, 2010).

40 41

 Introduction 

xxxv

percentage of women selected so far in a group. The two most recent groups have each included five women in the 12 selections. In the last 20 years, the Chinese have begun their own human spaceflight program, with two of their first ten “taikonauts” being female. In Europe, there are currently (2022) seven active astronauts, although a new recruitment process is underway. Of these, only one is female, the Italian Samantha Cristoforetti. The remaining six male ESA astronauts are from Denmark (1), France (1), Germany (2), Italy (1) and the UK (1). Only two other women have preceded Cristoforetti in the ESA Astronaut Corps: Claudie Haigneré (France), already mentioned above, who left ESA in 2002, and Marianne Merchez (Belgium), who never flew in space. The only other European female to fly in space is Briton Helen Sharman, who flew to Mir with the Russians in 1991 but never joined the ESA Astronaut Corps.42

Women, Space, and Philately Philately has always been used as a showcase for the excellence of a country and stamps were often exploited as a powerful means of propaganda, especially in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Even female astronauts have been portrayed in the stamps of many countries. Some of them, especially the first Soviet female cosmonauts, have featured on dozens of stamps. There are samples of these throughout this book. This book is derived from the author’s manuscript originally submitted in December 2021. Where possible, information has been updated up to the end of 2022.

Sources for the Biographies The sources listed at the end of each biography do not necessarily refer to specific instances in the text, but were instead used as general guidance in the compilation of each profile. Where there is a page range included, the author is directing the reader’s attention to each spacefarer’s information within the source listed.

 Cavallaro, U. “La Donna e lo Spazio” [Women and Space]. Astronomia, 39 (1), 32–34 (2014); Cavallaro, U. “Women in Space.” The Bridge (Quarterly Journal of International Women’s Association of Prague), 25 (Summer 2016), pp 14–16.

42

Contents

Dedication ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   v Foreword������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   vii Preface���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   xi Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   xvii Acronyms ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   xli 1 The  First Ladies of Space����������������������������������������������������������������  1 1.1 Valentina Tereshkova: The All-Soviet Girl��������������������������������  2 1.2 Sally Ride: America’s Pioneering Woman In Space���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 11 1.3 Helen Sharman: The First Briton In Space������������������������������ 24 1.4 Chiaki Mukai: Japan’s First Female Astronaut�������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 31 1.5 Roberta Bondar: Pioneer Of Space Medicine Research������������ 38 1.6 Claudie Haigneré: Esa’s First Female Astronaut������������������������ 43 1.7 Kalpana Chawla: Unable To Visit Her Homeland Officially���������������������������������������������������������������� 50 1.8 Yi So-Yeon: Korean “Spaceflight Participant” ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 58 1.9 Liu Yang: First Female Taikonaut�������������������������������������������� 65 1.10 Samantha Cristoforetti: The First Extraterrestrial Tiktoker���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 71

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xxxviii Contents

2 Performing  Science and Engineering in Space ������������������������������ 83 2.1 Anna Lee Fisher: The First Mother In Space���������������������������� 84 2.2 Margaret Rhea Seddon: The First Wedding Of Nasa Astronauts ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 90 2.3 Shannon Lucid: America’s First Female Long-Duration Astro-Cosmonaut��������������������������������������������������������������������102 2.4 Bonnie Dunbar: The First Female Astrocosmonaut������������������114 2.5 Mary Cleave: Flying At Age 14������������������������������������������������124 2.6 Ellen Baker: An Internist Physician On The Shuttle����������������131 2.7 Millie Hughes-Fulford: The First Female Payload Specialist����������������������������������������������������������������������������������135 2.8 Mae Jemison: Our Limits Are The Stars����������������������������������141 2.9 Elena Kondakova: The First Female Long-­Duration Mission������������������������������������������������������������������������������������148 2.10 Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenberger: From Space Camp To Space Station����������������������������������������������������������������������153 2.11 Elena Serova: The First Russian Female Cosmonaut On Iss��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������159 2.12 Kathleen Rubins: Laboratory Microbiologist Turned Astronaut��������������������������������������������������������������������������������165 2.13 Serena Auñón-Chancellor: Physician And Astronaut ��������������173 2.14 Jessica Watkins: The First Black Woman On A Long-Duration Space Mission����������������������������������������������181 3 O  utside the Spacecraft��������������������������������������������������������������������187 3.1 Svetlana Savitskaya: Twice In Space; A Second Soviet “First” ��������������������������������������������������������������������������189 3.2 Kathryn Sullivan: The “Most Vertical Person In The World” ������������������������������������������������������������������������198 3.3 Kathryn Thornton: The “Spacewalker Mom”��������������������������205 3.4 Linda Godwin: Physics And Astronomy����������������������������������211 3.5 Tamara Jernigan: An Astrophysicist Among The Stars��������������217 3.6 Tracy Caldwell Dyson: Lead Vocalist For Max Q ��������������������223 3.7 Nicole Stott: A Steady Flying Passion��������������������������������������230 3.8 Wang Yaping: First Chinese Woman To Walk In Space������������241 3.9 Christina Koch: A New Spaceflight Duration Record��������������251 3.10 Jessica Meir: From The Sea To The Stars����������������������������������259

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xxxix

4 M  adam Robotics Expert������������������������������������������������������������������271 4.1 Judith Resnik: The Second “Shuttlenaut”��������������������������������272 4.2 Marsha Ivins: Aspiring Astronaut At 19 ����������������������������������282 4.3 Nancy Jan Davis: Growing Up With The Saturn Rockets��������289 4.4 Ellen Ochoa: “Reach For The Stars And Let Nothing Limit Your Potential”��������������������������������������������������������������294 4.5 Janice Voss: Visited The Iss As A Cygnus Craft������������������������301 4.6 Mary Ellen Weber: From Skydiving To Stellar Strategies����������307 4.7 Janet Kavandi: The Rewards Of Perseverance And Tenacity ��������������������������������������������������������������������������313 4.8 Julie Payette: “To Assemble A Ship In The Ocean During A Storm”����������������������������������������������������������������������������������319 4.9 Sandra Magnus: Soaring To New Heights��������������������������������327 4.10 Stephanie Wilson: “Madam Robotics Expert”��������������������������333 4.11 Joan Higginbotham: An Unplanned Adventure ����������������������339 4.12 Barbara Morgan: “I’ll Fly With The Eyes, Ears, The Heart And Mind Of A Teacher”��������������������������������������������������������346 4.13 Karen Nyberg: Marathon Running Engineer ��������������������������354 4.14 Megan Mcarthur: 50Th Birthday Party In Space����������������������361 4.15 Naoko Yamazaki: Astronaut For 4,088 Days����������������������������368 5 T  he Right Stuff��������������������������������������������������������������������������������379 5.1 Eileen Collins: The First Female “Shuttlenaut” In The Driver’s Seat ����������������������������������������������������������������380 5.2 Susan Still Kilrain: The Second Female Shuttle Pilot����������������389 5.3 Pamela Melroy: The Last Woman To Command A Shuttle������394 5.4 Peggy Whitson: Nasa’s Most Experienced Astronaut����������������402 5.5 Sunita Williams: From The Depths Of The Sea To The Heights Of Space��������������������������������������������������������������������411 5.6 Shannon Walker: A Dragon Spacefarer On Falcon Wings��������420 6 M  ilitary Women Astronauts������������������������������������������������������������429 6.1 Susan Helms: Three-Star General��������������������������������������������430 6.2 Nancy Currie-Gregg: A Passion For Flying And A Concern For Safety��������������������������������������������������������������������������������437 6.3 Wendy Lawrence: The Us Navy’s First Female Astronaut ��������443 6.4 Cady Coleman: The Flute-Playing Colonel In Space����������������450 6.5 Kathryn Hire: The First American Woman Assigned To A Combat Aircrew��������������������������������������������������������������461

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6.6 Laurel Clark: From Deep Oceans To The Stars������������������������467 6.7 Lisa Nowak: The First Female Astronaut Ever Dismissed By Nasa ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������474 6.8 Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper: From Diver To Astronaut��������479 6.9 Ann Mcclain: From Eagle To Astronaut����������������������������������486 6.10 Kayla Barron: A Pioneering Submariner Turned Astronaut������496 7 S  paceflight Participants������������������������������������������������������������������505 7.1 Christa Mcauliffe: “Nasa Teacher In Space” ����������������������������506 7.2 Anousheh Ansari: The First Iranian Spacewoman��������������������516 7.3 Beth Moses: The First Woman To Fly On A Private Spacecraft��������������������������������������������������������������������������������523 7.4 Sirisha Bandla: From Gunter To The Edge Of Space����������������529 7.5 Wally Funk: No One Has Waited Longer��������������������������������534 7.6 Hayley Arceneaux: The Hope On Inspirati④N������������������������540 7.7 Sian Proctor: Astronaut By Lottery������������������������������������������547 7.8 Yulia Peresild: The First Actress In Space����������������������������������554 7.9 Audrey Powers: The First Attourney Turned Astronaut������������566 7.10 Laura Shepard Churchley – The First Daughter Of An Astronaut To Fly In Space��������������������������������������������570 Appendix I: Women Spacefarers in Order of First Mission������������������575 Appendix II: Extravehicular Activities��������������������������������������������������579 Appendix III: Military Astronauts��������������������������������������������������������581 Appendix IV: Women Spacefarers Married to Astronauts��������������������583 G  lossary ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������585 I ndex������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������589

Acronyms

AHoF Astronaut Hall of Fame AIAA American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics ASCAN AStronaut CANdidate (NASA) ASE Association of Space Explorers ASI Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (Italian Space Agency) ASP Astronaut Support Personnel (aka Cape Crusader) ATV Automated Transfer Vehicle CAIB Columbia Accident Investigation Board CCCP Coвeтcкaя кocмичecкaя пpoгpaммa (Soviet space program) CNES Centre National D’Études Spatiales (French Space Agency) COPUOS UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (Vienna, Austria) CNSA China National Space Administration CSA Canadian Space Agency DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (US) DLR Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (German Aerospace Center) DOSAAF Soviet Volunteer Society for Cooperation with the Army, Aviation and Navy (ДОСААФ in Russian) EAC European Astronaut Center (Cologne, Germany) EMU Extravehicular Mobility Unit (US Spacesuit) ESA European Space Agency EVA ExtraVehicular Activity (or “spacewalk”) FAI Fédération Aéronautique Internationale FAA Federal Aviation Administration (US) FE Flight Engineer GCTC Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (Star City, Moscow Oblast) GFSC Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland (NASA) HST Hubble Space Telescope xli

xlii Acronyms

HTV IAA IAF IML ISS JAXA JEMRMS JPL JSC KARI KSC MCC MPCV MPLM MS MSFC NASA NASDA NOAA NEEMO NPO Energia ODS PLAAF PPK PS RKA RMS ROSCOSMOS RSC Energia SAIL SAS SRB SRMS SSRMS

Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle (こうのとり, Kōnotori) International Academy of Astronautics International Astronautical Federation International Microgravity Laboratory International Space Station Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency Japanese Experiment Module Remote Manipulator System (Space Station Robot arm) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California (NASA) Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas (NASA) Korean Aerospace Research Institute Kennedy Space Center, Florida (NASA) Mission Control Center, Houston, Texas (NASA) Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Mission Specialist Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama (NASA) National Aeronautics and Space Administration (US Space Agency) National Space Development Agency (Japan; now replaced by JAXA) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (US) NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (underwater laboratory) Previous name for RSC Energia (see below) Orbital Docking System “People’s Liberation Army Air Force” (China) Personal Preference Kit Payload Specialist Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Российское авиационно-космическое агентство, in Russian). Merged into Roscosmos in 2015 Remote Manipulator System (Space Shuttle robot arm, aka Canadarm-1) Фeдepaльнoe кocмичecкoe aгeнтcтвo (Russian Federal Space Agency) Rocket and Space Corporation Energia (РКК Энергия in Russian) Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (NASA) Space Adaptation Syndrome, or space sickness Solid Rocket Booster (Space Shuttle) see: RMS Space Station Remote Manipulator System (aka Canadarm-2)

 Acronyms 

STEM STEAM STS TRDS(S) UNOOSA USAF USML USOS

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics Space Transportation System (the Space Shuttle) Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (System) United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs United States Air Force United States Microgravity Laboratory ISS United States Orbital Segment (all non-Russian modules)

xliii

1 The First Ladies of Space

On June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman ever to fly in space, orbiting the planet 48 times over three days on board Vostok 6. To this day, it remains the only solo spaceflight by a woman. The 26-year-old Soviet textile worker “traveled further than the entire American male astronaut corps combined” and was celebrated as a national heroine. At the 1963 World Congress of Women, Tereshkova’s flight was emphasized by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev as an icon of Soviet female emancipation to show that the USSR had achieved equality for women. This boast was not borne out by the Soviet/Russian space program in the years that followed. The first American female astronaut, Sally Ride, was launched during the 20th anniversary celebrations for Valentina Tereshkova’s mission, on June 18, 1983. She flew as a Mission Specialist (MS) aboard the Space Shuttle mission STS-7. The MS was a new position created with the advent of the Shuttle program, which opened up American astronaut selection to scientists and engineers and included women for the first time. Ride’s main task during the 147-hour mission was to operate a robotic arm that would help to place satellites into Earth orbit. The first woman from Western Europe to fly into space was Britain’s Helen Sharman, who was launched in 1991 as a non-professional cosmonaut in a cooperative Soviet-British mission co-sponsored by a group of British companies, thus making Sharman the first privately-funded woman in space. In subsequent years, other women from different countries took their turn to achieve a first: Roberta Bondar (Canada – 1992); Mae Jemison (African-­ American – 1992); Ellen Ochoa (Hispanic-American – 1993); Chiaki Mukai (Japan  – 1994); Claudie Haigneré (formerly Andre-Deshays, ­ ESA/ © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Cavallaro, To The Stars, Springer Praxis Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19860-1_1

1

2 

U. Cavallaro

France  – 1996); Kalpana Chawla (Indian-American  – 1997); Anousheh Ansari (Iranian-American  – 2006); Yi So-yeon (Korea  – 2008); Liu Yang (China – 2012); and Samantha Cristoforetti (ESA/Italy – 2014). In April 2021, the selection of the first female astronaut from the United Arab Emirates was announced. Nora Al Matrooshi, a 27-year-old mechanical engineer who worked as a piping engineer at Abu Dhabi’s National Petroleum Construction Company, is now in training with NASA’s Group 23 astronauts to work as a future international mission specialist.

1.1 VALENTINA TERESHKOVA: THE ALL-SOVIET GIRL Mission

Launch

Return

Vostok 6

June 16, 1963

June 19, 1963

Two years after the Soviet Union launched the first man into space – Yuri Gagarin  – they scored another “first” in the race to space by launching Valentina Tereshkova (Fig. 1.1), who “orbited over the sex barrier”1 on June 16, 1963. This time, the history-making leading actor was a woman, who spent three full days aloft in her Vostok 6 spacecraft and orbited the Earth 48 times. Tereshkova became a new worldwide symbol of the apparent superiority of the Soviet system and an “icon of Soviet female emancipation.” (Fig. 1.2)

Fig. 1.1.  Valentina Tereshkova, “the icon of Soviet emancipation.” Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.  Life Magazine declared, “She Orbits Over the Sex Barrier,” describing Tereshkova as a “blue-eyed blonde with a new hairdo [starring] in a Russian space spectacular.” 1

1  The First Ladies of Space 

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Fig. 1.2.  Commemorative cover of mission Vostok 6, signed by Valentina Tereshkova. From the Author’s collection.

Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (Baлeнти́нa Bлaди́миpoвнa Tepeшкóвa) was born in Russia on March 6, 1937, in the small village of Maslennikovo2 in the Tutayevsky District, Yaroslavl Oblast (region) in central Russia, 270 kilometers northeast of Moscow. Her childhood was affected by two consecutive wars. In 1939, her father, Vladimir Tereshkov, a tractor driver who trained to drive tanks, was killed in action during the Russian-Finnish war, a year-long armed conflict in the northwest of the country. Two years later, World War II came to the USSR and the German forces were halted only 50 kilometers from the Yaroslavl region. Her mother, Elena Fyodorovna Tereshkova, a worker at the Krasny Perekop cotton mill, single-handedly raised Valentina, her brother Vladimir, and her sister Ludmilla, under economically trying conditions. Tereshkova helped her mother at home, and was unable to begin school until she was ten. After finishing the seventh grade, she moved to her grandmother’s home in nearby Yaroslavl, and worked as an apprentice at a tire  Today, Tereshkova’s birthplace, Bolshoye Maslennikovo, is uninhabited (data from January 1, 2007 referred to only one resident living in the village year-round), but many houses are retained as summer residences. In the nearby town of Nikulskoye, five kilometers away, the “Kosmos” museum is entirely dedicated to the legendary cosmonaut and her exploits in space. 2

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factory in 1954. In 1955, she joined her mother and sister as a loom operator at the cotton mill, but continued her education by correspondence and graduated from the Light Industry Technical School in 1960. An ardent communist (a believer that there should be no private property), she joined the factory’s Komsomol (Young Communist League) and soon advanced to the Communist Party. In 1959, Tereshkova unknowingly made a decision that would completely change her life. Her friend talked her into joining the local Yaroslavl Aviation and Skydiving Club, which was associated with the All-Union Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Army (in Russian, DOSAAF). She made her first jump at the age of 22 on May 21, 1959, although her mother disapproved of her new hobby, saying it seemed too boyish. By the time Tereshkova volunteered for the Soviet space program in 1961, after being inspired by the flight of Yuri Gagarin, she had already accumulated 126 parachute jumps. The idea of training female cosmonauts was initiated by head of cosmonaut training General Nikolai Kamanin3 in 1961  – after Gagarin’s historic mission – when it was rumored that the United States was considering sending women into space from what would later become known as the Mercury 13 Program. As reported in the American media, a number of women pilots were in fact undergoing extensive (albeit unofficial) training as possible NASA astronaut candidates. As the director of cosmonaut training (a position he held between 1960 and 1971) and Deputy Chief of the Air Force, Kamanin believed it was his patriotic duty to beat the Americans in putting a woman in space. “We cannot allow that the first woman in space will be an American”, he wrote in his diary in October 1961. “This would be an insult to the patriotic feelings of Soviet women”. Initially, the project was opposed by both military and bureaucratic powers, but the idea was strongly supported by Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviet leader recognized the potential propaganda value, which would not only show the reliability of Soviet technology, but also that there was gender equality under the communist regime. However, at that time there were few female pilots, so the search for possible candidates was extended to include parachutists. The Vostok spacecraft was completely automated and operated on autopilot, so nothing during the flight would depend on the flying capabilities of the ‘pilot’. Kamanin asked DOSAAF to help him find suitable candidates. As this was a political mission, the requirements were kept very simple. The candidates had to be under 170  Some sources suggest that the decision to recruit female cosmonaut candidates came from either Khrushchev or legendary spacecraft designer Sergei Korolyov. 3

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Fig. 1.3.  Valentina Tereshkova is featured on 265 stamps issued by 59 countries worldwide. Postage stamps of the Soviet Union. From the Author’s collection.

centimeters tall, under 70 kilograms in weight and under 30 years of age (Fig. 1.3). They had to know how to use a parachute, be fit, have a strong communist spirit, and preferably be workers without a high education. Khrushchev wanted to show the world that, in the USSR, anyone could pilot a spacecraft. A list of 400 female candidates was agreed on January 15, 1962, but only 58 met the minimum requirements. In reviewing the list provided by DOSAAF, Kamanin, who would be responsible for their training, wrote in his diary: “Yesterday I considered the files for the fifty-eight female candidates. Generally disappointed and dissatisfied. The majority are not suitable for our requirements and have been rejected. Only twenty-three will be brought to Moscow for medical tests because DOSAAF did not examine their credentials correctly. I told them that I needed girls who were young, brave, physically strong, and with experience of aviation, who we can prepare for space flight in no more than six months. The central objective of this accelerated preparation is to ensure that the Americans do not best us to place the first woman in space”.

Of the 58 candidates, only five passed the final assessment test and qualified for selection as the second USSR cosmonaut group. The list remained secret until the late 1980s. The five were: • Tatiana Kuznetsova (20 years old), a secretary and stenographer, member of the USSR parachuting team and a regional and national champion. She was the youngest person ever selected by a government human spaceflight program. In the early days of the assessment, she was rated as the favorite to become the first woman in space.

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• Valentina Ponomaryova (28), who graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute and was a DOSAAF club pilot. She was sponsored by Mstislav Keldish who had been her boss at the Academy of Sciences. She attained the best test results, but did not respond with the standard Soviet rhetoric during interviews. • Irina Solovyova (24), a mechanical engineer and civilian parachutist, who was captain of the Soviet national parachuting team and a world champion. She was arguably the country’s top female parachutist and would be selected as the back up to Tereshkova for Vostok 6. • Valentina Tereshkova (24), a textile factory worker and club parachutist. • Zhanna Yerkina (22), who was a teacher. She had performed poorly in the simulator and was considered the least capable of the five candidates. She was later included in plans to launch Voskhod 5, an all-female flight that was subsequently cancelled. As had happened with Gagarin, the final candidate was chosen by Khrushchev in person. Although some of the other candidates were more technically skilled, Tereshkova was the preferred choice because she was the perfect propaganda vessel for the Communist Party’s New Soviet Emancipated Woman. She was a committed communist, ideologically pure, a member of the Komsomol, a textile factory worker, a volunteer in the DOSAAF’s civilian defense, the daughter of a war hero who had died during the Winter War, and a true Soviet proletarian. She was also a “pretty girl.” As she was a civilian, Tereshkova had been inducted into the Soviet Air Force as a lieutenant so that she could become a member of the cosmonaut corps. The psychosis of the secrecy surrounding the Soviet space program at the time was such that Tereshkova was even ordered to keep the secret of her selection from her mother. When saying her goodbyes and leaving for the training phase, she told her that she had been selected for an acrobatic training course. Her mother only discovered the truth by radio on the day her daughter was launched into space. None of the other four women in Tereshkova’s group ever flew in space, even though there were plans for further flights by women. An all-female flight by Ponomaryova and Solovyova was considered briefly, with the latter also performing a spacewalk, but after the death of Sergei Korolyov in 1966, that project was cast aside. The pioneering female cosmonaut group was dissolved due to “lack of utilization” in October 1969. In the supposed space race between the US and the USSR, NASA established a new American record for time spent in space with the Mercury MA-9 mission of Gordon Cooper, who launched on May 15, 1963 on a flight that lasted 34 hours and 19 minutes, completing 22 orbits of the Earth.

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Although the Soviets were already firmly ahead with the solo spaceflight records established the previous year by Andrian Nikolayev (3 days 22 hours) and Pavel Popovich (2 days 23 hours), Premier Khrushchev wanted to re-­ establish the Soviet leadership in space with a new set of exploits. He ordered the launch of the first woman into space and a new “rendezvous” of two spacecraft in the same orbit. The enterprise was presented as a “long-duration joint spaceflight.” Not only was it possible for any ordinary factory worker of the socialist nation to be able to fly in space, but he/she would also be able to stay aloft on one flight for more than twice as long as all of the American degree-­ educated, military Mercury Seven astronauts combined. Khrushchev demanded that three different spacecraft should be launched simultaneously (and sending Vladimir Komarov aloft was also immediately considered), but there were only two Vostok spacecraft available and there was not enough time to build a third one. The launch of Vostok 5, with Soviet Air Force Lieutenant Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky on board, was initially planned for June 12, but the mission had to be delayed by two days due to excessive solar flare activity. During the countdown on June 14, the Attitude Control Handle suddenly stopped working – a cable became unplugged and lodged under the cosmonaut’s seat. The problems were fixed without interrupting the countdown at Bykovsky’s explicit request and the mission, planned for eight days, began. Soon, however, the Control Center realized that the flight path would be significantly lower than expected, due to errors in the calculations. Further trouble arose with the survival system and the internal temperature decreased from the initial 30 degrees C to 10 degrees C. It was decided that Vostok 5 should return after only five days in space. Bykovsky’s flight eclipsed Cooper’s new American record, further extending the Soviet lead, and the Vostok 5 mission still retains the world duration record for a single-crew spaceflight. Despite the new record, however, it was Tereshkova who captured the attention and imagination of the entire world. At just 26, she was ten years younger than America’s youngest Mercury astronaut, Gordon Cooper. Two days after Bykovsky, Vostok 6 was launched from the ‘secret’ base of Baikonur, carrying the first woman into space: Valentina Tereshkova. Her callsign during the flight was Chaika (Чáйкa in Russian means “Seagull”). On her first orbit, Vostok 6 came within about 5 kilometers of Vostok 5, the closest distance achieved during the flight, and Tereshkova established radio contact with Bykovsky. Over the following orbits their separation distance increased progressively, with no possibility of the cosmonauts being able to influence their trajectories. From the second day, communication between the two spacecraft was only possibly via the Control Center (Fig. 1.4).

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Fig. 1.4.  The callsign “Seagull” is extensively used in both stamps and postmarks as an icon for Valentina Tereshkova, as shown in this Russian cover and Italian card (both signed by Tereshkova) issued to commemorate the 50th anniversary of her historical mission. From the Author’s collection.

In an interview published in Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2007, Tereshkova reported that Vostok 6 had launched faultlessly and the flight was going as planned until it entered Earth orbit. In fact, after she had orbited the Earth a few times, Ground Control realized that there had been a dramatic, potentially fatal miscalculation in the orbital parameters and provided an updated flight algorithm. The information about this mistake remained classified and was only disclosed to the media 40 years later. Unfortunately, Tereshkova’s troubles were not over. The Vostok spacecraft was very tiny and she was ordered to remain strapped into her seat for the entire 70 hours of the flight wearing her spacesuit and helmet. After several orbits of weightlessness, she began to experience space sickness (now termed Space Adaptation Syndrome, or SAS), with nausea, physical discomfort and vomiting. On Day 2, she developed a cramp in her right leg and by Day 3 the pain had become unbearable. Her helmet put pressure on her shoulders and a sensor attached to her head was irritating her skin. Due to the consequences of SAS, she was physically unwell and in a poor condition, without any possibility of cleaning herself up. During the landing procedure after re-entry, Tereshkova ejected from the capsule at 7,000 meters (23,000 feet), as planned, to land under her personal parachute. “To my horror,” she reported, “I saw that I was heading for a splashdown in a large lake instead of on solid ground. We were trained for such a circumstance, but I doubted I would have had the strength to survive”. Fortunately, a strong wind blew her over the shore but she did suffer a heavy landing. She hit her nose on her helmet, causing a dark blue bruise. She was in pain, dirty and almost unconscious and was immediately hospitalized. The honor of the Soviet Union required that the return of the first spacewoman

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should be a triumph, and after recovering, Tereshkova was returned to the landing site, cleaned up, and given a pristine spacesuit to be filmed for the official news releases. After his five-day mission, Bykovsky also ejected from his spacecraft at 7,000 meters, landing separately from his spacecraft at 14:06 (Moscow time) on June 19, 1963 some 540 kilometers from Karaganda in what is now Kazakhstan. A few dozen people living there rushed over to help him and brought him back to his spacecraft (which had landed two kilometers away) by car in order to take the ritual pictures. Tereshkova had landed only two hours earlier, in the Altay region near today’s border between Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China. Having launched the first woman into space, the Soviet Union gained immense worldwide esteem that the Politburo was the able to exploit in a masterly manner for propaganda purposes to confirm Soviet supremacy. The achievement was heralded as a triumph and a few days after her return, Tereshkova was awarded Pilot-Cosmonaut of the Soviet Union, Hero of the Soviet Union and the Gold Star of the Order of Lenin. More awards and honors followed over the years. The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) emphatically declared that: “Valentina Tereshkova was set forth on the same glorious path of progress already walked by the most renowned Russian women of the past. The triumph of the first spacewoman is [a legacy of ] the extraordinary scientific success of Sophie Kovaleskova, the first female professor, and to Sophie Peroskaja, the Russian revolutionary who was executed by hanging after attempting the assassination of the czar. Without social emancipation, the path to science would be barred to women”.

Five months later, Premier Khrushchev announced another unexpected event to the world: the first marriage of two cosmonauts  – the “space family.” Valentina Tereshkova and Andrian Grigoryevich Nikolayev, the third man in space and the only bachelor cosmonaut to have flown, were married on November 3, 1963. The marriage ceremony took place at the Moscow Wedding Palace and had a huge propaganda resonance. It was rumored that the marriage was at the insistence of Khrushchev, as a fairytale message to the country. The couple were assigned a luxury apartment on the Kutuzovskij Prospekt and Tereshkova gave birth to their daughter, Aljenka Andrianovna Nikolaeva-Tereshkova on June 8, 1964. But the marriage was not as idyllic as the press had claimed. Nikolayev, an ethnic Chuvash, was quite a gruff man and the “space family”

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fell apart within a few years. However, as with the American astronauts of that era, a divorce would mean the end of their careers, so the couple remained together and the marriage was only officially broken up in 1982. Their daughter, who was the first person to have two spacefaring parents, graduated with distinction from the prestigious Zhukovskiy Air Force Academy, and earned a doctorate in engineering in 1977. After her career as a cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova – an ardent communist since she was a young girl – became involved in Soviet politics, and held various offices. She was chairwoman of the Soviet Committee for Women from 1968 to 1987, and was a member of the Supreme Soviet Presidium from 1974 to 1989. She remained politically active even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and has been a member of the United Russia party in the national State Duma since 2011. In 2000, at a ceremony held in London, the International Women of the Year association named her as the “greatest woman achiever of the 20th century.” Tereshkova was a torchbearer in 2008 as part of the St Petersburg torch relay for the 29th Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, and again carried the Olympic torch in 2014 for the 22nd Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia. The relay for the 2014 Sochi Olympic torch began traditionally in Olympia, Greece, but then completed the longest journey in Olympic history. It was flown to space for five days, carried by a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) – itself a symbol of peaceful international cooperation – and made an historic spacewalk, spending more than an hour in outer space before returning to Earth. Tereshkova has a crater named after her  – a small impact crater located along the western perimeter of the Mare Moscoviense on the far side of the Moon. She is among the few people still living to have a lunar crater named after them.

Sources For This Section Briggs, C.S., Women Space Pioneers, pp. 30–35. Lerner Publications, Minneapolis (2005). Cavallaro, U., “The Race to the Moon Chronicled in Stamps, Postcards and Postmarks”, Springer, New York 2018, pp. 145–151. Dragosei, F., “Un bluff le immagini del rientro dallo spazio”, Corriere della Sera (March 7, 2007), p. 24. Gueldenpfenning, S., Women in Space Who Changed the World, pp. 30–38. The Rosen Publishing Group, New York (2012).

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Kevles, T.H., Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 29–37. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2006). Petro, J., The real rocket women: all-female astronaut panel represents international cooperation. rocket-women.com (2014). Accessed July 23, 2014. Quine, T., “Tereshkova’s Secret Sisters”, Spaceflight, 54(6), pp. 216–217 (2012). Shayler, D.J. and Moule, I., Women in Space – Following Valentina, pp. 44–67. Springer-Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Uri, J., (History Office, NASA JSC), Valentina Tereshkova and Sally Ride – Women Space Pioneers, in nasa.gov (March 30, 2018). Vis, B., “Soviet Women Cosmonaut Flight Assignments 1963-1989”, Spaceflight, 41(11), pp. 474–480 (1999). Woodmansee, L.S., Women Astronauts, pp. 36–37. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002). Wright, J., Olympic Torch Completes Longest Relay in History, in nasa.gov (August 7, 2017).

1.2 SALLY RIDE: AMERICA’S PIONEERING WOMAN IN SPACE Mission

Launch

Return

STS-7 STS-41G

June 18, 1983 October 5, 1984

June 24, 1983 October 13, 1984

There was a palpable excitement in the air: “The spirit and the substance of America’s manned space program has changed irrevocably”, a reporter emphatically proclaimed. Sally Ride, communicating with Houston as the Shuttle was shooting skyward, was asking the capsule communicator (Capcom) Roy D. Bridges “Have you ever been to Disneyland? This is definitely an E-ticket” – in other words, the most exciting ride of all. As mission pilot Frederick ‘Rick’ Hauck recalled in his Memories, Mickey Mouse visited the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) several months later, where he presented each of the STS-7 team with a Mickey Mouse watch. Sally Kristen Ride (Fig. 1.5) was born on May 26, 1951, in Encino, California, about 20 miles west of Los Angeles, into a family with Norwegian roots. When she and Kathy Sullivan got to know each other, as two of the first six women selected to NASA’s Astronaut Corps, it turned out that they had been in the first grade together at Hayvenhurst Elementary School in 1958, though neither really remembered the other clearly. They had a good laugh as they pieced this together 20 years later.

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Fig. 1.5.  Sally Ride. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license

From an early age, Ride began practicing softball and football. She wanted to join the Los Angeles Rams as a pro, but girls were precluded from the sport of football at that time and this helped to make Ride sympathetic to the feminist movement. She therefore decided to dedicate herself to the tennis that she had discovered at the age of ten. Her first coach was Alice Marble, the famous four-time US Open tennis champion of the 1930s, who had also won twice at Wimbledon. Ride devoted herself passionately to tennis, earning a national ranking when aged 16 and breaking into the US top 20 aged 18. She eventually played in the Westlake High School tennis team during her three years at that school, and served as captain for the last year where she led a team that managed to play in the local interscholastic tournament without dropping a set. Ride continued to compete on the tennis courts while at Stanford University. The tennis world champion Billy Jean King saw her playing and suggested that she should quit school and pursue a career as a professional tennis player. At the first major crossroads in her life, Ride chose to trade tennis for academics and graduated with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Physics and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in English in 1973. Between 1973 and 1975, she was part of Stanford’s Master of Science Program in physics, specializing in

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Fig. 1.6.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-7 signed by the crew, including Sally Ride. From the Author’s collection.

astrophysics and focusing on X-rays given off by stars. She earned her Master’s (MSc) degree in Physics in 1975 and her doctorate (Ph.D.) in Physics in 1978 from the same university, where she was also involved in research and laser physics. One day, while reading the student newspaper Stanford Daily, Ride saw the advertisement that would change her life. NASA was selecting scientists to conduct experiments on Space Shuttle flights. These scientists, known as “Mission Specialists”, would go into space as part of the Shuttle crews. More significantly, for the first time NASA was also calling for applications from women and minority representatives to join its Astronaut Corps, which up to this point had been an “all-male, all-white club.” Ride applied, as one of 8,370 candidates which included 1,000 women (Fig. 1.6). The selection process was tough. “It was of big help”, Ride recalled, “the experience gained with tennis matches, which had given me a certain amount of self-esteem”. It had also given her the self-control that was one of her distinctive characteristics. “What Sally really thinks of anything”, her sister once said, “is a mystery”. Very early in the morning of January 16, 1978, while she was still working on her doctorate thesis, Ride got the call she had been waiting for. George Abbey, the legendary and mysterious NASA Director of Flight Crew Operations at the time – and chairman of the selection board in 1977 – was on the phone: “We’ve got a job here for you, if you are still interested”. Ride became one of NASA’s new Group 8 selection, the TFNGs (Thirty-Five New

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Guys)4, which for the first time also included six women. She told the agency’s oral historian: “There was a lot of media attention surrounding the announcement because not only was it the first astronaut selection in nearly ten years, it was the first time that women were a part of an astronaut class. There was a lot of press attention surrounding all six of us. Stanford arranged a press conference for me, the day of the announcement  – the first time, of course, that I had even thought of being part of a press conference. I mean, my gosh, I was a Ph.D. physics student. Press conferences were not a normal part of my day. “A lot of newspaper and magazine articles were written – primarily about the women in the group – even before we arrived at Johnson Space Center [JSC]. The media attention settled down quite a bit once we got to Houston. “NASA protected me while we were in training, and even the day that we did all our pre-flight press conferences about a month before the flight, we did them in pairs… They did a really good job shielding me from the media so that I could train with the rest of the crew and not be singled out. There were still the occasional stories, and we definitely found ourselves being sent on plenty of public appearances”.

Sally Ride’s recruitment was one of the most successful achievements of the glamorous African-American actress Nichelle Nichols, who at the time was well known for the role of Lieutenant Uhura that she had played in the popular Star Trek television series. She was enlisted by NASA to recruit minority and female personnel for the space agency. Nichols recalled: “When NASA asked me to help them find the first qualified women and minorities to join the then all-male-all-white Astronaut Corps, I did so with great enthusiasm. One of the first that I was able to reach was a beautiful, young, brilliant woman named Sally Ride. She not only joined the Astronaut Corps, she revolutionized it by blazing the trail that so many female astronauts followed. She became my inspiration to continue to search to find the next Sally Ride”.

Having switched from physics to engineering, Ride helped in the development of the robotic arm for the Space Shuttle, together with her colleague, John Fabian. Ride was assigned to the Shuttle’s robot arm, the Remote  The class name has a rather “Marine” origin, as explained by Mike Mullane in his book Riding Rockets (p.  63): “In polite company, TFNG translated to ‘Thirty-Five New Guys’. Not very creative, it would seem. However, it was actually a twist of an obscene military term. In every military unit, a new person was a FNG, a ‘f**king new guy’. You remained a FNG until someone newer showed up, then they became the FNG. While the public knew us as the ‘Thirty-Five New Guys’, we knew ourselves as ‘The F**king New Guys’”. 4

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Manipulator System (RMS), that was still in the testing and development stage. She became heavily involved in the simulator work to verify that the simulators accurately modeled the arm, preparation of procedures for using the arm in orbit, and developing the malfunction procedures so that astronauts would know what to do if something went wrong. Ride worked on the robot arm for a couple of years and also spent a lot of time at the contractor facility in Toronto, Canada, with the engineers who performed the hardware development and testing. She then worked with the crew of STS-2 on the detailed procedures for the on-orbit tests of the RMS, as this mission would be the first to carry the system. She also worked to help prepare the STS-2 crew’s Earth observations plan and trained the (military) crew on how to recognize the things that scientists were interested in. During the second and third Space Shuttle flights (STS-2 and STS-3), she served as the ground-based Capcom – a function that was traditionally performed exclusively by another NASA astronaut5. In 1982, Ride married fellow NASA astronaut Steve Hawley, who had also joined the Astronaut Corps in the same TFNG class. They divorced five years later in 1987. After intensive training, Ride was assigned in 1983 as a Mission Specialist (MS) to the Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-7. She recalled in an interview: “It was around 7 or 7:30 in the morning because I tended to get into the office early. So I got a call to go over to Mr. Abbey’s office. And you know, that was generally taken as either a very good or a very bad sign. And so I walked over to Building One and went to the eighth floor. His assistant had me go right in and it was me and George Abbey, and he said in typical George Abbey fashion, ‘So do you still want to fly? Well, we’re going to assign you to STS-7’. So George talked to me for a few minutes, and then took me up to the ninth floor to meet with Chris Kraft [JSC Director]. And he said: ‘Are you sure you want to do this? We’re thrilled to have you on the crew, but we just want to make sure that you know what you’re getting into’. And at that point, of course, all I cared about was getting a chance to fly. So I said ‘Yes–Yes–Yes’”.

So Sally Ride soared into history as the first American woman – and, at 32, the youngest American – to fly in space, in the process capturing the imagination of hundreds of young women in the US and the Western world, who  It was widely expected that either Sally Ride or Judy Resnik would be the first woman to fly. In fact, Rhea Seddon remarked in her oral history that Resnik and Ride had received “the sorts of technical assignments that really prepared them for flight,” such as RMS work and Capcom duties. “I think most of us felt it would be Sally or Judy”, Seddon observed. 5

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were attracted by her example and decided they wanted to be astronauts themselves. Later, Ride’s colleague and crewmate, Kathy Sullivan, commented: “‘Why was Sally tapped to fly first?’ is a question I’ve been asked many times in the past few days. The truth is none of us ever knew, not even Sally. Whatever the reasons may have been, history will record that the selection turned out well indeed. Sally performed superbly on STS-7 and stepped into the role of first American woman to fly in space with intelligence, dignity and grace”.

The Challenger commander, Robert L. Crippen, had chosen Sally Ride for the STS-7 mission because she was extremely well qualified on the RMS systems and operations  – as the robotic arm would be used intensively  – and also because of her “very good public presence.” NASA leaders believed that Ride, who was known for guarding her privacy and protective of her emotions, could handle the pressure of being a celebrity. It was inevitable that “the first American woman in space” would receive notable media attention, and Ride was known for keeping her cool under stress. For months, she had to endure inane questions from the press and crazy articles in the tabloids. “There was a lot more attention on us”, she recalled, “than there was on previous crews, probably even more than the STS-1 crew”. The four male members of her crew would fade into the shadows in the public eye. The media were interested only in Ride. “The clamor from the press for interviews with Sally was unabated”, Rick Hauck confirmed in his Memories. Ride said in one interview: “None of the astronauts who applied did it for publicity. Everybody applied because this is what they wanted to do. So the males in the group didn’t really want to be spending their time with reporters; they wanted to be spending their time training and learning things. They didn’t seem to mind at all that more of the attention was paid to the women astronaut candidates. In fact, they wished us well. And, frankly, the women probably would have preferred less attention”.

The pressure of the spotlight was intense and some of the coverage was laughable. During one pre-flight press conference, Ride was asked, ridiculously, “Do you think you will cry during the flight”? She always exhibited grace under pressure and responded humorously: “Why don’t you ask Rick [Hauck, the pilot] that question”? When asked how much she was getting paid, she answered very frankly, “I mean, who cares? I’d pay them”! Ride managed to handle the insanity of the media activity with grace, even though it was not

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something she enjoyed. The same was true of her colleague Judy Resnik, who loved it even less. Sally Ride’s launch on STS-7 occurred just two days after the 20th anniversary of the launch of the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova. STS-7 was the second flight of Challenger and the first mission with a crew of five. It was the most complex in the Shuttle program up to that point. During the mission, the crew deployed telecommunications satellites for Canada (ANIK-2) and Indonesia (PALAPA B-1). Ride was involved in ten experiments and mainly operated the Canadian-built RMS to perform the first deployment and retrieval exercise with the Shuttle Pallet Satellite (SPAS-01): “Operating with the robotic arm”, Ride explained, “was a little like playing with a complicated videogame”. She was aware that her level of performance would be very important for the female colleagues who would follow her. Everything went smoothly and the flight was enjoyable. “The thing that I’ll remember most about the flight was that it was fun”, Ride commented on her website, sallyridescience.com. “In fact, I’m sure it was the most fun I’ll ever have in my life”. One thing that did not go quite as planned was the return. Although originally intended to conduct the first Shuttle landing at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), inclement weather in Florida forced STS-7 to be diverted to Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) in California. After the mission, Ride was asked to take part in a goodwill tour of Europe, together with pilot Rick Hauck. They visited eight countries, where they met kings and queens and prime ministers, and visited research facilities – as well as giving innumerable presentations and interviews. Their itinerary also included an appearance at the 34th International Astronautical Federation (IAF) Congress in Budapest, Hungary. Russian cosmonauts were also there, and the American astronauts were urged not to mingle or be photographed enjoying drinks with them. Ride was invited to a private meeting with cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya and although she and Rick Hauck had been instructed to keep their distance from the cosmonauts, she accepted. No report of the meeting has ever been made public. It was a difficult moment, as US/USSR relations at the time were strained due to the recent shooting down of Korean Airlines Flight 007. In 1984, Ride again served as an MS, this time on STS-41G, bringing her total flight time to 344 hours in her two missions. With seven astronauts, STS-41G carried the largest crew to fly to that date and Ride was joined by Kathryn Sullivan on that mission. It was the first time that two female astronauts had flown together. During the mission, Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in open space.

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In June 1985, Ride was assigned to the crew of STS-61M, which was due to fly in July the following year, but all mission training was halted in January 1986 following the Space Shuttle Challenger accident in which all seven crewmembers were killed. Dr. Sally Ride served as a member of the Rogers Presidential Commission that investigated the tragedy of Challenger, the spacecraft on which she had flown twice. She was the only astronaut assigned to the Commission and was responsible for the Operations sub-committee. As a member of the panel, Ride gained a reputation for asking tough questions and for challenging people to tell difficult truths. She was the physicist who discovered why Challenger had exploded. The panel learned from testimony and other evidence that there had been signs of trouble on earlier Challenger flights, but that they had been dismissed as not critical. At the end of the inquiry, she told a colleague that it was difficult not to be angered by the findings. One witness was Roger Boisjoly, an engineer who had worked for the company that had made the Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB) and had been shunned by colleagues for revealing that he had warned his bosses and NASA that the boosters’ seals, called O-rings, could fail in cold weather. Challenger had taken off on a very cold morning6. After Boisjoly’s testimony, Ride, who was known to be reserved and reticent, publicly hugged him. She was the only panelist to offer him support. Upon completion of the investigation, Ride was assigned to NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., as Special Assistant to the Administrator for long-range and strategic planning, and directed NASA’s first strategic planning effort. While there, she wrote an influential report entitled NASA Leadership and America’s Future in Space and later became the first Director of NASA’s Office of Exploration. Dr. Sally Ride retired from NASA in 1987. As usual, she shunned publicity and said very little about her reason for quitting, but it was not hard to suppose that she had simply lost confidence in NASA. Ride had been the first American woman to fly in space and was also the first woman to leave the agency. NASA required its astronauts to remain with the Corps for six years and she had stayed for eight. She returned to the academic world and became a science fellow at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at  As reported by Mike Mullane in his book, anomalous heat damage had been recorded in the right-side booster of STS-2 as early as November 1981 (Mike Mullane, Riding Rockets, pp. 101–102). NASA and Morton Thiokol’s top management were therefore aware of problems with the O-ring seals, but agreed to launch STS-51L against the recommendation of Boisjoly, who had alerted management a year before, in a report dated January 1985 referring to several Shuttle launches approved without correcting the hazard (see Russels, P., Boisjoly et al., Roger Boisjoly and the Challenger Disaster: the Ethical Dimension, in Journals of Business Ethics, Vol. 8, no. 4, April 1989, pp. 217–230). 6

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Stanford University. The following year, she joined the faculty at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) as a Professor of Physics and Director of the California Space Institute at the University of California. A symbol of the ability of women to break barriers and a long-time advocate for improved science education, in 2001 she founded her own company, Sally Ride Science, to pursue her enduring passion for promoting science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) literacy and motivating young women to pursue careers in STEM. The company aimed at creating entertaining science programs and publications for upper-elementary and middle-­ school students and their parents and teachers. Ride also wrote seven science books for children: To Space and Back (with Sue Okie); Voyager; The Third Planet; The Mystery of Mars; Exploring Our Solar System; Mission Planet Earth; and Mission Save the Planet (all with Tam O’Shaughnessy). She also initiated and directed education projects designed to fuel middle-school students’ fascination with science: EarthKAM (Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle-­ school students). Originally called KidSat, the program allowed middle-school students to capture images of Earth using a camera aboard the Space Shuttle. The program operated during five Shuttle flights (STS-76, STS-81, STS-86, STS-89, and STS-99). KidSat was renamed EarthKAM in 1998. In 2001, the camera was moved to the ISS and the program was renamed ISS EarthKAM. After Ride’s death in 2012, NASA eventually renamed the program Sally Ride EarthKAM. In 2003, Ride was asked to serve on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. She was the only person to sit on both panels investigating the catastrophic Shuttle accidents that killed all astronauts on board: the Challenger explosion in 1986 and the Columbia disintegration in 2003. In an interview with The Times, she said that part of the problem at NASA was that people had forgotten some of the lessons learned from the Challenger accident. Dr. Sally Ride died on July 23, 2012, aged 61, just one month before the passing of Neil Armstrong. She had spent 17 months courageously battling against pancreatic cancer. In her obituary, which she had co-written herself, she publicly revealed that she was survived by Professor Tam O’Shaughnessy, “her partner of 27 years.” Ride had started a relationship with her in 1985, which was kept secret but led to the dissolution of her marriage with fellow astronaut Steven Hawley in 1987. The two had first met at the age of 12 when both were aspiring tennis players and, over tennis matches and camps, had embarked on a lifelong friendship. Their paths then separated. Ride chose an academic career, graduated in physics and became an astronaut. O’Shaughnessy went on to play on the women’s professional tennis circuit, competing in the US National

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Championships (now known as the US Open) and at Wimbledon at the beginning of the 1970s. After retiring from tennis, she embarked on a career as a professor at San Diego State University, until 2007 when she decided to devote her time and energy to Sally Ride Science as co-founder and chief operating officer, and then chief executive officer. Sally Ride was committed to breaking down the cultural and educational barriers that block so many, especially young girls, from science and the opportunities it offers in life. This she did through her work as a physics professor, mentor, motivator and businesswoman. Ride received numerous honors and awards. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, the California Hall of Fame, the Aviation Hall of Fame, and the Astronaut Hall of Fame. She received the Jefferson Award for Public Service, the von Braun Award, the Lindbergh Eagle, and the NCAA’s Theodore Roosevelt Award. She was twice awarded the NASA Spaceflight Medal. In 2012, she was honored with the National Space Grant Distinguished Service Award. In November 2013, after her death, President Barak Obama posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as “Sally Ride was to generations of young women a powerful role model and showed us that there are no limits to what we can achieve”. Ride’s life and work continue to be recognized with other posthumous honors. In 2014, Women in Aviation, International (WAI) inducted her into its International Pioneer Hall of Fame. The state-of-the-art research vessel AGOR 28 (Auxiliary General Oceanographic Research), owned by the US Navy and operated by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, was named R.V Sally Ride in her honor. It is the first Navy research ship to be named after a woman. O’Shaughnessy was the christening sponsor of the ship and broke a bottle of champagne across her bow on August 9, 2014. The National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C., holds and displays Sally Ride’s personal stamp collection, which was donated by her partner Tam O’Shaughnessy in 2018. Ride discovered a passion for collecting space stamps when she was a young girl and continued to do so throughout her life7. The exhibit includes one folder and seven stock book albums containing a variety  During a nine-month family tour of Europe in 1960, Ride, then aged 9, and her younger sister Bear were each encouraged to begin a stamp collection as a means of entertainment during the road trip. “Everywhere that they traveled in Europe, Bear collected the animal stamps and Sally collected the Olympic stamps”, O’Shaughnessy revealed. “After that, Sally just really got into it and continued to collect stamps the rest of her life”. In the late 1960s, Ride expanded her philatelic interests beyond the Olympic Games and at age 17 or 18, she also started collecting space exploration stamps. (Collectspace. com June 19, 2018.) 7

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Fig. 1.7.  From left are UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla; tennis legend Billie Jean King; US Postal Service Chief Information Officer Kristin Seaver; Tam O’Shaughnessy, Ride’s life partner and Executive Director of Sally Ride Science; former NASA astronaut Ellen Ochoa, the first Hispanic woman in space; and Becky Pettit, UC San Diego Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. They were at the public dedication ceremony of the new Sally Ride stamp at UC San Diego, (May 23, 2018). Figure Credit: © Margaret King, Writer/Editor, Sally Ride Science. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

of covers, stamps – especially stamps of the Olympics and space exploration – and other philatelic materials that she collected over the years. The US Postal Service honored Dr. Ride with a Forever postage stamp which was unveiled on May 23, 2018 during the stamp’s official dedication ceremony at UCSD in La Jolla, where Ride had been a professor pf physics and where her company, Sally Ride Science, is now based (Fig. 1.7). Participants at the ceremony included Tam O’Shaughnessy, Ride’s life partner and co-founder of Sally Ride Science at UCSD; tennis legend and Ride’s friend Billy Jean King; US Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, Condoleezza Rice; and Ellen Ochoa, the first Hispanic woman in space and who served as Director of NASA JSC from 2013 to 2018. The stamp features a colorful portrait of Sally Ride in her space suit, designed by USPS Art Director Ethel Kessler with artwork by long-time NASA illustrator Paul Salmon, who used for inspiration a group photo of her first launch crew that Ride had signed and inscribed to him. The stamp captures Ride’s warm smile, in her light blue astronaut suit. Behind her is the Space Shuttle Challenger on which she flew twice, blasting off into a blue sky.

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Fig. 1.8.  Sally Ride American stamp. From the Author’s collection.

A special first day postmark was made available, featuring a representation of Ride’s autograph, so that each stamp canceled looked as though she had signed the envelope (Fig. 1.8). “20 million of the Sally Ride stamps will orbit the world as they are used by the public and saved by collectors” to remember a woman who went where no American woman had gone before. According to data provided by stamps expert Peter Hoffman, there are 20 stamps from 13 countries that feature Sally Ride. A Quarter Dollar coin (25 cents) honoring Sally Ride was announced by the US Mint in October 2021, during the celebration of the 20th anniversary for Sally Ride Science, the company she founded in 2001. This is one of the first five coins in the US Mint’s American Women Quarters Program8. The reverse (tails) of the cupro-nickel coin, designed by fine artist Elana Hagler, a member of the Mint’s Artistic Infusion Program, depicts Dr. Sally Ride looking out of a window on the Space Shuttle, inspired by her quote: “But when I wasn’t working, I was usually at a window looking down at Earth”. The inscription “E PLURIBUS UNUM” (“Out of many, one,” in Latin) is intentionally positioned over Earth next to America, indicating that out of all the women in the United States, Dr. Ride was the first into space.

 Beginning in 2022 and continuing through 2025, five quarters will be issued each year with tails-side designs featuring trailblazing American women. 8

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Sources For This Section Briggs, C.S., Women Space Pioneers, pp. 35–42. Lerner Publications, Minneapolis (2005). Cunningham, W., “The All-American Boys”, iBooks, New York, 2003. Evans, B., “Spaceflight Pioneer Sally Ride Loses Battle with Pancreatic Cancer”, americaspace.com (July 23, 2012). Gibson, K.B., Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 81–90. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Grady, D. “American Woman Who Shattered Space Ceiling”, nytimes.com (July 23, 2012). Gueldenpfenning, S. Women in Space Who Changed the World, pp. 39–48. The Rosen Publishing Group, New York (2012). Harnett, S. “Women in Space: Sally Ride”, australianscience.com.au (May 20, 2013). Hauck, F. “Memories of My Space Flight with Sally Ride”, lightyears.blogs.cnn.com (July 24, 2012). Interview with Sally Ride, “Oral Histories” program, jsc.nasa.gov (October 22, 2002). Interview with Sally Ride, “Oral Histories” program, jsc.nasa.gov (December 6, 2002). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 62–63, 66–68. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Mullane, M. Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut. Scribner, New York (2006). O’Shaughnessy, T. Sally Ride: a Photobiography of American Pioneering Woman in Space, Roaring Brook Press, New York (2015). Official biography of Sally Ride, nasa.com (July 2012). Official biography of Sally Ride, Sallyridescience.com (June 2014). Pearlman R., Sally Ride’s stamp: The story of an astronaut’s philatelic portrait, in collectspace.com (May 22, 2018) Pearlman R., [post initiated by], Sally Ride’s space stamp collection: Inside the astronaut’s albums in collectspace.com (post initiated on June 19, 2018) Pearlman R., “US Mint reveals final design for astronaut Sally Ride 2022 quarter” in collectspace.com (October 7, 2021) Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space – Following Valentina, pp. 198, 208–215. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Sullivan, K. “The human, funny side of Sally Ride”, cnn.com (July 26, 2012). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 52–54. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

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1.3 HELEN SHARMAN: THE FIRST BRITON IN SPACE Launch Soyuz TM-12

Return May 18, 1991

Soyuz TM-11

May 26, 1991

Helen Sharman was not just the first Briton to fly in space; she was also the first European, the first non-Russian and first non-American woman to do so. Sharman was the first to break the gender barrier on the Soviet Mir space station, the first non-Soviet woman to ever visit a space station and the last foreign visitor in the Soviet era. Not long after she returned to Earth, the Soviet Union was no more. For the record, it must also be added that Sharman made the UK the first of only three nations to date whose first astronaut has been a woman. (She was followed by Iran’s Anousheh Ansari in 2006 and by South Korea’s Yi So-yeon in 2008.) Recently, there was understandable dismay among feminists (and others) when Tim Peake (the first British man to travel into space, as an ESA astronaut, as well as the first to live on the ISS) was mistakenly called “The first Briton in space”. Helen Sharman does not like to be classified as “the first space tourist,” stating: “I was there on a commercial mission. I was paid to do it as a job, doing experiments on someone else’s programme.” Helen Patricia “Lenochka” Sharman (Fig. 1.9) was born in Sheffield, England, on May 30, 1963, the daughter of a college lecturer father and a nurse mother. She lived with her family in Grenoside, a suburb of the industrial town of Sheffield, where she received much of her early education. In her autobiography, Seize the Moment, Sharman described her upbringing as “decidedly unremarkable.” At school, she was good at French and German, and loved science. She also played the piano. She graduated in Chemistry from the University of Sheffield in 1984 and was hired as an engineer for the General Electric Company in London. “Even though the salary on offer was the lowest”, she says in her autobiography, “the work they were offering was varied”. Her role encompassed solving production problems, organizing schedules, and doing research on and development of cathode ray tube components. Her employer eventually offered her the opportunity to further her studies and Sharman enrolled at Birbeck College in London in 1985 on a part-time Ph.D. course, to explore the luminescence of rare Earth ions in crystals. In 1987, while still studying at Birbeck, she began working as a research technologist for Mars Incorporated – an American

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Fig. 1.9.  Helen Sharman. Figure Credit: © ESA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

global manufacturer of confectionery and other food products which at that time was planning a new range of ice-creams: “The company wanted to make a new and delicious ice cream and I was to be part of the team that scaled up production from a few bars in the laboratory to tons of ice cream every day in the factory”.

Once she had completed this project, Sharman worked in the Chocolate Department, “investigating the properties of chocolate and using different ingredients and machinery to make chocolate more quickly, more cheaply, and with the same flavour.” She found the work fascinating, not least for the fact that it enabled her to incorporate many facets of everyday life into her work. One evening, in June 1989, the 26-year-old Sharman was sitting in a traffic jam heading back from the Mars factory in Slough, Berkshire, to her flat in Surbiton, southwest London, when she heard an announcement on the radio station: “Astronaut wanted. No experience necessary”. In her autobiography, Sharman describes in hindsight the events of that evening as “the crucial, pivotal moment in my life.” A career path that she had never considered possible had now opened up in front of her, though not at first. “I thought they

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wouldn’t choose me so [I decided] I wouldn’t bother”, she recalled. “By the time I got home I’d realized that if I didn’t actually apply, then they couldn’t choose me. As my mum used to tell me: ‘If you don’t try something, you’ll never know what might have happened’”. The advertisement was looking for astronaut volunteers under a project called “Juno”, a private British space program since there was no official national one. No experience was required, and the only parameters were British citizenship, age between 21 and 40 years, formal scientific training, proven ability to learn a foreign language, and a good standard of physical fitness. Project Juno was intended to send a British astronaut to the Mir space station under a cooperative arrangement between the Soviet Union (which was seeking to cement relations with Britain as part of President Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, and to raise hard currency) and a consortium of private British sponsors led by Antequera Ltd (Fig. 1.10). Soviet promotional operations had already succeeded in selling a ticket for space to Japan, Cuba, Syria, Afghanistan, Mongolia, and many more. The UK had become the third country in the world (after the USSR and the US) to launch a satellite, when it launched Ariel 1 on April 26, 1962. The satellite had been constructed both in the UK and in the US (by NASA’s

Fig. 1.10.  Commemorative cover of mission Soyuz TM-12, signed by Helen Sharman. From the Author’s collection.

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Goddard Space Flight Center), and was launched by NASA from Cape Canaveral. But British aspirations in space exploration almost exclusively focused upon unmanned research, with particular emphasis on Earth observation, and there has been no government policy to create a British astronaut corps. In the 1980s, despite setting up the British National Space Centre (BNSC), the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher virtually ruled out any chance of a human space program. Four military Britons had been in training with NASA before the Challenger accident, but by the time NASA was flying Shuttles again, Britain had decided not to participate. Sharman recalls: “Immediately, that small dream that I had had when I was younger… that maybe – just maybe – space travel was possible; suddenly that was there in front of me. What would it be like to sit on top on a rocket and wait for that launch? What would it be like for me, as a chemist, to be able to grow crystals; crystals that you cannot grow on Earth? But probably best of all, what was it going to be like floating about feeling weightless? For those reasons, very selfish reasons, when I got home that night I applied for that job of astronaut”.

After applying by telephone and having a short interview, Sharman received a long application form which she completed and posted, becoming one of over 13,000 applicants for the job. Rigorous physiological and medical tests followed, after which only 22 candidates made it through the selection process, three of which were women. A final medical review produced the final four, who were then “sequestered” for two weeks in a Russian hospital for further medical tests. Sharman and her backup, British Army Major Timothy Mace, then underwent 18 months of grueling training in Soviet Russia at the Yuri Gagarin Center in Star City, 30 kilometers northeast of Moscow, where Soviet cosmonauts used to train. They endured challenges such as the centrifuge (to experience G-forces) and hydro tank (for spacewalk training). Sharman was measured in 54 different places to ensure that her spacesuit fitted perfectly. “That’s the only suit I have ever had that was made to measure”, she jokes. Once it was announced that Sharman would be flying, the press inevitably started calling her “the Girl from Mars.” Although quite tiresome, the sobriquet was thought of as a means to help sell the project to the public at large. At the time, the Soviets requested US$12 million (£7.5 million) to cover the cost of the Soyuz taxi and one week on the space station. Margaret Thatcher’s government, which had ended Britain’s involvement in manned spaceflight in 1986, refused to contribute towards the cost and made it clear that the funding would have to be raised by private finance. Antequera Ltd – headed by

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George Pattie, a member of the British Parliament and a former space minister – was responsible for the selection and started to raise the funds needed: not just the $12 million required to pay Energia for the flight to Mir but a further $8 million to cover the expenses of 18 months of training. However, only one of the 500 British companies connected with the aerospace industry – British Aerospace – bought a share. Memorex and Interflora eventually joined the pool of corporate sponsors and ITV bought the television rights, but the consortium as a whole failed to raise the entire sum. At one point, rumors spread that the British astronaut had been selected by lottery. What actually happened was that, given the difficulty in finding commercial sponsors, a lottery was created to try to raise funds, but without much success. In fact, only a paltry $1.7 million was generated. Sharman and Mace had been training in Star City for over a year when they learned that their contact in London had left, as Antequera had not been able to raise sufficient funds. It looked as though the enterprise would be cancelled. Indeed, there were many problems. As well as financial issues, there was Soviet reluctance that had begun to surface once Antequera announced that the two finalists were Sharman and Timothy Mace (the military pilot was also a member of the British national skydiving team). It seemed clear to many that some in Soviet “technical” circles were not happy at the prospect of sending a female candidate to Mir, perhaps out of fear that their own female cosmonauts – who had been trained but had never flown and were grounded in Star City  – would complain. Reportedly, Mikhail Gorbachev personally stepped in to save the day in the interests of international cooperation. The Soviets arranged for the Moscow Narodny Bank – a British commercial bank subsidized by the Soviet state – to take over the program. On May 18, 1991, at the age of 27, cosmonaut researcher Helen Sharman lifted off aboard Soyuz TM-12, thus gaining a place in both space and history. She had been accompanied to the launch pad by former cosmonaut Alexei Leonov – then Deputy of the Cosmonaut Training Center in charge of crew training – who offered her a number of “unofficial” items to carry aboard Mir. Sharman launched from Baikonur  – where both Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova had also launched back in the 1960s – accompanied by two Soviet cosmonauts: commander Anatoly Artsebarsky and flight engineer Sergei Krikalev. When it was confirmed that Sharman would fly, Artsebarsky – who had counted on flying with pilot Tim Mace – was unable to hide his disappointment, although he later declared that Sharman’s performance during her mission was impeccable.

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On arrival at Mir, Sharman was honored by Viktor Afanasyev and Musa Manarov, who invited her to enter the station first and greeted her with the traditional bread and salt that Russians use to welcome a new guest, and then offered her a bedroom to herself. With the demise of most of the British commercial participation in the mission, the British element of Project Juno was Sharman herself. “The mission was purely commercial”, she explained, “but having said that the funding was not readily available so a deal was done with the Soviets that I would do their experiments in return for a seat on their flight”. Rather than being a representative of a Soviet-capitalist partnership as anticipated, Sharman became a guest of the Soviets and her experiment program was almost exclusively designed by them, with the primary emphasis upon life sciences. Sharman operated 17 biotechnical, medical and technical experiments and also wore electrodes to track her heart rate, monitored her mental coordination and reaction speed, and took blood samples from the tips of her fingers 12 times a day. Additionally, she took air samples throughout Mir to assess the prevalence of dust in the station; dust and crumbs floated everywhere, causing frequent sneezing and also disturbing sleep. Sharman brought back paper filters with samples to be studied on Earth. She also carried on board half of the 125,000 pansy seeds she had been given by Suttons, a British company that provides quality seeds, which she placed in the Kvant-2 airlock, the portion of the station least shielded from cosmic radiation. She brought the seeds back to Earth and distributed a sample of the seeds flown in space, and some of those left behind, to British schoolchildren in order for them to grow the seeds and determine whether exposure to space had affected their growth. Sharman also participated in a televised advert for Interflora from Mir, by “ordering” flowers for delivery to her mother; the first order ever received from outer space. “Just imagine how Helen’s mum must have felt when we delivered them into her arms”! the company advertised. Finally, a significant portion of Sharman’s time was devoted to photography of the UK and watching planet Earth from space. She told The Independent newspaper: “It’s something no astronaut ever gets tired of doing. You get this constantly changing image of the Earth spinning below. You get these fabulous views and you get time to think about that”.

After eight days on Mir, Sharman returned to Earth in the Soyuz TM-11 descent module on May 26, 1991, with fellow cosmonauts Afanasyev and Manarov. The “soft” landing took place on a very windy day that caused the

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capsule to collide laterally with the ground and roll several times before stopping. In the end, everything worked out fine, with Sharman reporting only a few bruises to her face due to an impact with the built-in microphone in her helmet. Following her flight, Sharman became a TV presenter and public speaker on space and science, hoping to inspire a new generation of men and women into joining the fields of science. A brilliant ambassador for science and a keen advocate of human space travel, she pointed out that Britain was alone among the major industrialized nations in not having a human space program: “We need to be pushing our human boundaries. We were a sea-faring nation and that exploration made us the country that we have become. The fact that we’ve stopped human space exploration has become a real problem. It has stopped us from being proud of being part of this international community”.

Many people may think that Britain has a manned program because there have been a handful of astronauts with joint UK/US citizenship that have flown on the Space Shuttle. However, they all flew under the American flag. Sharman observed: “I am sure this has led the public to believe that we as a country have had quite a long interest in human space flight as a nation, and we haven’t. I think that is something that the Government has been very happy to allow us to continue to think”.

Sharman never returned to space, but was on the shortlist for the European Space Agency (ESA) in 1992 when she applied with two other British candidates. She tried again in 1998 but was unsuccessful. Sharman eventually reconnected with science as a manager at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, at Kensington University, London. In 2015, she joined Imperial College London, where she is UK Outreach Ambassador. Ten years after her flight, on April 12, 2011, Sharman was awarded the medal “For Merit in Space Exploration” by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 437. She has received many other awards, including the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Science and Technology Outreach in the New Year Honours of 2018. She has received 11 honorary degrees from UK universities, and British schools and school houses bear her name in recognition of her as a pioneer in science and a woman in STEM.

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Sources For This Section Cavallaro, U. “Helen Sharman 25 years ago, the first Briton in space”, Ad*Astra, ASITAF Quarterly Journal, 28 (June 2016), pp. 31–34. Connor, S. “Don’t Forget to Look out of the Window”, independent.co.uk (May 27, 2013). Evans, B. “‘No Experience Necessary’: The Story of Project Juno”, americaspace.com (May 2013). Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, p. 167. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Hamill, J. “Sexists Have Forgotten Helen Sharman Was First British Person in Space, Angry Feminists Claim”, mirror.co.uk (December 17, 2015). “Interflora Reaches Out”, interflora.co.uk (1991). “Helen Sharman and Project Juno”, citizensinspace.org (January 27, 2013). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 138–144. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). “Moon over Helen Sharman”, squeamishbikini.com (March 15, 2012). Personal contacts by e-mail in May 2016. Personal communication with the Author by email in April/May 2016. Shayler, D.J, ; Hall, R. Soyuz: A Universal Spacecraft, p. 341. Springer, London (2003). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space – Following Valentina, pp. 198, 314–318. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 76–77. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002). www.helensharman.uk/ personal official website.

1.4 CHIAKI MUKAI: JAPAN’S FIRST FEMALE ASTRONAUT Mission

Launch

Return

STS-65 STS-95

July 8, 1994 October 29, 1998

July 23, 1994 November 7, 1998

Chiaki Mukai (Fig. 1.11) was one of the first three Japanese astronauts selected in 1985, the first group of the Astronaut Corps of the Japanese Space Agency NASDA, which was later merged into the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Besides being the first Asian female astronaut to fly into space, Mukai was also the first Japanese citizen to make two trips, a remarkable achievement at that time in a country where few women were able to reach executive positions, much less outer space. In the traditionally maledominated society of Japan, her selection was hailed as a tangible sign that

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Fig. 1.11.  Chiaki Mukai. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

women were beginning to make the breakthrough, although initially Mukai remembers being asked questions like “How do you feel to be a woman astronaut”? On one occasion, she replied: “Did you ever ask a man how he feels to be a man astronaut”? In the foreword for the book Women in Space  – Following Valentina, Mukai wrote: “I have often been asked if it was my childhood dream to become an astronaut. The answer is ‘no’. The thought never occurred to me until I was 32 years old. When Sputnik orbited the Earth in 1957, I was only five years old, and as aware of the significance of the event as most other Japanese were: that is to say, not at all. The ‘space firsts’ that marked the next decades inspired me to read the biographies of the history-makers; but that was the extent of my interest in space exploration, which seemed to be another world entirely. My childhood dream was much more immediate and personal. I wanted to be a doctor, and to help those, like my younger brother, suffering from diseases. He had aseptic necroses – a rare disease which made his leg bones brittle. Our family watched him struggle to walk, and the teasing by other children made our hearts heavy with

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sadness. My parents eventually took him to a big university hospital in Tokyo, and as his condition improved, so did my determination to become a doctor. When I was ten, a composition I wrote in school, entitled ‘What will I be in the future?’ promised as much. I left my parents’ home at 14, and moved to Tokyo to prepare for medical school”.

Chiaki Mukai was born on May 6, 1952, in Tatebayashi, a small village located near Tokyo in the prefecture of Gunma (now a Tokyo suburb), where her father taught in a junior high school and her mother ran her own shop. She was the oldest of four siblings. In 1977, she became a doctor, specializing in cardiovascular surgery, and began teaching at the Medical School of the Keiō University, Tokyo, one of the main Japanese universities and the oldest in the country. There she met Dr. Makio Mukai, whom she married in 1982. In the Foreword of the abovementioned book, Mukai went on to describe how she learned about the possibility that she could fly in space: “One morning in December 1983 as I was relaxing in my office after a night on duty in the intensive care unit, a newspaper article caught me by surprise. The Japanese space agency was looking for candidates to fly onboard the Space Shuttle in 1988. I literally shouted, ‘Gee! Can someone from Japan actually fly in space’? I thought (stereotypically) that space travelers had to be either American or Russian. I did not know that a German had flown on Spacelab-1 just days earlier, much less that a Czech, a Pole, another German, a Bulgarian, a Hungarian, a Vietnamese, a Cuban, a Mongolian, a Romanian and a Frenchman had already flown to Soviet space stations. I did not even know that we had had a Japanese space agency  – the National Space Development Agency  – since 1969. The article held another surprise for me: the candidates were to have scientific backgrounds and conduct experiments in space. But were not astronauts always pilots and aviators? With a shock, I realized that science and technology had progressed to the point where ordinary people living and working on Earth were actually able to do the same kind of work in space. We were now entering the era of space utilization. “I became more intrigued with the possibility of seeing our beautiful blue planet from outer space with my own eyes. Would such a magnificent sight deepen my way of thinking and expand my concept of life itself? At the same time, I was fascinated by the possibility of using the spaceflight environment – especially weightlessness – for research purposes. Here was an opportunity to contribute my medical expertise to the space program”.

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In 1985, Mukai was selected as one of three Japanese Payload Specialist (PS) candidates for the First Material Processing Test (FMPT) which flew in the Spacelab-J mission aboard STS-47. But she did not fly on that mission, instead serving as backup PS and as a Spacelab communicator for crew science operations. But it was the beginning of her long space odyssey. She explains: “My path into space had highs and lows. The first high was being one of three candidates, selected from 533 applicants, for a Spacelab-J mission in 1988. But the first low, four months later, was the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger. In the wake of the tragedy and the ensuing uncertainty about the future of the space program, I spent days in consideration and soul-searching over whether to abandon my second dream and return to my first: the medical field”.

The Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union a few months later led her to reflect seriously on the vulnerabilities of technology. Eventually, she took the difficult decision to remain in the space program. In 1988, she achieved a doctorate in Physiology at the Keiō University in Tokyo: “Other lows followed, as our mission was delayed repeatedly into 1992, and then when I was selected as the back-up and not as a member of the prime crew. Of course I was disappointed for a while, but the lows became highs as the training put me in an advantageous position to understand the mission as a whole, and to witness how many people it took, all working together, to make the mission successful. This preparation served me well when I finally achieved my second dream and flew into space in 1994”.

After more than ten years of training and delays, Mukai finally launched into space on the STS-65 Shuttle mission, the second flight of the International Microgravity Laboratory (IML-2). The crew spent two weeks on orbit, with Mukai establishing a new endurance record for a woman in space (Fig. 1.12). She was in space in July 1994 during the 25th anniversary celebrations of the first Moon landing of Apollo 11. The research during IML-2 was also more ambitious than it had been on the IML-1 mission flown earlier in which Canadian Roberta Bondar was involved. For IML-2, there were 82 experiments dealing with life science (human physiology, space biology, radiation biology and bioprocess) and microgravity science (materials and fluid science, and research into the microgravity environment and countermeasures). Mukai was responsible for experiments on the cardiovascular system, the vegetative nervous system, and bone and muscle metabolism. She fondly remembers the beauty of Earth and the feeling of flying in microgravity, experiencing the

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Fig. 1.12.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-65, signed by Chiaki Mukai. From the Author’s collection.

lightness and the strange sensations of her sight, hearing, and touch, which are the senses that tell us how we are positioned in space. Interestingly, she mostly remembers the feeling of heaviness she felt in her arms when she returned to Earth and re-encountered gravity. Nothing had prepared her for the feeling of re-­entering the atmosphere where gravity rules, and the sensation of being “drawn to the ground like a magnet.” “I knew the gravity that exists on Earth. But I was not aware of it. After being in space, your body adapts to microgravity. When you get back, you feel your body is so heavy. Your body is pulled to the center of the Earth. When I came back from space, I developed a special sense for about a day. I [could even feel] the weight of business cards and paper”.

In 1998, Mukai flew again, becoming the first Japanese astronaut to fly in space twice. Her STS-95 crew also included the veteran US astronaut and Senator John Glenn, the former Mercury astronaut who was the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962 and had now returned to space aged 77. Utilizing her medical expertise, Mukai worked with the Senator to study spaceflight and its relationship to the aging process. Glenn said that she had “more energy than anyone I know of.” The appreciation was mutual: “I have learned a lot from his positive attitude”, said Mukai, referring to John Glenn. “He’s so energetic. I was fortunate to work with such an American hero”.

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On their seventh day aboard Discovery, during a conversation with Japan’s Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, and Yutaka Takeyama, the head of the Science and Technology Agency, Mukai read a poem that she had written about being weightless in space: “Zero gravity – makes possible somersaults – any number of times”. NASDA asked the Japanese public to think of two lines with seven syllables to finish her poem, making it a “tanka”9 with an overall rhythm of 5-7-5-7-7. More than 40,000 people, including some from other countries, took part in the competition and submitted a total of 144,781 verses. The youngest to do so was just five years old and the oldest was 101. During the mission, Mukai conducted various experiments on changes to the human organism and aging in microgravity. She also studied sleep in space and repeated an experiment performed earlier that year during the STS-90 Neurolab mission to evaluate the effectiveness of melatonin in astronauts and explore ways to combat the insomnia that many experience in space. On her two missions, Mukai logged a total of 566 hours (over 23 days) in space. She was assigned to a third mission (to the ISS) scheduled for launch in 2004, and was preparing an experiment that she had proposed for the mission on the effects of microgravity and radiation. At the same time, she was also deputy mission scientist for STS-107, coordinating the scientific operations of that flight. After several delays, STS-107 flew in 2003 but ended tragically with the destruction of the Shuttle Columbia over the skies of Texas during re-entry. One consequence was that Mukai decided to abandon her “second dream” and left NASA. From 2004 to 2007, Mukai worked as a visiting professor at the International Space University (ISU) in Strasbourg, France. A few years later (in 2015), she was awarded France’s highest honor – the Legion of Honor – for her contribution to strengthening cooperation between France and Japan in the field of space exploration. In 2007, Mukai returned to Japan, where she directed the Space Biomedical Research of JAXA – which had superseded NASDA – until March 2011. That April, she became Advisor to the JAXA’s Managing Director, and in July, she was appointed the first Director of the newly organized JAXA Center for Applied Space Medicine. She produced over 60 scientific publications. Since April 2015, Mukai has been Vice President of the Tokyo University of Science, where her responsibilities have included the promotion of internationalization and the promotion of women’s affairs. Currently, she serves as a  Tanka are five-line poems of 31 syllables split into a pattern of 5-7-5-7-7. This form has been in use in Japan since at least the seventh century and is still an important and very popular style for serious and amateur poets today. 9

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chief of the Space Colony Research Unit which is developing technologies for long-term stays in extreme closed environments, gearing up for human society in outer space. From June 2016 to June 2017, Mukai served as Chairperson for COPUOS, the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, in Vienna, Austria. COPUOS addresses the global community’s attempts to reduce space debris, to realize the long-term sustainability of outer space activities, and to promote Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

Sources For This Section Anon “Chiaki Mukai - the First Japanese Woman to go to Space” in www.tohoku. ac.jp (March 20, 2018) Donwerth-Chikamatsu, A. “Chiaki Mukai, Japan’s First Woman Astronaut”, anniedonwerth-chikamatsu.com (November 7, 2015). Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 176–180. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Gueldenpfenning, S. Women in Space Who Changed the World, pp. 83–90. The Rosen Publishing Group, New York (2012). “ISU Faculty, Dr. Chiaki Mukai Honored by France”, isunet.edu (February 4, 2015). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 126–128. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Mukai, C. “Foreword”. In: D.J. Shayler and I. Moule (eds), Women in Space – Following Valentina, pp. XIII–XV. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Mukai, C. “Kibo Promises Development in Space Medicine”, jaxa.jp (2003). Official JAXA biography of Chiaki Mukai, jaxa.jp (January 8, 2013). Official NASA biography of Chiaki Mukai, nasa.gov (October 2003). Personal communication with the Author through e-mail in April/May 2016 and December 2021. “Preflight Interview: Chiaki Mukai”, STS-95, spaceflight.nasa.gov (January 21, 2003). Shimbun, A.S. “Best Closing Lines for Mukai’s Poem Awarded”, web-japan.org (March 1999). Thornton, E. “Our Home Planet Is So Beautiful: It’s Fragile … and Has Dignity”, businessweek.com (June 14, 1999).

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1.5 ROBERTA BONDAR: PIONEER OF SPACE MEDICINE RESEARCH Mission

Launch

Return

STS-42

January 22, 1992

January 30, 1992

“When I was eight years old, to be a spaceman was the most exciting thing I could imagine”. As she grew older, Roberta Bondar realized that her dream faced two major obstacles: her gender and her nationality, as Canada had no space program at the time. But her dream came true at the age of 47, and not only did she become the first Canadian woman to fly in space, she was also the first non-American woman to fly on the Space Shuttle and the world’s first neurologist in space. Bondar is also the only astronaut to have used fine-art photography to explore and reveal Earth’s natural environment from the surface. Roberta Lynn Bondar (Fig. 1.13) was born on December 4, 1945, to a father of Ukrainian descent, in Sault-Sainte-Marie, Ontario, where she completed both her elementary and secondary schooling. At age five, with her

Fig. 1.13.  Roberta Bondar. Figure Credit: © NASA (courtesy Roberta Bondar). Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Fig. 1.14.  Commemorative cover of the return of mission STS-42, autographed by Roberta Bondar. From the Author’s collection.

mother’s help, she recalls saving up all of her Dubble Bubble® chewing-gum wrappers in order to win a space helmet, which she then wore to explore the outdoors environment around their house. Bondar was keenly interested in the idea of space travel and avidly read science-fiction comics and books about space: “I longed to soar into space. I wanted to reach out to adventure with my body as well as with my imagination” (Fig. 1.14). Bondar’s parents encouraged her to be goal-oriented from an early age and she was involved in several activities, including Girl Guides, the YMCA, Anglican Church groups, and athletics. She loved sports, such as canoeing and biking, fishing, and hot-air ballooning, and she also competed in basketball and tennis. At school, she excelled in science, and rather than playing with dolls, she preferred science equipment, chemistry sets, and medical bags. At home in their basement, her father built her a laboratory with a microscope. In grade 13, she remembers undertaking a science project about the Moon, despite her guidance counselor trying to talk her out of science because she was a girl. After graduating from Sir James Dunn Collegiate & Vocational School in Sault-Sainte-Marie, Bondar earned a BSc degree in Zoology and Agriculture from the University of Guelph in 1968, an MSc degree in Experimental Pathology from the University of Western Ontario in 1971, a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Toronto in 1974, and a Doctor of

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Medicine (M.D.) degree from McMaster University in 1977. Along the way, she also earned a pilot’s license. In 1981, Bondar became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, specializing in neurology. In 1983, she was teaching medicine at McMaster University and directing the McMaster Medical Center of Hamilton clinic for multiple sclerosis when she learned about the agreement between the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and NASA, and applied to become an astronaut, together with 4,300 other candidates. She was the only woman among the 19 finalist candidates and, in December 1983, became one of the six astronauts of the first CSA class. Her particular interest in the nervous system and the inner-ear balancing system, especially as it related to the functioning of the eye, had immediate relevance to experiments being planned for the first Canadian spaceflight. Bondar began training as an astronaut in February 1984. Like Millie Hughes-Fulford, she assumed at first that she would only have to wait a few months to fly, and continued to train in Houston. After a while, she started commuting to Toronto and returned to her research using a new kind of trans-cranial Doppler ultrasound to measure blood flow in the brain. Later, she would use a similar instrument on orbit in microgravity. She was scheduled to fly in early 1986, but while she was in Houston that January she learned of her father’s sudden death, which was almost immediately followed by the Challenger accident. Both events seriously challenged Bondar’s commitment to the space program, but she finally decided to continue. Her only flight came in 1992 as PS for STS-42, the first International Microgravity Laboratory mission (IML-1) on board the Space Shuttle. This was a very ambitious scientific mission, with 54 experiments conducted during the eight-day flight. The space laboratory was linked with the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, where the scientists involved in the experiments could participate and make the necessary adjustments. To ensure minimum disturbance to the laboratory, the Shuttle was gravity-gradient stabilized by orienting it vertically, with the tail continuously pointing toward the center of Earth. Following her spaceflight, Bondar left the space agency to return to research and pursue her interests. For over a decade at NASA she headed an international research team carrying out scientific studies on the physiological change that occurs in humans in space, and continuing to find new connections between astronauts recovering from the microgravity of space and neurological illnesses on Earth. She contributed to studying the data collected during 24 missions on both the Shuttle and Mir. Her contribution to space medicine is universally recognized. “Astronauts have been our guinea pigs in space”, she

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explains. “The longer they stayed in orbit, the more parts of their bodies, cells and functions are bent beyond normal”. Besides being used by NASA in preparing for future interplanetary travel, the results of this research are also contributing to the preparation of more effective treatments of diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, Parkinson’s Disease, and Shy Drager Syndrome. Bondar’s techniques have been used in clinical studies at the B.I. Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, and at the University of New Mexico. A respected advisor to industry and government, Bondar participates in meetings and conferences on the environment and to conferences and events with students. In the introduction to the Report of the Working Group of Canadian Environmental Education, she wrote: “After observing the planet for eight days from space, I have a deeper interest and respect for the forces that shape our world. Each particle of soil, each plant and animal is special. I also marvel at the creativity and ingenuity of our own species, but at the same time, I wonder why we all cannot see that we create our future each day, and that our local actions affect the global community, today as well as for generations to come”.

Among other things, Bondar has supported the United National Environmental Program (UNEP) to launch various initiatives, including a talk on “Oceans” at the Rio Summit, tree-planting, and promotion of Global Environment Outlook (GEO) reports. She was Chair of a distinguished panel at the 2010 International Women’s Forum (IWF) Cornerstone Conference in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and Chair of the Province of Ontario’s Working Group on Environmental Education. All the recommendations in their report, Shaping Our Schools – Shaping Our Future, were accepted by the Ontario Ministry of Education, thus strengthening environmental education for elementary and secondary-school students: “Without knowledge, the world is bereft of culture. And so we must be educators and students both. At some point, an educator must broaden the net to include all issues relevant to humanity’s challenges”. Dr. Bondar is a member of the Governing Council of the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe), a pan-African institute researching the influence of climate change on the spread of insect-­ borne diseases. An avid photographer, Bondar studied nature photography at the Brooks Institute in California and has published several books of photographs. Touching the Earth, which she issued in 1994, chronicles her experiences in space on her eight-day STS-42 mission, during which she was also tasked with taking photographs of Earth. After her space mission, she continued her

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photographic explorations and published three other books of photographs, including Passionate Vision documenting Canada’s national parks in 2000. Several exhibitions of her landscape photographs have been shown at galleries in London, Vancouver, Toronto, and Calgary. She is co-founder and president of the Roberta Bondar Foundation, which, as her website highlights, “responds to the recognized need within society to educate and improve knowledge of the environment in a way that stimulates interest, excitement, creativity, responsibility, and for some, the desire for study in this area.” Academically, Bondar is one of the most distinguished astronauts to have flown in space, having been awarded 24 honorary doctorates from Canadian and American universities. She served as Chancellor of Trent University for six years. Bondar has also been inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame and into the International Women’s Forum’s Hall of Fame for her pioneering space-medicine research. Several schools and parks in Canada are named after her. In 2003, Bondar was featured on a Canadian domestic-rate postage stamp as part of a Canadian astronauts series.

Sources For This Section “About Roberta – the Inspiration: a Great Canadian, a Great Cause”, therobertabondarfoundation.org. Biography of Roberta Bondar, cityssm.on.ca (2008). Bondar, R. Shaping our School, Shaping Our Future: Environmental Education in Ontario Schools, Report of the Working Group of the Environmental Education, Giugno (2007). Communication with the Author through e-mail in May 2016. Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 171–175. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Gueldenpfenning, S. Women in Space Who Changed the World, pp. 49–57. The Rosen Publishing Group, New York (2012). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 122–126. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Muir, E.G. Canadian Women in the Sky: 100 Years of Flight, p. 132ss. Dundurn Group, Toronto, Canada (2015). Official NASA biography of Roberta Bondar, jsc.nasa.gov (July 2007). “Roberta Bondar”, Our Planet: The Planet We Share (September 2011), www.unep. org/pdf/op_sept/EN/OP-2011-09-EN-FULLVERSION.pdf, pp. 34–35. Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 81–82. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

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1.6 CLAUDIE HAIGNERÉ: ESA’S FIRST FEMALE ASTRONAUT Launch Soyuz TM-24 Soyuz TM-33

Return August 17, 1996 October 21, 2001

Soyuz TM-23 Soyuz TM-32

September 2, 1996 October 31, 2001

A “Spationaute” of CNES, the French Space Agency, Claudie Haigneré (nee André-Deshays) participated in two missions that led her to both the Russian space station Mir and to the ISS. Haigneré joined ESA’s Astronaut Corps in 1999, thus becoming the agency’s first female astronaut. She was also the first woman ever to qualify as Soyuz Commander, the fourth and last woman to visit Mir (after Helen Sharman, Elena Kondakova, and Shannon Lucid), and the first European woman to visit the ISS. To an interviewer who asked her in 2001 whether the presence of women in space would make a difference, she answered: “The flights of short duration have shown that from a physiological point of view, there are no significant differences between men and women. As for long missions, relatively few women have been in space so far, and we have not enough data. From a psychological point of view, instead, several studies have focused on human behavior in isolation and on life in confined spaces. All of them agree that a mixed crew works better – in organizing their work, in making decisions, in managing conflicts, in maintaining relationships with the staff of the Control Centre. Men and women are different but complementary. You have to let them live and work together in their own way, without trying to make them do things in the same way. When we’ll explore the planets, it will be a big step forward for the entire human race. And the human race is made up of men and women”.

Claudie André-Deshays Haigneré (Fig. 1.15) was born in Le Creusot, France, on May 13, 1957, “A few months before Sputnik!” as she is keen to highlight. She graduated at 15: “I have always enjoyed going to school. I have a sister who is two years older than me, but we were in the same class because I skipped one year at nursery, learning to read over her shoulder, and then I skipped the second grade. In high school my sister was a ‘normal’ girl who liked to go to parties, while I was leaving with my bike and my dictionary on the rack to make translations of Latin with my friends”.

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Fig. 1.15.  Claudie Haigneré. Figure Credit: © ESA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

After participating in competitive athletics throughout her school career, Haigneré wanted to enroll at INSEP, the Higher Institute of Physical Education, but she was not accepted because she was too young. Faced with having to wait two years, she chose a course of study related to physiology and anatomy, which could have proven useful later once she had resumed her sport-related studies, and enrolled at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris. However, instead of returning to INSEP, she decided to complete the course and, by the age of 20, Haigneré had already completed her university studies in Medicine. She then achieved certificates (Certificats d’Etudes Spécialisées) in Biology and Sports Medicine in 1981, Aviation and Space Medicine in 1982, and Rheumatology in 1984. Haigneré then attained a diploma (Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies) in Biomechanics and Physiology of Movement in 1986 and completed her Ph.D. thesis in Neuroscience in 1992. She accumulated so many degrees that she earned the nickname “Bac +19” among her friends. From 1984 to 1992, after graduating in Rheumatology, Haigneré served for eight years in the Rheumatology and Rehabilitation Department at Cochin Hospital in Paris, where she became a respected researcher involved in research and the application of diagnostic and therapeutic techniques in rheumatology and sports traumatology. Although she always maintained a great interest in space, as in so many other areas, the idea of becoming an astronaut arrived

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Fig. 1.16.  Commemorative cover of mission Soyuz TM-24, signed by Claudie AndréDeshays (Haigneré). From the Author’s collection.

suddenly while she was serving in the hospital (Fig. 1.16). By chance, she came across a tender from the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, (CNES, the French Space Agency) that was searching for scientists, with no gender specification, to pursue its microgravity research programs in space. Haigneré was immediately attracted to the possibilities and sent in her dossier as one of 1,000 applicants, of which 100 were women. In September 1985, she was selected as one of the seven French astronaut candidates in the second Group of CNES. Haigneré was involved in the development and preparation of scientific experiments for CNES in the field of human physiology, in particular with the “Physalie” and “Viminal” experiments flown on the Franco-Soviet “Aragatz” mission to the Mir station in 1988, with Jean-Loup Chrétien. Her research topics were human adaptation of motor and cognitive systems in weightlessness. Haigneré continued her medical career and, between 1985 and 1990, also worked in the Neurosensory Physiology Laboratory at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. In 1989, she was appointed Scientific Coordinator responsible for the research programs of CNES Life Sciences Division in Paris, and took part in preparing the experiments on the adaptation of human beings to microgravity that were sent to Mir in 1992 during the Franco-Russian “Antares” mission. In 1993, she was assigned as back-up

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cosmonaut to Jean-Pierre Haigneré (her future husband, whom she married in Star City in 1999) for the Franco–Russian “Altaïr” mission, the Soyuz TM-17 flight to Mir between July 1–22, 1993. “The first challenge”, she said, “was to learn Russian in one month. I had to learn it well, not only for technical training, but also to culturally integrate in Star City”. She did not fly in that mission, however, but instead was responsible for monitoring the biomedical experiments from the Mission Control Center in Kaliningrad, near Moscow. Haigneré then helped to coordinate experiments for the Euro-Mir 94 mission of ESA astronaut Ulf Merbold, and prepared the scientific experiments for the 1996 Franco-Russian “Cassiopée” mission, to which she was assigned in July 1994. Haigneré reached Mir on August 17, 1996, aboard Soyuz TM-24, and became the first French woman in space. She was welcomed aboard Mir with the traditional Russian ritual of bread and salt and the party then continued with fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, lemon, and cheese she had brought with her. She has often recalled the unforgettable feeling of the peculiar scents these foods emitted in space. Already on board the space station was Shannon Lucid, who had participated in the MIR-21 expedition and was now waiting for Shuttle STS-79 mission to come and retrieve her. It was the first time that two women had been aboard Mir at the same time and the first time the space station had hosted two non-Russian guest cosmonauts together. Lucid had prepared the bed for Haigneré and a place for her belongings: “She was for us like a mum”, Haigneré recalls. Lucid also helped her to learn the intricacies of the station and, in the early days, was there to help on more than one occasion: “A very feminine attention that I wouldn’t expect. It was hard to leave Shannon”. Supported by more than 200 French scientists and engineers, Haigneré conducted a very intensive research program in four fields: life sciences (physiology and biological development), fluid physics, new technologies, and student experiments. Because of her professional background in rheumatology, biomechanics, and physiology, she was able to contribute significantly to the successful results obtained. Although some problems were experienced (some of the experiment hardware required in-flight repairs), an unexpected amount of data was gathered. To reach the mission goals, Haigneré worked up to 20 hours a day, and found little time for rest. She reflected that she would have preferred a much longer mission, commenting: “It had taken a week to learn to live onboard the station and use the facilities and a longer mission would allow [you] to utilize them to the full potential”. She returned to Earth 16 days later on board Soyuz TM-23, accompanied by the “two Yuris”

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(Onufriyenko and Usachov), who had been members of the MIR-21 Expedition together with Shannon Lucid. After her return, Haigneré lived in Russia for several years taking on various roles, including working in Moscow as the French representative of the Franco-Russian company Starsem, training as backup to Jean-Pierre Haigneré, and supporting his “Perseus” mission as crew interface coordinator at the Mission Control Center in Korolyev. At the same time, she also trained for EVA and qualified as Cosmonaut Engineer for the Mir space station. In July 1999 she was also certified as Soyuz Return Commander, thus becoming the first woman qualified to command the Soyuz in an emergency (and the only one so far). On November 1, 1999, Haigneré joined ESA’s Astronaut Corps, based in the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany. She became involved in the development of the Microgravity Facilities of the European Columbus laboratory and supported the medical activities in the Agency’s Directorate of Manned Spaceflight and Microgravity. “As astronauts”, she explains, “our career is certainly marked by flights into space, but between the flights we carry out an extensive professional career both as engineers and as scientists, experts in the development of ESA’s technical projects, as well as teachers”. In other words, even astronauts spend most of their time here on Earth engaged in different tasks. In December 2000, Haigneré was assigned to the “Androméde” mission and also trained with Nadezhda Kuzhelnaya (backup to flight engineer Konstantin Kozeyev). She lifted off on October 21, 2001, aboard the Soyuz TM-33, becoming the first European woman and the second ESA astronaut (after Italian Umberto Guidoni) to visit the ISS. Post-flight reports were full of praise for her work, both from the scientific world and from the French authorities. The French Minister of Research (with responsibilities for space) expressed his esteem and admiration for her skill, dedication, and courage. After her last space mission, Haigneré returned to France and began a political career. She was appointed Minister for Research and New Technologies in the second center-right government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin (2002–2004) and later became Minister for European Affairs in the third Raffarin government (2004–2005) and Secretary General of the Program for Franco-German Cooperation. Between November 2005 and September 2009, she was appointed Senior Adviser to the ESA Director General for space policy, to support the new strategies that the agency would have taken ahead of geopolitical changes in the international arena.

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From April 2009 to February 2015, Haigneré was President of Universcience, the public institution that was founded by grouping together two centers of excellence: the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris and the Palais de la Découverte, aimed at becoming the most important French scientific center. She said: “I want to make this institution a point of reference at National, European and global level for the dissemination of scientific and technical culture. And of course a special place will be devoted to space”. The goal of Universcience, connected with the Ministry for Culture and the Ministry for Research, is to attract young people to scientific studies and careers, and to strengthen the dialogue between science and society where scientific and technological progress is triggering a rapid change in every area. Haigneré says: “The common thread of all my life, in all missions and functions I was entrusted in, has always been to love science, to help everyone understand that science and technology developments are the heart of our daily lives and provide the tools for our future, to support young people in their desperate search, and to direct new talent to these exciting careers”.

Not to mention that the research also involves self-discovery and understanding the world around us. When asked whether she has any regrets, Haigneré answers: “Actually, if I could go back I would apply more in studying philosophy. Today my role leads me to reflect on the meaning of things, on the transmission of knowledge and sometimes I regret having neglected these areas when I was at school. I was quite attracted to science where I could cope well and I was successful, and  – honestly  – philosophy at the time did not attract me much. I didn’t understand it deeply. But then I tried to recover by reading everything. I guess I’m one of the best customers of Amazon.fr”!

From 2014 to 2016, Haigneré was President of the Scientific Council of the Chaire des Bernardins in Paris, a research program promoting “digital humanism” under the slogan “L’humain au défi du numerique” (Humans facing the digital challenge). The main objective of the program, officially launched in January 2015 through seminars and workshops, was to address “Human challenges of Digital Culture”, a wide range of major changes of social, cultural and ethical significance in our societies due to emerging practices, with sociopolitical impact.

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In February 2015, Haigneré returned to ESA as an advisor to the Director General. In 2017, she accepted the position of Chair of the Jury for the DStv Eutelsat Star Awards Competition, an annual pan-African competition for students aged 14–19 who write an essay or design a poster on a satellite-­ related topic. The competition aims to encourage young minds to change their world positively via innovative thinking in science and technology. The organizers believed that choosing Haigneré served as a strong incentive to get female students to dream big, and inspire them to live up to their potential. Haigneré has been decorated with many awards in France and in Russia, including the French National Order of Merit, Légion d’Honneur, and the Russian Order of Friendship of Peoples. Many observers recognize her contributions to the good relations that were established between the space programs of the two countries, through her work in the Russian space program. Her awards include: Honorary Member of the Société Francaise de Médecine Aéronautique et Spatiale, Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), Honorary Member of the Association Aéronautique et Astronautique de France (AAAF), Member of the Académie de l’Air et de l’Espace (ANAE). Member of the French Académie des Technologies, member of the French Académie des Sports, Member of the French Académie des Sciences de l’outre mer, Member of the Belgian Academie des Sciences et Techniques. Docteur Honoris Causa of the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, Docteur Honoris Causa de la Faculté de Mons (Belgique), Professeur Honoris Causa of the University of Beihang in Peking, China. Patron of the Cité de l’Espace in Toulouse, and of the Institut de Myologie de la Pitié-Salpétrière set up by the Association Française contre les Myopathies (AFM), as well as the Fondation Clarins-Arthritis. Board member for multiple foundations such Airbus, Loreal and Fondation de France. The asteroid 135268 Haigneré is named after her and her husband, in their combined honor. There are streets named after her in the French towns of Claira, Franqueville-­ Saint-­Pierre, Marignane, Mudaison and Valliquerville

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Sources For This Section Cavallaro, U. interview, Milano, Italy, October 28, 2014. Cavallaro, U. “Claudie Haigneré, the First ESA Female Astronaut”. AD*ASTRA, ASITAF Quarterly Journal, 23 (December 2014), pp. 10–12. Chesnel, S. “Claudie Haigneré: ‘A 20 ans, j’étais en 5e année de médecine’”, letudiant.fr (June 15, 2010). ESA, “An Interview with Claudie Haigneré”, esa.int (October 16, 2001). Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 181–186. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 163–168. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Official biography of Claudie Haigneré, esa.int. Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space—Following Valentina, pp. 326–327, 332–334. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 103–105. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

1.7 KALPANA CHAWLA: UNABLE TO VISIT HER HOMELAND OFFICIALLY Mission

Launch

Return

STS-87 STS-107

November 19, 1997 January 16, 2003

December 5, 1997 -

Indian-born and a naturalized US citizen, Kalpana Chawla was one of the crew that perished during the Shuttle Columbia disaster of STS-107, which disintegrated over Texas on February 1, 2003, upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. Kalpana Chawla (Fig. 1.17) was born on March 17, 1962, in Karnal, Punjab, about 120 kilometers northwest of Delhi, in the State of Haryana, North India, to an archetypal family with strong drive. In a country that prized the birth of sons more, she was the youngest of four siblings, after two sisters, Sunita and Dipa, and a brother, Sanjay, with whom she shared an obsession with planes and the dream of becoming a pilot. Most biographies report that she was born on July 1, 1961 but, as the authoritative biography by her husband Jean-­Pierre Harrison reveals, that date entered her official records because it was used to enroll her in school a year in advance. Her

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Fig. 1.17.  Kalpana Chawla. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

family were refugees from Pakistan who settled in Karnal after partition in 1947. Her father, one of the few survivors in his family, managed to reach India safely and, starting from scratch as a self-taught technologist, ventured into a variety of trades before finally setting up his own tire factory and succeeding in becoming a leading industrialist in Karnal. Chawla acquired an attitude of never giving up and not acknowledging failure from her father. She was originally called “Montu” by the family, but at the age of three she chose for herself the name “Kalpana,” meaning “idea” or “imagination” in Sanskrit. Open-minded in her thoughts and unique in her attitude, she learned karate (and eventually became a black belt) and enjoyed hiking, back-packing, and reading. Her mother remembers her as extremely intelligent, hard-working, and sometimes a rebellious teenager: “… as she grew into a young woman she cut her hair short and never put on any make-up. She refused to cook, never ironed her clothes and began to wear trousers or jeans.” She did not want to take from Mother Earth more than was absolutely essential for her survival. Sharing an anecdote during a visit of

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Sunita Williams (the second Indian-American female astronaut) to India, Chawla’s father said: “Kalpana was once late from work and I asked her what took her so long. After coaxing, Kalpana revealed that she had gone to fix her broken shoes. I asked her why did she do so as she could have bought a new pair. To this, she replied that by doing so she had saved an animal’s life and given employment to a person”.

From a very young age, Chawla was attracted to the starry sky and remembered spending her evenings lying on the roof and admiring the firmament. She was also drawn by flight. After a thrilling joyride at a club, flying became her first love. She became as excited as a child whenever she saw planes or talked about them. She said: “I was very lucky that we lived in a very small town which had a flying club. Me and my brother, sometimes we would be there on bikes looking up. Every once in a while, we’d ask my dad if we could get a ride in one of these planes. And he did take us to the flying club and get us a ride in the Pushpak and a glider that the flying club had. Also growing up, we knew of J.R.D. Tata, who had done some of the first mail flights in India... The airplane that he flew for the mail flights now hangs in one of the aerodromes out there that I had a chance to see. Seeing this airplane and just knowing what this person had done during those years was very intriguing. Definitely captivated my imagination. Even when I was in high school, if people asked me what I wanted to do, I knew I wanted to be a flight engineer”.

Dreaming of becoming a “flight engineer,” Chawla took her pre-university and pre-engineering studies at Dayal Singh College, Karnal. When her father, whose business often kept him out of Karnal, became aware of her plans, he tried his best to dissuade her. Conservative by temperament, he felt that a girl had no career prospects in engineering and advised her to become a doctor or a school teacher. Firmly supported by her mother, however, she joined the Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh. She was the first girl ever to enroll in the Aeronautical Engineering course, and one of the first seven girls to undertake any engineering course. In 1982, Chawla became the first woman in the college to earn a BSc degree in Aeronautical Engineering. After attaining her degree, Chawla applied to several American universities and was accepted by the University of Texas at Arlington for an MSc in Aeronautical Engineering. “In the back of my mind”, she said later, “I knew that the US would have more airplanes than we would at home”. Initially, her father did not agree to allowing his daughter to live alone in a strange country

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and, since he happened to be away for business for more than a month, in the male-dominated household no one else could take a decision. So Chawla reluctantly accepted a teaching job at the Punjab Engineering College. When her father returned home, now a rich and powerful entrepreneur, he realized how determined his daughter was to go to the US and, knowing that the last date for admission to Arlington was in three days’ time, he organized her passport, visa, and tickets for the following day. When the British Airways flight he had booked was suddenly cancelled, her father then called friends in the US and arranged for her to be admitted behind schedule. Reportedly, the university even organized a pickup for her from the airport, accompanied by her brother. Within an hour of her arrival in the University of Texas at Arlington, in September 1982, Chawla met Jean-Pierre Harrison, who eventually became her flight instructor and whom she married in December 1983. Because of this marriage, there was tension with her family for a while. They only grew closer again when she joined the space program. Finally, Chawla was able fulfill her childhood dream of learning to fly planes, and earned Commercial Pilot’s licenses for single- and multi-engine land and seaplanes, as well as gliders, devoting a lot of time and money to maintain all those licenses: “I have a very cheap lifestyle in everything else”, she would explain years later, jokingly adding: “I hope NASA doesn’t find out about the car I drive”. After completing her MSc in Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington in 1984, and a second Masters in 1986, the couple moved to Boulder, Colorado, where Chawla earned her doctorate in Aerospace Engineering in 1988. In the same year, she began working at the NASA Ames Research Center, where she focused on vertical take-off, undertaking computational fluid dynamics (CFD) research on Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landing (VSTOL) concepts which are now being pioneered by major new spaceflight companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. She also applied for US citizenship, which she received in April 1991. After the completion of the Ames project, in 1993, Chawla joined Overset Methods, Inc., Los Altos, California, as Vice President and Research Scientist. There, she noticed a bulletin announcing a new class of astronauts and decided to apply, figuring: “You’re not going to win a lottery, until you buy a ticket”! She tried twice before she won her lottery and, at the beginning of 1995, was selected to join the Group 15 astronauts and moved to Houston. Having spent ten years in the most beautiful and progressive areas of the US, Chawla was at first reluctant to go to Houston, with its oppressive heat and humid weather for six months of the year; she likened it to “Los Angeles with the climate of Calcutta.” But her enthusiasm for the new job overcame

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her reticence. She was initially assigned as crew representative to work technical issues for the Astronaut Office EVA/Robotics and Computer Branches. Then she served in the development of Robotic Situational Awareness Displays and testing Space Shuttle control software in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL). She also completed Extravehicular Activity (EVA, or spacewalk) training but could not be certified because of her small size. She took part in two Shuttle missions, both on board Shuttle Columbia: STS-87 and STS-107. Chawla became the first Indian-born woman in space when she lifted-off on November 19, 1997 on Shuttle mission STS-87. She served as Mission Specialist-2 and Flight Engineer (MS-2/FE), tasked with supporting the commander and pilot during the mission’s ascent phase. Given her passion for flying, it was a task that made her particularly euphoric: “I felt like Alice in Wonderland”. Microgravity was a completely new and exhilarating experience: “The only thing I feel is my thoughts. There is nothing else touching me, telling me I have limbs”. While in space, Chawla had the privilege of speaking with the Indian Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, who is said to have commented later that talking to her on orbit was for him the high point of 1997. As MS, she was the prime robotic arm operator, responsible for deploying the reusable free-flying astronomical observatory Spartan (Shuttle Point Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy), designed to collect data from the Sun. The deployment was unsuccessful, however, and the satellite had to be recovered through a contingency spacewalk. After five months of investigation, NASA subsequently found that the mistake was the result of many small errors, including some problems in the software of the interfaces. The crew had planned to visit India in its post-flight tour, but relations between the US and India suddenly became strained because of India’s underground nuclear tests on May 11 and 13, 1998. This became one of Chawla’s deepest regrets, as she was unable to visit her native country in any official capacity because, as an astronaut, she was a representative of the US government. After returning from the STS-87 mission, Chawla was assigned to duties in the astronaut office with the ISS program before being selected in 2001 for her second flight. In January 2003, she flew on the ill-fated Columbia STS-107 mission that ended tragically 16 minutes before landing at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), while returning after its successful 16-day science mission. This mission had originally been scheduled for launch on May 11, 2000, but had been repeatedly delayed due to scheduling conflicts and technical problems, including the discovery of cracks in the Shuttle’s engine flow liners in July 2002. The

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launch date was ultimately pushed to January 16, 2003. As the training was delayed and became extended, Chawla would often remind her crew: “Man, you are training to fly in space. What more could you want”? The launch seemingly went off perfectly and Chawla’s family was in Houston to witness it. This mission was one of the few between 1998 and 2006 not committed to construction of the ISS. It also marked the maiden flight of the Spacehab Research Double Module or RDM (built by Alenia Spazio in Turin, Italy) in which the crew – divided into the blue shift and the red shift – worked 24 hours a day on a variety of experiments: 59 in total. All the experiments went well during a great scientific mission in which Columbia’s crew may have detected, among other things, a new atmospheric phenomenon, dubbed a “TIGER” (Transient Ionospheric Glow Emission in Red). The crew was in high spirits the day they were to return to Earth. One of the last images of the STS-107 crew in orbit, recovered from wreckage inside an undeveloped film canister, shows Chawla happily floating with the crew in microgravity, where she had used the words: “You are just your intelligence” (Fig. 1.18).

Fig. 1.18.  One of the last images of the STS-107 crew in orbit, showing Kalpana Chawla (bottom left, in red) happily floating in microgravity, where she had said the words “You are just your intelligence”. This picture survived on a roll of unprocessed film recovered by searchers from the STS-107 crash debris. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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A feeling of premonition seemed to surface during the last in-flight call that Chawla had with her family while in orbit, as her sister Sunita recalled: “She asked mom, ‘Mam, shall I show you something?’ We could just see her doing something, but for a few seconds we didn’t know what she was actually doing. Then out came a picture of mom and dad from 35 years ago, when she was a kid. Then she took out a picture of her and JP [her husband Jean-Pierre Harrison] and showed it to him. Then she took out a picture of us three sisters, and she said, ‘You are all with me’”.

This reminded her sister of a card she had sent a few times before: “One day a spaceship is going to kidnap me”. After its successful 16-day scientific investigation, the mission ended tragically when the Shuttle orbiter disintegrated over Texas. The cause of the accident was determined to be a piece of foam that had broken from the Space Shuttle’s external tank during launch and struck the left-wing of the orbiter, damaging the thermal protection tiles. When Columbia re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, the damaged wing slowly overheated and the hot atmospheric gases penetrated and destroyed the internal wing structure, eventually leading to loss of control and total disintegration of the vehicle. In his book10, Walter Cunningham wrote: “Complacency and overconfidence, in spite of numerous instances of exhaust gas leakage through a solid rocket booster seal, were factors in the Challenger disaster during launch. After twenty years of living with foam insulation shedding from the Shuttle’s external tank, NASA management became complacent and failed to fix it even as the problem grew more dangerous. It was eventually treated as an acceptable flight risk and a chronic maintenance problem that culminated in the 2003 breakup of Columbia during reentry”.

Chawla’s colleague, Janet Kavandi, who at that time was deputy Director of Flight Crew Operations at Johnson Space Center (JSC), remembers her as the “sweetheart” of the group: “Everyone she met was her best friend”, Kavandi said, during the Memorial dedicated to Chawla at the Nedderman Hall in the University of Texas Arlington College of Engineering, where she had earned her MSc degree in Aerospace Engineering. Among many memorials to Chawla are one of the peaks in a mountain chain on Mars, an asteroid (51826 Kalpanachawla), an Indian series of  Walter Cunningham’s book, “The All-American Boys” was declared “the best of all the astronaut books” by the Los Angeles Times. 10

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meteorological satellites, students’ and colleges’ awards, a NASA supercomputer, and a song from the musical group Deep Purple’s Steve Morse. In his novel Before Dishonor, novelist Peter Allen David named a shuttle “the Chawla.” Northrop Grumman’s Pressurized Cargo Module Cygnus NG-14, built by Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy, and launched from the Wallops Island spaceport on October 2, 2020, was also named S.S. Kalpana Chawla. She was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the NASA Space Flight Medal, and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. In her brother Sanjay Chawla’s words, “To me, my sister is not dead. She is immortal. Isn’t that what a star is? She is a permanent star in the sky. She will always be up there where she belongs”.

Sources For This Section Cavallaro, U. “Ten Years since Loss of Space Shuttle Columbia: Lost But Not Forgotten.” AD*ASTRA, ASITAF Quarterly Journal, 16 (March 2013), pp. 1–3. Chaudhary, A. (ed.) “A Success Story of Kalpana Chawla”, Biyani’s Group of Colleges, www.sanjaybiyani.com (2011). Cunningham, W., book “The All-American Boys”, ibooks, New York 1977, 2003, 2003, 488 pages Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 191–196. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Gueldenpfenning, S. Women in Space Who Changed the World, pp. 91–100. The Rosen Publishing Group, New York (2012). Gulati, M. “In Conversation with Banarsi Lal Chawla”, www.thezine.biz (September 19, 2015). Harrison, P. The Edge of Time: The Authoritative Biography of Kalpana Chawla. Harrison Publishing, Los Gatos, CA, USA (2011), 236 pp. Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, p. 220. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Navin, J. & Gebhardt, C. “S.S. Kalpana Chawla Cygnus arrives at Space Station”, in www.nasaspaceflight.com (October 4, 2020). Official biography of Kalpana Chawla, jsc.nasa.gov (May 2004). “Preflight Interview: Kalpana Chawla”, STS-107, spaceflight.nasa.gov (November 12, 2002). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space—Following Valentina, pp. 280–282, 298–299. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). “Space Agencies Must Fulfil Kalpana Chawla’s Dream: Sunita Williams”, ndtv.com (February 27, 2016). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 107–108. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

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1.8 YI SO-YEON: KOREAN “SPACEFLIGHT PARTICIPANT” Launch Soyuz TMA-12

Return April 8, 2008

Soyuz TMA-11

April 19, 2008

The flight of Dr. Yi So-yeon, the first South Korean astronaut to fly in space, was not only a personal accomplishment, but a national one, as this spaceflight in 2008 made South Korea the 35th country to reach space and only the third to date to have a woman as its first astronaut, following on from the Briton Helen Sharman and the Iranian Anousheh Ansari. She was also only the second Asian female astronaut, after the Japanese Chiaki Mukai, and to date remains the only South Korean astronaut in a country that has a hard time allowing women to fit in and climb its social, political, and business ranks. Moreover, at age 29, she also claimed the record of youngest astronaut from the American Sally Ride. So-yeon “Lee” Yi (Fig. 1.19) was born in Gwangj, South Korea, on June 2, 1978. From an early age, she dreamed about being an astronaut or flying in the universe, while watching science-fiction movies and animations. She says:

Fig. 1.19.  (L-R) Yi So-yeon with her Soyuz TM12 colleagues Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license

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“When I watched sci-fi movies as a kid, with the cool astronauts flying the spaceship, there was always one female scientist who was always smart, thin, pretty, and always blonde; and if something happened, she always explained everything well, and then, when the men started fighting, she calmed them all down and solved things. So watching these cool women, I thought, ‘Ahh! I want to be a cool scientist like that’! It was totally the same with other ordinary kids pretending to fly into space. No more and no less. As I grew up, I realized that it was impossible to have those kinds of jobs in Korea. Maybe only Russians or Americans”.

But Yi So-yeon continued to like technology and she recalls that, from primary-­school age and with the support of her parents, she was attracted to mechanics. She says: “Although I grew up in Korea, my parents are not typical ‘conservative’ Korean parents. For my generation, parents were more likely to encourage sons to go into the hard sciences and engineering. I never felt that engineering was a ‘guys’ thing… my parents raised me to believe that I could choose any field. Especially my daddy, who always made me his ‘assistant’ on his fix-up projects… working on the cars, boilers, and other things. I was his No. 1 assistant whenever he did technical things”!

After graduating from Gwangju Science High School, Yi So-yeon chose a scientific career and earned a BSc in Mechanical Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon, which was the first research-oriented science and engineering institution in South Korea. She then studied for her MSc. She recalls: “For my Ph.D., I transferred to the Bio Systems department. Even though I transferred departments, I did almost the same research, since I was working with BioMEMS (micro-electro mechanical systems) for my Masters in Engineering. My Ph.D. thesis was about how to develop micro-machines to separate DNA molecules by their sizes”.

While she was working at her dissertation at the university, Yi So-yeon occasionally came across an advertisement by the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) and learned about the space program. She says:

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Fig. 1.20.  Commemorative cover of the launch of Soyuz TMA-12, autographed by Yi So-yeon. From the Author’s collection.

“When I read an article about the astronaut program, I thought it would be cool, but I couldn’t even imagine that I would make it. However, I thought, at least I want to try. Of course, I was sure that I would be eliminated after a few rounds”.

On December 25, 2006, Yi So-yeon was instead selected as one of the two Korean astronaut candidates, beating more than 36,000 other applicants (Fig. 1.20). The challenge was learning to speak enough Russian in just few months in order to train for the flight. She trained at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City, near Moscow, Russia, from March 2007 through April 2008 as backup for the “prime” astronaut Ko San, an artificial-intelligence expert and roboticist. She says: “I had never been in Russia at all, and it was not a familiar country to me. I didn’t even know the Russian alphabet when I left, so it was a totally new world for me, even besides the training. One of the toughest things was to learn Russian. At first, the culture and the reactions of people were unusual to me. Most of all, the military base was a totally strange place: as a woman, I’d never been on a military base before”.

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Due to her training commitments in Russia, Yi So-yeon was unable to be present at the ceremony at KAIST when her doctorate in Biotech Systems was conferred on February 29, 2008. She had to delegate her mother to attend her doctoral graduation ceremony in her place. Just weeks before the scheduled launch, the Russian Federal Space Agency asked for Ko San to be replaced, having reportedly violated regulations of the training center and security protocols on several occasions by removing sensitive training materials from the Russian facility without permission, even mailing one classified document back to Korea. Though he later denied this and explained that he was trying to understand how the Soyuz systems worked so that he could participate in the mission safely, Ko San was sent back to his country and the glory of becoming South Korea’s first astronaut went to Yi So-yeon, who succeeded him on the prime crew. Yi So-yeon lifted off from Baikonur on board Soyuz TMA-12 on April 8, 2008, thus becoming the first Korean and the 49th woman to visit space. She flew as a spaceflight participant, together with cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko. The two Russians would replace Peggy Whitson and Yuri Malenchenko, who had finished their six-month rotations on the ISS, with Whitson having just completed her tour as the first female commander of the space station. Reportedly, in the “commercial agreement” and for Yi So-yeon’s ticket to space, the Korean government had paid US$20 million ($25 million according to some sources) to the Russians, for something that has been called a “matter of national pride.” The mission was part of an ambitious South Korean initiative into space exploration, including the planned completion of a US$265 million space research center. During her 11 days on the ISS, Yi So-yeon conducted 18 scientific experiments on behalf of KARI, including one that monitored the effects of microgravity on 1,000 fruit flies that she had transported into space. Other experiments involved the growth of plants in space, the study of the behavior of her heart, and the effects of gravity change on the pressure in her eye and shape of her face. With a specially designed three-dimensional Samsung camera, Yi So-yeon took six shots of her face every day to see how it differed in the lack of gravity. She also observed Earth, in particular the movement of dust storms from China to Korea, and measured the noise levels on board the ISS. She said: “That was a lot. Everyone told me I didn’t have to complete all of them, that it wasn’t expected of me. But I knew everyone was watching me, so I gave up meals and sleep and completed all 18 experiments. It’s a very Korean thing to do”.

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Yi So-yeon felt that it was important that she should do a good job in representing South Korea and worked very hard: “The most fantastic thing is that I cannot feel my weight, and I can fly around like Peter Pan”. During her stay aboard the ISS, she never tired of looking at the Earth. “Our beautiful planet, Earth, is the greatest gift from God”, she said. “I believe that we have an obligation to share it fairly with everyone, to preserve it to the best of our ability, and to hand it over to the next generation in as good a condition as when received”. Whenever she woke up in the middle of the night, she would climb out of her sleeping bag and float over to the nearest window. “I realized that I should be grateful for all that I have”, she said; “my friends, siblings, parents, teachers and colleagues… as well as the wind, the sky, the stars, the moon, the mountains, the air”. In honor of the first Russian in space, Yuri Gagarin, Russia celebrates April 12 as Cosmonautics Day, and while she was on orbit, Yi So-yeon shared – with some hearty laughs – a traditional kimchi dinner of instant noodles, chili paste, and other traditional Korean recipes with the crew. “It was very delicious”, the veteran Commander of the Space Station Sergei Volkov commented diplomatically during a live in-flight call. “Despite the fact that you want things spicy when you get up here, it was a bit more spicy than we expected or required”. Three top government research institutes had worked to create “space kimchi” because “If a Korean goes to space, kimchi must go there, too”. When the Korean government finally decided to finance the space trip, they wanted the Korean spacefarer to be well prepared for this momentous journey, which meant that she had to take kimchi with her. After millions of dollars and years of research, South Korean scientists successfully engineered Korean space recipes. When the Russian space authorities approved the plan, the South Korean food companies that participated in the research took out full-page newspaper ads. Not only did Yi So-yeon share the traditional Korean food with the crew, she also left some for the next expeditions: “I am not certain if they will become common fare in space”, she said, “but others enjoyed the foods I brought, and if there are any left I plan to leave some behind for others to enjoy”. When Soyuz TMA-11 returned to Earth on April 19, it was reported as the first spacecraft ever on which there were more females than males on board: Yi So-yeon, Peggy Whitson, and Yuri Malenchenko. It was not a smooth return. The space capsule missed its mark and the re-entry started later than expected, as the Soyuz descent module did not separate properly from the rest of the spacecraft. Soyuz then followed a “ballistic trajectory,” a pre-­programmed maneuver when the re-entry module does not separate as planned. It landed about 420 kilometers away from its planned touchdown point  – a highly

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unusual distance given how precisely engineers plan for such landings – near some shepherds in northern Kazakhstan. “They thought at first we were aliens”, So-yeon said in an interview. During this rough re-entry and landing, the crew was subjected to severe G-forces (more than 8 Gs, i.e. eight times the force of gravity) and arrived around 20 minutes later than scheduled. The capsule hit the ground so hard that it bounced. Despite the “hard landing,” the entire crew ended up largely uninjured. Some controversy was sparked during the post-flight press conference when the Roscosmos Chief Anatoli Preminov referred to a naval superstition that having women aboard a ship was bad luck: “In Russia, we have a sort of omen regarding such occasions but thank God, everything ended well. Certainly we will try to somehow avoid a prevalence of females on a crew, though I don’t think it will be mandatory”. It is reported that, after her return to Korea, Yi So-yeon was hospitalized at an Air Force facility in Cheongju, some 130 kilometers southeast of Seoul, where she was treated for a minor neck injury and bruising of some vertebrae. To fulfill her dream “in a still male-dominated world,” Yi So-yeon had to overcome many obstacles. “Men and women are different”, she commented, “and I believe that it used to be that people didn’t distinguish the ‘differences’ from ‘abilities’. Being different is not the same as being less capable”. There are big obstacles in her country: “Confucian culture”, she says, “is very chauvinist, but I think Korean society is changing”. But she adds: “What I’ve seen in Russia is that the women cosmonauts are not treated like the other ‘guys’ in the program either”. Asked to comment on the mission of Chinese taikonaut Liu Yang, she said: “I have not met Liu Yang yet, and I am not sure yet whether she is in a ‘show window’ for the international awareness of China’s progress in space and science. I’ve read that one of the prerequisites in China was that they be married! In my view, married or single cannot be the criteria to evaluate whether a woman is ‘mentally stable’ or capable of managing the requirements of the job. As I understand it, this requirement was discredited as a misunderstanding rather than discrimination”.

After her mission, Yi So-yeon officially became a senior researcher at KARI and traveled widely as Korea’s space ambassador, both in her own country and abroad, to give public lectures. She also participated in educational programs to inspire students. Immediately after the flight, she found herself giving a public lecture in schools almost every day, though her speaking engagements eventually decreased to approximately one per week. She said:

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“I have a dream that one day, an engineer or scientist or winner of a Nobel Prize would get asked ‘What makes you do this?’ And he or she might answer, ‘When I was a kid, I watched TV and the first Korean astronaut was flying on the ISS and doing experiments there; it was really exciting! I thought only Russians or Americans could fly to space, but she changed my mind. So I made up my mind I should be a person who does those things … and finally I made it’”.

Yi So-yeon left the state-run research space center in August 2014, sending a letter to explain her resignation “for personal reasons.” This brought the country’s first astronaut program to an end and sparked criticism of government waste. In an interview, she later explained that her retirement was because she was about to marry an American-Korean man and receive American citizenship; moreover, she had decided to add an MBA to her Ph.D. in Biotech Systems. She chose the University of California-Berkley’s Haas School of Business because of its proximity to Silicon Valley and its distance from Korea, where she was a celebrity with little privacy. “California is an easy place to be an Asian woman engineer”, she says. “It feels like home”. In 2016, Yi So-yeon taught as an Engineering Physics professor at Everett Community College in Washington State. Now a resident of Puyallup, WA, she works with South Korean-based Studio XID and California-based Loft Orbital Solutions.

Sources For This Section Bonilla, E.L. “International Brief: Dr. Soyeon Yi”, appel.nasa.gov (May 24, 2012). “First Korean Astronaut Yi So-yeon”, blog.sciencewomen.com (March 11, 2008). Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 187–190. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Lopez-Alegria, D.; Yi, S. “Space Ambassador, Science Advocate”, spacebridges.com (June 25, 2012). Malik, T. “South Korean Astronaut Shares Laughs, Space Food with Station Crew”, space.com (April 15, 2008). Newcomb, A. “Why South Korea’s Only Astronaut Quit”, abcnews.go.com (August 13, 2014). O’Neill, I. “Soyuz Capsule Hatch Nearly Burned Up and Crew’s Lives Were on a ‘Razor’s Edge’”, universetoday.com (April 22, 2008). “Russian Spacecraft Returns Off-Course”, cbsnews.com (April 19, 2008). Sang-Hun, C. “Kimchi Goes to Space, along with First Korean Astronaut”, nytimes. com (February 22, 2008).

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1.9 LIU YANG: FIRST FEMALE TAIKONAUT Mission

Launch

Return

Shenzhou-9 Shenzhou-14

June 16, 2012 June 5, 2022

June 29, 2012 December 4, 2022

Born on October 6, 1978, in Zhengzhou, the central Chinese province of Henan, a relatively poor but heavily populated agricultural region, Liu Yang became the most celebrated woman in contemporary China in June 2012 when she became the first female taikonaut to fly in space. She was hailed as the “Chinese Valentina Tereshkova” or “Chinese Sally Ride.” An only daughter and member of the Chinese Communist Party, Liu Yang is married as per the Chinese space program’s requirements: “Married women would be more physically and psychologically mature”, according to the official Chinese Press Agency, Xinhua. Wu Bin, the director of the China Astronaut Center at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, was reported to have said: “We prefer married women because they are more likely to devote themselves to the hard training processes”. According to the newspaper China Daily, female Chinese astronauts must be married and preferably be mothers because of concerns that higher levels of radiation in space would “harm their fertility.” In February 2015, it was announced that Liu Yang had given birth, but no further information has been released about her child. Liu Yang is described as a sociable person, an avid reader, a lover of cooking, and an eloquent speaker with a penchant for patriotic speeches; she has won first place in a military speech contest. She once said in an interview that as a child she first wanted to become “a lawyer like the ones in television series.” Then, the first time she sat on a bus with her mother, she also thought that becoming a bus driver would be great, as she could ride the bus every day. In 1997, she enlisted in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). She said: “It was pure chance that I became a pilot. At that time, our country was recruiting the seventh batch of female pilots. The recruitment happens only every seven or eight years. So I didn’t think that it would occur to me that I would one day be a pilot. Unknowingly, my class teacher signed me up for the pilot selection. She said I was qualified, with good test scores and good eyesight”.

So, unwittingly, Liu Yang embarked on a path to becoming a pilot: an extraordinary experience that most girls of her age could only dream of:

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“My first flight experience was totally amazing. I watched the ground get further and further away, and people below grow smaller and smaller, finally to the size of little ants. And I was increasingly closer to the sky. I didn’t feel scared at all. It was a like miracle”.

Liu Yang is known for being tough. She was away from home for four years and did not return until she graduated in 2001, nor did she let her parents visit her during her four years at the college: “Baby eagles can never soar under their family’s wing”, she was reported to have said. When she made her first skydive, she did not immediately call her family to tell them that she was safe. Her parents broke down in tears when Liu Yang finally called them, with her father saying to her: “It’s good that you are safe”. She graduated from an aviation college in Changchun, Jilin Province, in 2001 and became a cargo plane pilot for the Air Force aviation division: “I still remember the parachuting practice for new airborne troop recruits at an airport in Hubei. They were all teenagers – fit but sunburned due to years of hard training. They were seated in the cabin, and began singing when the door was opened. After the song, they raised their fists chanting ‘Learn from pilots, Salute to pilots’. I felt so warm and honored”!

During nine years in the Air Force, Liu Yang became deputy commander of a military flight unit, with the rank of major, and qualified on five types of aircraft, logging 1,680 hours of flight. She participated in several military exercises, emergency rescues, and disaster relief work. In 2008, she flew on a disaster relief mission in Guizhou. In 2009, she joined a drought relief task. She was praised for her cool and successful handling of a mid-air emergency when a flock of pigeons collided with the military transport plane she was piloting and disabled one engine. Having taken the precaution of sending out a mayday message, she managed to retain control of the severely damaged aircraft and was still able to land safely. This kind of calmness under pressure would appeal to astronaut selectors and, in May 2010, she was recruited for the second group of taikonauts and was one of the two women who made the final cut of seven (Fig. 1.21). “Female astronauts generally have better durability, psychological stability and ability to deal with loneliness”, according to Wu Ping, the spokeswoman for China’s manned space program. Liu Yang said: “I admired those involved in the launch missions of Shenzhou spacecraft. It never occurred to me that I would one day join their ranks. During the selec-

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Fig. 1.21.  Commemorative cover for the launch of Shenzhou-9, signed by the crew including Liu Yang (right). From the Author’s collection.

tion, we had photos taken with those astronauts, but I didn’t imagine that I could be an astronaut myself ”.

The training for Liu Yang was a very intense “total immersion” in the program. Once more, she lost sight of family and friends, who did not even know where she was. When she eventually reappeared, she said: “It was a disciplinary request. Our selection and training procedures were confidential. There were reports about me when I was a pilot. But I never mentioned my job to anyone while being an astronaut. Apart from my parents, nobody knew my whereabouts”.

The training for astronauts in China is split into eight categories, including basic theory, comprehensive academic learning, physical training, psychological training, training for adaptability to the spaceflight environment, astronaut technique training, program assignments training, and large-scale cooperative exercises. It is very systematic and strict, and in many aspects resembles the Soviet space program during the Cold War. Liu Yang said: “We had so much to learn. Sometimes it could be a bit dull. From the moment we joined the group, we have lived a routine life. We haven’t had a break from the intense work schedule and heavy tasks. During the two years, I have never watched a film, gone shopping, or slept late. We even had classes on Saturdays. And we got up early on Sundays to review the lessons.

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“From day one I was told I am no different from the male astronauts... Our training was the same as the male astronauts. If they do six-G in the centrifuge, we do too. We can only adapt to the space environment through hard training. The space environment won’t change because you are female. They could lower requirements for us, but the space environment won’t be that caring”.

As per Chinese custom, even the official confirmation of her name as a member of the prime crew for the upcoming Shenzhou-9 mission was only released just a few days before the launch. In contrast to the huge celebrity enjoyed by pioneering female astronauts in the Soviet Union and the US, the Chinese women have been virtually unknown for a long time. For 18 months, the names of the seven new taikonauts were kept as a closely guarded state secret until, at the end of 2011, Tony Quine, an Isle of Man-based British space memorabilia collector and space writer, discovered a “philatelic cover” listed for sale on a German space dealer’s website. The stamped postcard was postmarked in China on May 10, 2010  – the same day as the country’s space program had reportedly appointed the candidates to its second group of taikonauts – and was signed by seven Chinese pilots, including two women. The cover had accidentally been released prematurely. Chinese online forum sources helped to verify the names and unravel the mystery of the new taikonauts (Fig. 1.22). Liu Yang blasted off on June 16, 2012 (on the 49th anniversary of the flight of Tereshkova) on board Shenzhou-9 (“Divine Vessel”) on top of the Long March 2-F rocket. According to the official press agency, she had spoken to reporters and said – in true patriotic style – a heartfelt “Thank you for the confidence put in me by the Motherland and by the people: I feel honored to fly into space on behalf of hundreds of millions of female Chinese citizens and earn their trust and support”. The mission lifted off from Jiuquan, the Chinese spaceport located on the edge of the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia. The team also included Commander Jing Haipeng, the first Chinese taikonaut to fly twice (having previously flown in 2008 on the Shenzhou-7 mission, the first Chinese mission with a crew of three), and the military pilot Liu Wang, a rookie taikonaut who had waited for his first flight for 14 years, having been selected in the first group of Chinese astronauts in 1998. Much attention was paid to the “mental compatibility” of the crew. Wu Bin said: “This is our first attempt to send a female astronaut into space; it will pose problems for the team’s mental compatibility. They will be asked to work as a team during training and we will observe and evaluate how well they cope with each other”.

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Fig. 1.22.  The names of the seven new taikonauts selected in May 2010 were kept secret for 18 months. They were accidentally released in December 2011 when an autographed postcard was listed for sale on a German space dealer’s website. The cover was signed by seven Chinese pilots, including two women (Liu Yang, second row left, and Wang Yaping, second row in the center). Research by the British space writer Tony Quine, with contributions from international experts, helped to solve the mystery and reveal the names. Figure Credit: © Spaceflori.com. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

Shenzhou-9 was the first manned mission to perform a manual docking procedure, with the orbiting space lab module Tiangong-1 (“Heavenly Palace”) that was put into orbit in September 2011. It was emphatically presented as “another outstanding contribution by the Chinese people to humanity’s efforts to explore and use space.” The mission marked the first time China had transferred astronauts between two orbiting craft, a milestone in the nation’s efforts to acquire the technological and logistical skills to run a full space station to house people for long periods. (Automated rendezvous and docking between the unmanned Shenzhou-8 spacecraft and Tiangong-1 had earlier been performed in November 2011.) Jing Haipeng and Liu Yang had rehearsed the maneuver 1,500 times in simulation and on the day, which coincided with the Dragon Boat Festival, the docking exercises with Tiangong were broadcast live on state television and were met with an outpouring of national pride. During an interview at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) held in Naples in October 2012, Liu Yang said that she was astonished by the beauty of Earth as seen from space, and that she was pleasantly surprised by the toy panda that had been left aboard Tiangong-1 by the ground crew. Applause was heard from China’s Mission Control room at the Beijing Aerospace Control

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Center as she boarded the module. Despite the Tiangong Space Lab being only 15 cubic meters inside, Liu Yang was allocated a separate toilet and a soundproofed bedroom to protect her privacy. The compartment, specifically designed for females, was equipped with cosmetics specially made for space and the water supply for the bathroom was twice that given to male colleagues. Ten biomedical experiments were carried out during the mission, the first Chinese medical experiments in space. It was a week of scientific achievement for China because, that same week, the submersible Jiaolong was exploring inner space, diving 6,095 meters into the Marianna Trench in the Pacific Ocean. The space mission lasted for 12 days and 15 hours, more than double the previous longest Chinese mission. “Every minute in space I felt like a fish swimming freely in water”, Liu Yang said. “Everything floats and flies because of the weightlessness. Compared with the Earth, it seems that everything in space has got a life”! China has been barred from the ISS since 2011, when the US Congress passed a law prohibiting official American contact with the Chinese space program due to concerns about national security, and banned NASA from engaging in bilateral agreements and coordination with China. China is not an ISS partner and no Chinese nationals have been aboard. ESA is open to China’s inclusion, but the US remains opposed due to concerns over the transfer of technology that could be used for military purposes. Liu Yang has said: “International cooperation is very necessary. The Chinese have a saying, ‘When all the people collect the wood, you will make a great fire’. International ­cooperation can help us to join our efforts together to have a better exploration of the universe and accelerate our exploration steps”.

After her mission on Shenzhou 9, Liu Yang was awarded the honorary title of “Heroic Astronaut” and the Third-class Space Service Medal Contrary to what space analysts expected, she did eventually return to space, launching on June 5, 2022, aboard Shenzhou 14 and heading to the Tiangong Space Station for a six-month mission. This was the first mission made up entirely of China’s second generation of astronauts, those who joined the program in 2010. The goal of the mission was to oversee the final stages of the construction of the Tiangong station, helping with the docking, set-up and testing of the two laboratory modules, Wentian and Mengitan. Wentian successfully docked on July 26. Mengtian docked on November 3, 2022, expanding the Tiangong Space Station to 110 cubic meters. Liu Yang became the second Chinese woman to carry out a spacewalk, on September 6, 2022, when she completed a series of tasks including installing an additional external pump, raising panoramic camera B, installing a workbenh, and demonstratin emergency return, in an EVA lasting 6 hours 7 minutes.

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Sources For This Section Coppinger, R. “China’s First Woman in Space: Q&A with Astronaut Liu Yang”, space.com (October 4, 2012). Dan, Z. “US Media Focuses on Chinese Female Astronaut”, english.cntv.cn (June 18, 2012). Duncan, M. “Liu Yang Draws Cheers as First Chinese Woman Set for Space Voyage”, www.reuters.com (June 15, 2012). Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 197–200. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Harvey, B. China in Space: The Great Leap Forward, pp. 1–11. Springer Praxis, New York (2013). Huei, P.S. “Countdown Starts for Chinese Woman Taikonauts”, www.thejakartapost. com (June 13, 2012). Martina, M. “China Hails Space Mission’s Success as Crew Returns to Earth”, www. reuters.com (June 29, 2012). McDonald, M. “No Fanfare for China’s Female Astronauts”, nytimes.com (June 11, 2011). Moskowitz, C. “Chinese Astronauts Enter Orbiting Space Module”, www.nbcnews. com (June 18, 2012). Pearlman, R. “Names of China’s Secret Astronauts Revealed by Autographed Envelope”, collectspace.com (December 7, 2011). Qiuyuan, L. “Exclusive Interview: Astronauts Selection Process”, english.cntv.cn (June 16, 2012). Rui, Z. “Liu Yang: From Pilot to Astronaut”, english.cntv.cn (June 15, 2012). Xiaodan, D. “China Launches Spaceship with First Female Astronaut”, english.cntv. cn (June 16, 2012).

1.10 SAMANTHA CRISTOFORETTI: THE FIRST EXTRATERRESTRIAL TIKTOKER Mission

Launch

Return

Soyuz TMA-15M Crew Dragon 4

November 23, 2014 April 27, 2022

June 11, 2015 October 14, 2022

Samantha Cristoforetti (Fig. 1.23) is one of six ESA astronauts, selected (from 8,413 candidates) in May 2009  in the “Shenanigans” class, together with her fellow countryman Luca Parmitano. Until the new group was announced in November 2022, she was the only woman in the ESA Astronaut Corps. As the first Italian female astronaut, Cristoforetti has acquired a symbolic, almost mythical image that she would rather avoid (Fig. 1.24). It is well

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Fig. 1.23.  Samantha Cristoforetti. Figure Credit: © ESA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fig. 1.24.  Cover sent by Commander Anton Shkaplerov from on board the ISS and signed by the crew of Expedition 42, including Samantha Cristoforetti. From the Author’s collection.

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Fig. 1.25.  Stamps issued by Biberpost (Germany) featuring the portrait of Samantha Cristoforetti and the Soyuz TMA-15M crew, before launch. Figure Credit: © Ralf Schulz/ Biberpost. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

known that she does not like to be considered a representative of her gender, stating that her success has been built on merit, as well as on a good dose of luck, as she herself concedes: “The opportunities to become an astronaut are few and infrequent, and you must be there at the right time”. She does not like this topic, but addresses it with determination, and also with a bit of clever irony. She says (Fig. 1.25): “At Star City, Russian astronauts usually enter the hall of the Soyuz simulator with blue suit and sneakers. And when it was my turn to go to pick up the sneakers they had assigned to me, I opened the box and I found a pair of pink shoes. Pink is actually a nice color like so many others, and the gesture was done with the best of intentions. However, I found it an unusual gesture, because very infrequently, in my professional life and in my training, it happens to me to highlight a difference or a peculiarity with respect to my colleagues. But I realize that, to the outsider, the fact that I am a woman can raise questions and curiosity”.

To address this kind of curiosity, she created the “Avamposto42” blog, hosted by www.esa.int. On the first page, she immediately tackles the core issue: “Whoever looks at our group picture usually immediately notices one thing: I am the only woman. To be honest, as I am inside the picture and not outside, I do not pay much attention. First of all, let me clearly tell that there’s really nothing outstanding in the deal! Many astronauts have been in space, and there is no activity in this profession that was not already done before by somebody else. Nobody expects me to prove anything. I am an engineer, a military pilot, an astronaut: there is nothing in my training that makes me an expert on gender

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issues. Nor I have an eye trained to grasp these issues, or the mind trained to think about it. In short, it’s unlikely that I have something smart or original to add on this subject”!

Cristoforetti understands, however, that, within certain limits, some curiosity from those outside the picture is also legitimate. She admits: “Basically, me too, when I was a young girl and I looked at the pictures and read the stories of those who flew into space, I was especially interested in the female astronauts. Maybe because they were a minority, or they were more like me. If I had met any of them, I believe that I had even some specific questions that I would not ask their male colleagues”.

Born in Milan, Italy, on April 26, 1977, Samantha Cristoforetti spent her childhood in Malè, in Val di Sole, Trentino Region, Italy. She recalls that she had wanted to become an astronaut since she was a young girl. After completing her high-school education at the Liceo Scientifico in Trento, she spent a year in the US on a student-exchange program. She then worked on an experimental project in aerodynamics at the École Nationale Supérieure de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace in Toulouse, France (Erasmus program, 2000) and performed research for her doctorate on solid rocket propellants at the Mendeleev Russian University of Chemistry and Technology in Moscow, Russia (2000–2001). In 2001, she graduated from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Besides Italian (her mother tongue), she speaks English, French, German, and Russian, and she also is studying Chinese – as a “hobby,” she clarifies to avoid misunderstandings. Cristoforetti was one of the first Italian women to become a lieutenant and fighter pilot in the Italian Air Force. Her career began in 2001 at the Italian Accademia Aeronautica in Pozzuoli, Naples, Italy, where she attended the four-­ year “Boreas V” course. In 2005, she graduated with honors in Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautical Science at the University Federico II of Naples and was awarded the Honor Sword for best academic achievement, the first woman to receive such an award. In 2005–2006, she completed the Euro-­ NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training (ENJJPT) at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, and became a fighter pilot. In 2007, Cristoforetti was assigned to the 212th Squadron, 61st Flight Training Wing of Galashiels, where she completed the training “Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals”. From 2007 to 2008, she piloted the MB-399 and served in the Planning and Operations section for the 51st Bomber Wing

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based in Istrana, Treviso, Italy. In 2008, she joined the 101st Squadron, 32nd Bomber Squadron based at Amendola, Foggia, Italy, where she attended the operational conversion training for the AM-X ground attack fighter. Captain Cristoforetti has logged more than 500 hours of flying in six types of military aircraft: SF-260, USAF T-37, T-38, Aermacchi MB-339, MB-339CD, and AM-X. Following her astronaut selection, Cristoforetti joined ESA in September 2009 and completed the basic astronaut training in November 2010. In 2011, she was awarded Reserve Astronaut status and started a challenging training program that involved traveling to the US, Canada, Japan, and the European Astronaut Center (EAC) in Cologne, Germany, to familiarize herself with the ISS systems developed by different partner countries. It was a long and arduous undertaking that, in an interview with AD*ASTRA, she likened to a “marathon.” She said: “Arriving to the launch requires years-long preparation. It’s a sort of endurance race and you have to dose and measure out your energies. It’s not a sprint race, nor is it a high hurdle. You have no peaks of difficulties to overcome. Really it’s a matter of keeping up the pace”.

In July 2012, Cristoforetti was assigned to “Futura,” the ASI mission on board the ISS. As she recalled in the AD*ASTRA interview, “Training is a duty which requires that you live out of a suitcase”. Sixteen different countries contribute to the ISS and each astronaut must know all the complex technologies and on-board systems operating in the station and those of the cargo spacecraft that will deliver supplies. Astronauts therefore move alternatively from the US to Russia, the main contributors to the ISS, but they also train in the Japanese and Canadian Astronaut Training Centers to get acquainted with the different technologies they have to live with during their long-term mission. At the EAC in Germany, they get to practice with the European Laboratory Columbus. Samantha Cristoforetti was launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-15M with astronauts Terry Virts (US) and Anton Shkaplerov (Russia) on November 23, 2014, at 21:01 CET (November 24 at 3:01 a.m. local time in Baikonur, Kazakhstan). Just 5 hours and 48 minutes after lift-off, the crew arrived at the ISS, where they were welcomed aboard by Commander Barry Wilmore (NASA) and cosmonauts Elena Serova (the fourth Russian woman in space) and Alexander Samokutyaev (Roscosmos). This was the third long-duration mission for an Italian astronaut on the ISS, one of the flight opportunities provided according to the bilateral ASI/NASA agreement in return for the

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development of the pressurized MPLM (Multi-Purpose Logistics Module) that Italy delivered to the US. The three MPLM, including the “Leonardo” living module now permanently attached to the ISS and known as the PMM (Permanent Multipurpose Module), were built by Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy. During launch and return, Cristoforetti took on the role of flight engineer and co-pilot on the Soyuz spacecraft. In the aforementioned interview, she said: “Most of the training I do in Russia is spent on the Soyuz. We will use it for the launch and the return. Few hours altogether, but they will be the hours potentially more at risk. And I must gain a thorough knowledge of the spacecraft, as I’ll have to help the commander to manage the critical phases”.

Her mission was named “Futura” to highlight the science and technology research she ran in weightlessness to help shape our future. During her six months on the ISS, she was involved in Earth observation experiments and performed various tests in physics, human physiology in weightlessness, and telemedicine, with important impacts on Earth. She also oversaw the undocking of ESA’s fifth and final ATV (Automated Transfer Vehicle) Georges Lemaître. Experiments sponsored by the ASI also included technology demonstrators such as three-dimensional printers, which, she observed at the time, “could be revolutionary in the future and allow to print on board the necessary spare parts.” She said: “European astronauts have often chosen a ‘leitmotif ’, a ‘key-subject’, to focus the communication on their mission. Looking at my personal story I have chosen to focus on Wellbeing and Nutrition, which is something that concerns everybody. Food is essential to stay healthy over time, to keep us in a state of serenity and well-being in our daily lives and to allow us to perform at our best. What I discovered is that just a little basic knowledge on the interaction between food and our health allows us to make informed choices that make a huge difference in our ability to stay in shape. The mission ‘Futura’ [will] explore the topic of interaction between food and body that, if wrong, can generate imbalances that in a long term may generate problems, such as cardiovascular disease or diabetes. Those remain for years as subclinical aspects, because they act in more dilated times. In space we can investigate such issues from a privileged point of view, since astronauts offer an accelerated aging model”.

In order to create a link between space, as one of the most advanced sectors, and the concrete issues of a healthy lifestyle on Earth, the “Avamposto-42”

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(Outpost-42) website Cristoforetti set up was in part a meeting point to allow fans and the curious to follow the “Futura” mission closely. The website’s name refers to the number – Expedition-42 – of the long-duration mission that she participated in. “The International Space Station is a laboratory where we do science, but I also consider it as an outpost of humanity in space,” she wrote. But the name of the site also refers to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the comedy science-fiction series created by Douglas Adams. She explained: “I’ve always loved science fiction and I found it funny that the number of my mission, ‘42’, coincides with the number which in the book is, ironically, the answer – provided by the supercomputer Deep Thought after a computation which took 7½ million years – to ‘the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything’”.

During the first in-flight call of the “Futura” mission, connected with the ASI, she said: “Day after day I’m becoming a true Space being”. Among the many visits received during her long expedition on the ISS, one of the most anticipated arrivals was that of the SpaceX Dragon CRS-6, which she captured using the robotic arm on April 17, 2015 (Fig. 1.26). For Cristoforetti and the team on the station, this was the historic day on which the long-awaited “ISSpresso machine” finally arrived on board. This is

Fig. 1.26.  Cover commemorating the launch of the SpaceX Dragon CRS-6, carrying the “ISSpresso machine” to the ISS. The cover was autographed by Samantha Cristoforetti. From the Author’s collection.

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the space expresso maker built by the engineering firm Argotec (Turin, Italy), who teamed up with Turin-based Lavazza and the ASI (Italian Space Agency), working together for more than a year to bring authentic Italian expresso coffee into space11. Through Twitter, Cristoforetti shared a picture of herself drinking the coffee from a special cup designed for use in microgravity – while wearing her favorite Star Trek outfit (Figs. 1.27 and 1.28). Cristoforetti’s return to Earth was delayed by a week because of an investigation into the malfunction of the unmanned Russian Progress-59 resupply ship that failed to arrive at the ISS and burned up in the atmosphere in April. When the delay was announced, as Anton Shkaplerov recalled a few months later in a post-flight tour conference held in Milan, Italy, a dazzling smile appeared on Samantha Cristoforetti’s face. As a result of the delay, on June 6, she surpassed the endurance record of 194+ days for a female astronaut in space on a single mission, set by NASA’s Sunita Williams in 2007. Together with Terry Virts and mission commander Anton Shkaplerov, Cristoforetti returned on June 11, 2015, after spending 199 days, 16 hours, and 42 minutes in space. The Soyuz landed on schedule about 90 miles southeast of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. The landing was “hard and quick,” according to

Fig. 1.27.  The ISSpresso machine installed on the ISS. Italian companies and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) worked together for over a year to bring authentic Italian expresso coffee to the station. Figure Credit: © Argotec/Lavazza/ASI. Reproduced with permissions. All rights reserved.

 See AD*ASTRA #22 (October 2014) p. 6.

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Fig. 1.28.  Samantha Cristoforetti in the “Cupola” of the ISS, drinking coffee from the specially-designed cup while wearing her Star Trek outfit. Figure Credit: © NASA/ESA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Shkaplerov, the commander of the Soyuz spacecraft. “For some reason, we were spinning”, he added in comments broadcast on Russian television. No other details were provided. “I’m fine but… but heavy”, Cristoforetti confirmed in her first @ESA TV interview. After completing her post-flight tasks, Cristoforetti led the Spaceship EAC initiative, a student-centered team working on the technological challenges of future missions to the Moon. She was also part of a working group tasked with liaising with Chinese counterparts to define and implement cooperation in astronaut operations. In 2017, together with ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer, she took part in a sea survival exercise organized by the Astronaut Center of China in the Yellow Sea. This was the first joint training between Chinese and non-Chinese astronauts in China. In June 2019, Cristoforetti also had the opportunity to live for ten days underwater, as the Commander of the NEEMO23 NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations mission. On December 31, 2019 she announced her resignation from the Italian Air Force. The announcement caught many by surprise and caused a sensation, followed by controversy in the media. After completing the formalities at the Base of the “51° Stormo” of Istrana (to which she belonged), on January 2, 2020, the Air Force officially made the announcement on Twitter: “Today, Captain Samantha Cristoforetti bid

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farewell to the War Flag of her 51st Wing. In over 18 years in the Air Force she has fulfilled her dream of becoming an astronaut and will continue to bring the Italian flag into space. Hello @AstroSamantha”. Two days later she explained her decision via another Tweet: “I had the opportunity to express to the Armed Forces, in the appropriate fora, my disagreement regarding some situations and, at the same time, I decided to take my leave for consistency and for my serenity”. Cristoforetti returned to ESA’s Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany, where she lives with her partner Lionel and their two children Kelsi Amel and Dorian Lev. In May 2021 she was assigned to her second space mission, and was appointed as the Commander of the ISS Expedition 68a (approximately ten days) scheduled for 2022. She was initially due to become the fifth ESA astronaut to command the International Space Station and the first European woman in this role. “Returning to the International Space Station to represent Europe is an honor in itself ”, Cristoforetti stated. “I am honored, I feel full responsibility for this leadership role”, she added during her first ESA TV live stream public event after her appointment. Being commander “does not mean giving orders,” but being a facilitator finding solutions: “A good leader understands if [they are] not the most competent person on a given issue and knows how to take a step back to make room for those who are more competent, but this does not mean abdicating the leadership role: in the end you always remain responsible, but you know that at that specific moment another person knows more than you do”. This time, she also had a family to think about, as she explained: “When I left for my first mission, seven years ago, I still had no children and everything was easier. I now have two children and this is a fact that I must consider and worry about. Like all astronauts, I can say that we manage to do this amazing job because we have the full support of our amazing families. This means that my partner and my family make sacrifices to make my dream come true and for this I am incredibly grateful”.

On March 2, 2022, ESA announced that Cristoforetti would no longer serve as commander because a recent revision of the Space Station flight plan resulted in a shortened mission for Crew-4, and that ISS Expedition 68 would therefore start after her departure from the station. She was, however, confirmed in the role of lead of the United States Orbital Segment (USOS), which includes the US, European, Japanese and Canadian modules and components of the Space Station; basically all the station except the Russian

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segment. “This change was in the works before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so it was not done in response to that”, according to informed sources. (Although the escalating tensions certainly made the move seem prudent.) Due to continued unfavorable weather conditions at any potential splashdown sites around the Florida peninsula, the planned undocking of the Axiom Space Ax-1 mission – the world’s first all-private mission to the ISS – originally scheduled for April 18, 2022, was pushed back several times. The mission was eventually able to reenter on April 25, clearing the docking port a week later than scheduled. This delay impacted the launch of the Crew Dragon-4 Freedom. What would have been an unforgettable 45th birthday in space for Cristoforetti on April 26 instead became a day of waiting in quarantine on Earth. The mission finally launched on April 27. Cristoforetti became the first ‘extraterrestrial’ TikToker and opened a profile to tell young people about her mission on the ISS. In her introductory video on the social network, ‘AstroSam’ said: “Follow me! To boldly go where no TikToker has gone so far”. On July 21, 2022, Cristoforetti performed her first EVA. The spacewalk was put in doubt a few days earlier by the bombastic head of the Roscosmos corporation, Dmitry Rogozin, who – in response to the suspension of ESA cooperation on the ExoMars  – threatened to stop working with ERA, the European robotic manipulator built for Russia, being installed on the ISS Russian Nauka module. Following a presidential decree effective immediately, Rogozin was dismissed as director general of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and was replaced by July 15. The robotic arm remained on the Russian module and the preparations for the spacewalk were finalized in time. Cristoforetti teamed up with experienced Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev and spent 7 hours and 5 minutes outside the ISS, becoming the first European female spacewalker and the first European astronaut to wear a Russian Orlan spacesuit. After the Falcon 9 booster scheduled to launch the Crew 5 mission was damaged during transport across the country for testing, NASA had to revise the schedule of the Crew 5 mission, with the launch delayed by more than a month. Because of this, the Soyuz crew returned to Earth before the arrival of the new crew at the ISS. Cristoforetti fulfilled the role of commander of the station, taking over from fellow crewmember Oleg Artemyev. The traditional handover ceremony with the symbolic passing of a key from the previous commander – that also marked the end of Expedition 67 led by Artemyev – was broadcast live from the ISS on ESA Web TV on September 28.

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Sources For This Section Cavallaro U., Interviews in September 2013 and October 2014 Cavallaro, U., “The Marathon that leads to space”, in AD*ASTRA, n. 18 (September 2013), p. 7–8. Cavallaro, U., “Samantha Cristoforetti: out of this world until May 2015”, in AD*ASTRA, n. 23 (December 2014), p. 6–9 Cristoforetti, S., Outpost 42 blog: outpost42.esa.int/blog/ Cristoforetti, S., “I’ll be Commander thanks to my family” in www.italy24news. com (May 2021) Gibson, K. B.. “Women in Space. 23 Stories of First Flights”, Chicago Review Press, Inc., 2014, pp. 201–203. ESA. “Commanding role for ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti” in www.esa.int (May 28, 2021). ESA “Revised flight plan brings change for Samantha” in www.esa.int (March 2, 2022). Official biography of Samantha Cristoforetti in aeronautica.difesa.it, Official biography of Samantha Cristoforetti in asi.it Official biography of Samantha Cristoforetti in esa.int Pilello, A. “ISSpresso: An espresso machine for space”, AD*ASTRA, ASITAF Quarterly Journal, 22 (September 2014), P. 6

Sources for the Biographies The sources listed at the end of each biography do not necessarily refer to specific instances in the text, but were instead used as general guidance in the compilation of each profile. Where there is a page range included, the author is directing the reader’s attention to each spacefarer’s information within the source listed.

2 Performing Science and Engineering in Space

“The design and mission of Shuttle pushed NASA to be more inclusive”, said astronaut Ellen Ochoa. With the advent of the new space era that allowed science to be conducted in a way that could not be done anywhere else, NASA opened astronaut selection in the late 1970s to scientists and engineers in addition to the traditional pilots. American women and ethnic minorities were also now eligible for selection, as Mission Specialists (MS). Today, we think of space stations as platforms for long-duration scientific microgravity research, offering unique opportunities and supporting numerous discoveries, scientific publications and historic breakthroughs that not only help us explore further into space, but also benefit us back on Earth. Many women spacefarers have made remarkable contributions while paving the way for others and have become an integral part of advances in the space program. Anna Fisher, a chemist and medical doctor who was one of the original six NASA female astronauts selected in 1978, was first assigned to help design a spacesuit for women and then worked on developing emergency procedures, paying special attention to operational aspects and medical intervention. One of the first responsibilities for Margaret Rhea Seddon – a physician and surgeon selected along with Fisher  – was to find a menu suitable for women in space. A pioneer of space medicine research was Roberta Bondar (see Chapter 1), the first neurologist in space, who was involved in over 40 scientific experiments conducted for scientists from 14 countries, as a Payload Specialist (PS) during the IML-1 (STS-42) Shuttle mission in 1992.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Cavallaro, To The Stars, Springer Praxis Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19860-1_2

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Much of their research was further developed during long-duration missions aboard space stations, uncovering unexpected ways that the human body changes in microgravity. American medical investigator and molecular biologist Millie Hughes-Fulford was the only female NASA PS, whose studies have greatly contributed to our knowledge of bone and muscle loss in astronauts and how to mitigate their effects. The knowledge gained is also applicable to people on Earth dealing with diseases such as osteoporosis. Protein crystal growth experiments conducted aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have led to the development of new drugs and provided insights into the treatment of numerous diseases, from cancer to muscular dystrophy. In 2016, American microbiologist and NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins was the first researcher to sequence DNA in space. The capability of identifying unknown microbes in situ will be crucial for future spaceflights deeper into space.

2.1 ANNA LEE FISHER: THE FIRST MOTHER IN SPACE Mission

Launch

Return

STS-51A

November 8, 1984

November 16, 1984

Awarded “Mother of the Year” in 1984 when she became the first mother in space, Anna Lee Fisher was the last of the 35 astronauts selected in 1978 to leave NASA. She has been involved in three major historical NASA manned space programs: the Space Shuttle, the ISS, and the Orion Project. Anna Lee Tingle Sims Fisher (Fig. 2.1) was born in New  York City on August 24, 1949, but moved to different locations and considers San Pedro, California, to be her hometown: “My father was in the military. I’m an Army brat, so we moved every two or three years”. She graduated in 1967 from the San Pedro High School, attracted by science, and earned a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Chemistry in 1971 at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She stayed on at UCLA and started graduate school in the chemistry department, specializing in X-ray crystallographic studies of metallocarboranes. She co-authored three publications relating to these studies for the Journal of Inorganic Chemistry. The following year she moved to the UCLA School of Medicine, and received her Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree in 1976. After completing a one-year internship at Harbor General Hospital in Torrance, California, she specialized in emergency medicine and worked in several hospitals in the Los Angeles

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Fig. 2.1.  Anna Lee Fisher. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

area. Fisher later earned a Master of Science (MSc) degree in Chemistry from UCLA in 1987, based on her earlier year in the graduate school. In her memories, her interest in space is connected to the flight of Alan Shepard, as she reported in an Oral History interview: “We were out at physical education class and our teacher had a little transistor radio. We were listening to Alan Shepard’s first flight. That was when I first really thought, ‘Wow, I would love to go do something like that’. But of course all the astronauts at that time were male. They were all fighter pilots. For whatever reason, it never even entered my mind to consider trying to go to pilot training. That wasn’t something that I had access to or that entered my imagination”.

While she was doing her internship at the Harbor General Hospital, she learned from a friend of her fiancé (and later husband) Bill Fisher that NASA was looking for new candidates (Fig. 2.2). She filled in the complex 11-page form  – which at that time had to be completed by hand – with the help of Bill, who in turn decided to do the same, and sent in the application the day before the deadline. Anna and Bill married in August 1977. She remembers that NASA called them to come for an interview when they were about to plan their wedding:

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Fig. 2.2.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-51A, signed by Anna Lee Fisher. From the Author’s collection.

“I’m not one of these ‘plan a wedding a year in advance’ kind of people. We were sitting there and I said, ‘It’s NASA. They want me to come interview’. He said, ‘Say yes, we’ll figure it out’. So I said yes. I said [to Bill], ‘Okay, now what’? That began one of the hardest weeks of my life”.

The wedding was planned at the last minute: “We went and got dresses, we got a photographer, did all this stuff. We called a couple of our friends that we wanted to come. Bill’s family wasn’t even able to adjust, but they were very understanding. We did all that. We got married. Then I got on a plane. I didn’t really have time to think about the interview process, study, or research”.

Anna Fisher was selected as one of the first six female NASA astronaut candidates in January 1978 (Group 8), but her husband missed out on selection that year. He tried again and was accepted into the next class (Group 9) two years later in 1980. One popular image of Anna Fisher that shows her wearing a helmet and space suit, almost in complete profile, and likely taken by photographer John Bryson in early 1978, became iconic and has frequently been posted and shared on social media sites (Fig. 2.3). In August 1979, Fisher completed her training and evaluation period and actively participated in setting up the Space Shuttle program, contributing to the verification of flight software at the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL), where she also reviewed test requirements and procedures for ascent,

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Fig. 2.3.  One popular image of Anna Fisher, frequently shared on social media. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

in-orbit, and Risk Management System software. As the crew representative, she supported development and testing of the Remote Manipulator System (RMS, the robot arm), payload bay door contingency spacewalk procedures, the extra-small Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU), and contingency repair procedures. For STS-5 through STS-7, she supported vehicle integration and payload testing at Kennedy Space Center (KSC): “I did the first payload flows that we supported”, she recalls, “because the previous flights up to then had not really had real payloads”. Another problem to be resolved was that of the spacesuits. Fisher, who was petite, was assigned to help in designing a suit for women: “They simply thought they could take big space suits and proportionally cut them down”, but Fisher found the unisex stock sizes simply unworkable. “Women are not smaller men. Women are built differently”. This had nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with safety. For a while, NASA thought it would be more economical to select a larger candidate who would fit the suit, rather than adjust the suit to fit a smaller woman, but tall women are also built differently: another lesson NASA learned. In addition, Fisher worked on the development of emergency procedures, paying special attention to the operational aspects and medical intervention, and provided both medical and operational input into the development of rescue procedures. As a physician in rescue helicopters, she supported the first Orbital Flight Test (OFT) launches and landings (STS-1 to STS-4) at either the primary or backup landing sites, ready to render emergency medical aid.

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She was then Capsule Communicator (Capcom) for Shuttle mission STS-9 which carried the first Spacelab, the European space laboratory built in Italy. Referring to all these experiences, Fisher said: “I got many interesting assignments that really helped me to understand the Shuttle and its procedures and helped me to become a good crew member when it was my turn to fly on the Shuttle. I’m glad I did this experience, because it is not the same thing to train without figuring out what’s going on in SAIL, what they do in the Mission Control Center, how they operate at the Cape and without really knowing people or having worked with them, which is something different from having met them in some meeting. All these experiences gave me the opportunity to see up at close hand the main projects handled at the time by my office”.

In July 1983, a few weeks before the birth of her first baby, Fisher was assigned to the STS-51A mission: “I’m probably the only person who’s been assigned to their flight about two weeks before they deliver. I doubt that’s probably ever happened in the history of the space program since, which I thought was really neat that they showed that confidence in me”.

After a short leave of absence for the birth of her daughter, Kristin Anne (born on July 29, 1983), Fisher started her training. In November 1984, she launched into space as an MS on Shuttle STS-51A, thus becoming the first mother to fly into space. The crew’s flight patch was designed with six stars: five representing each of the crewmembers and one star for her newborn. She also kept a picture of her baby girl on her Shuttle locker while she was in space, and later gifted each of her girls copies of the necklace she wore on the flight, specified as “flown on my flight”, or from her husband Bill’s flight. During the mission, the crew successfully deployed two satellites (Canada’s Anik D-2 (Telesat H) and Hughes’s LEASAT-1 (Syncom IV-1)) and recovered two others (Westar 6 and Palapa B2) whose kick motors had failed to ignite, returning them to Earth for refurbishment and later relaunch. Fisher was assigned to assist Commander Rick Hauck during the final stages of the complex rendezvous with both satellites (Fig. 2.4). Fisher was eventually assigned to mission STS-61H, scheduled for launch on June 24, 1986, using Columbia. However, the mission was cancelled after the Challenger disaster in January 1986. She returned to graduate school and completed a second MSc degree in Chemistry from UCLA in 1987. That same year, she also served on the Astronaut Selection Board for NASA’s newest class of astronauts: Group 12.

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Fig. 2.4.  The STS-51A crew flight patch was designed with six stars: five to represent each of the crewmembers, and the sixth for Fisher’s newborn daughter. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fisher was due to participate in Shuttle mission STS-29, scheduled for the beginning of 1989, but she took another leave of absence from the Astronaut Office to raise her second daughter, Kara Lynne (born on January 10, 1989). She returned to NASA in January 1996 during the early phase of construction of the ISS. It was not easy for her: “Coming back was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life because by that time pretty much everyone in my group had flown two to four flights, and most of them were gone; there were only a few people left from my group, and the Office was full of new people whom I didn’t even know”.

From 1996 through 2002, she was the chief of the ISS branch. In that capacity, she coordinated input into the operation of the space station for the Astronaut Office, working closely with all the international partners and supervising assigned astronauts and engineers. She made headlines when speaking at the event marking the delivery of the now-retired Shuttle Discovery to the Smithsonian Museum in 2012, when she advised those who wanted to become astronauts to “get studying Russian” – a joke that someone, perhaps rightly, interpreted as referring to the new space policy of President Obama. From January 2011 through August 2013, Fisher served as an ISS Capcom working in the Mission Control Center and was also the lead Capcom for Expedition 33. Eventually she became a management astronaut, working on the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), NASA’s

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new spacecraft intended to take astronauts to the Moon and beyond, and supported European payloads for the ISS Integration branch. Fisher retired from NASA in April 2017 after 39 years of service to the agency. She was one of the longest serving astronauts in the history of NASA. She still does a number of public appearances every year. “I wish I could start again and have a second career at NASA”, she said recently.

Sources For This Section Evans, B. Tragedy and Triumph in Orbit: The Eighties and Early Nineties, pp. 295–297. Springer Praxis Books, New York (2012). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, p. 74. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Official biography of Anna Lee Fisher, jsc.nasa.gov/Bios (July 2014). Personal contacts by e-mail in May 2016. Ross-Nazzal, J. “Anna L.  Fisher: Oral History Transcript”, jsc.nasa.gov (February 17, 2009). Ross-Nazzal, J. “Anna L. Fisher: Oral History Transcript”, jsc.nasa.gov (March 3, 2011). Ross-Nazzal, J. “Anna L. Fisher: Oral History Transcript”, jsc.nasa.gov (May 3, 2011). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space – Following Valentina, pp. 221–224, 252. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 58–60. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

2.2 MARGARET RHEA SEDDON: THE FIRST WEDDING OF NASA ASTRONAUTS Mission

Launch

Return

STS-51D STS-40 STS-58

April 12, 1985 June 5, 1991 October 18, 1993

April 19, 1985 June 14, 1991 November 1, 1993

Margaret Rhea Seddon (Fig. 2.5) was already a qualified physician and surgeon when she learned that NASA was selecting new astronauts for the first time in a decade, expanding its selection process to include women and promising “equal employment opportunities.” Rumors had been circulating about this for three years, but evidently it was not easy to reconcile the new

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Fig. 2.5.  Margaret Rhea Seddon. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

“vision” with safeguarding the needs of test pilots. The answer came from the Space Shuttle program, whose crews would comprise more than just those flying the vehicle, such as Payload Specialists (PS) and Mission Specialists (MS). These new positions needed candidates with an in-depth university education in science, medicine or engineering. Seddon had long since prepared for this and was just awaiting such an opportunity. She said: “Since I knew wherever human explorers went they would have to have doctors along, I decided to be a doctor. When NASA finally accepted women, they wanted scientists for the Space Shuttle and that included doctors” (Fig. 2.6). She was one of two medical doctors among the six women selected by NASA as astronauts in 1978 (the other being Anna Lee Fisher). Margaret Rhea Seddon was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on November 8, 1947: “Have you ever had the feeling that you were being watched? I grew up that way. When you live in a small town where your family has lived for generations, everyone knows your pedigree and knows who you are. Do something wrong and your momma, grandmamma, and great-grandmamma are sure to find out. It tends to keep you out of trouble”.

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Fig. 2.6.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-51D, signed by Rhea Seddon. From the Author’s collection.

The daughter of an attorney who was on the board of the local hospital, from a young age Seddon enjoyed piano and classical ballet and developed an early love for the sciences, but in her small town there were very few opportunities at the time: “I can’t remember ever having any science before the seventh grade”. She was interested in space travel from the very beginning of the space program. “I watched the Russian satellite Sputnik fly overhead when I was a young girl in 1957”, she recalls, “and knew that space would be what my generation would explore”. Space in those years made headlines and she avidly started to read everything she could that dealt with space, bringing the aura of space into everything she was doing: “I remember in seventh grade we had to do a science poster for our final grade. This was before Gagarin flew in space, and there was a Life Magazine article about what might happen to humans when they went away from gravity. There were all these swell pictures, pictures of the man going into space, things that might happen, and G-forces. I just thought that was interesting”.

Seddon knew that Russia had had women cosmonauts since the inception of their space program and she figured out that by the time NASA took on women astronauts, they would also need physicians. However, after graduating from Central High School in Murfreesboro in 1965, she realized that it would be hard to pursue her interests there, so she left Tennessee and went to

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the University of California, Berkeley: “When I was looking for colleges, I wanted to find out what was the best college in the country in life sciences, and that’s how I ended up at Berkeley”. While there, she first encountered the Free Speech Movement (FSM)  – a student protest which was taking place during those years on the campus of the University of California – and became aware for the first time that careers previously barred to women, such as medicine and aviation, were now within reach. But even at Berkeley, while she did not find gender discrimination or discouragement from her professors, there were still only a few women on her course when she began, and even fewer as she approached graduation. After finishing her degree at Berkeley in 1970, Seddon returned to the University of Tennessee’s College of Medicine, where she gained her medical doctorate in 1973. She was one of a kind: “I was once again in the spotlight”. Her father helped her to get a job at the local hospital, where they were opening the first intensive-care unit. She recalls: “As the unit was delayed in its opening they sent me to surgery. That’s how I got interested in surgery. I applied then to several surgery programs around the country, but I don’t think they were prepared to take women. I did get a slot with the University of Tennessee, where I went to medical school. They knew me; they knew I was interested. I’d worked with a number of the surgeons there who knew I was a hard worker and serious about doing this. I was the only woman in the surgery residency program”.

It was at this point she became interested in the nutrition of patients who have had major surgery: “Sometimes we’d operate on a patient, and we could fix what was wrong but they couldn’t eat for a while. They just basically starved to death; they never healed. We were beginning to be able to feed people by vein. I got interested in that, so did some research in that”.

Progressively, she also started to investigate the effects of radiation therapy on nutrition in cancer patients. Seddon then decided that it was time to do what she had dreamed of for years and learn to fly, figuring that a pilot’s license would increase her chances of becoming an astronaut. She worked at night in the hospital emergency rooms and took flying lessons during the day. Within a few months, she had her pilot’s license. That was 1977, and then Seddon heard from a colleague that NASA was offering jobs to women for the Space Shuttle program. She recalls:

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“He didn’t have any idea where I should apply. The only thing I remembered was that astronauts trained somewhere in Houston. I addressed an inquiry letter. This was of course back before you could just Google stuff. I sent a letter to NASA, Houston, Texas, and it got to the right person. I got the information back. I wrote for the application and sent it in”.

Seddon was thrilled when she was invited to Houston for physical tests and interviews, but had to compare herself with many outstanding candidates. Several were MD/PhDs who had already done NASA research: “They were just incredible people. I couldn’t imagine that I would compete with them. What have I got to offer to compare with that? I don’t know why they decided that I should come in and the others shouldn’t”. On January 16, 1978, Seddon received a phone call from George Abbey, who said: “Well, we were just calling to see whether or not you were still interested in this job”. She recalls: “I asked, ‘How many will be in the class’? He said, ‘There are 15 pilots and 20 mission specialists.’ I said, ‘How many women’? He said, ‘Six’. I thought, ‘That’s great. That’s really great’”. With this conversation, she learned that she had been chosen as one of the TFNGs or Thirty-Five New Guys. Given her previous professional interest in nutrition, her first technical assignment was designing the food packages for the Shuttle program: “I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get something more general. I think Sally Ride was a Capcom, Anna Fisher got suits, and I ended up with the cooks… I was used to, a lot of times, being assigned to follow something that wasn’t the big deal, but if you prove yourself in doing whatever job you’re given, better jobs come your way”.

Seddon was charged with the responsibility of finding a menu suitable for women in space. According to the standard menu, she recalls, “each astronaut had a daily food allowance of 3,100 calories a day. But four of the women were under 5’5” [1.65 meters]. That much food would have turned us into blimps”. So she replaced puddings and cookies with fruits and vegetables. “One of the problems in space”, she explains, “is that you don’t have gravity to work against, so you really have to work at it to burn calories”. Eventually, Seddon also worked in the SAIL where she contributed to the set-up of the Shuttle software: “That was a very valuable experience for me, and it taught me a great deal about how all those facts that I had learned in the lectures would come together and how it really worked”. She also took part in the development of the equipment that was carried in the Orbiter

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medical kits. As a helicopter physician, she was part of the search-and-rescue team during the launch and landing of Shuttle missions, and joined NASA’s Aerospace Medical Advisory Committee. She also served as Capcom in the Mission Control Center in Houston. Remembering those years, she said: “I think I didn’t pass one day without learning at least ten things”. On May 30, 1981, Seddon and Robert Lee “Hoot” Gibson became the first active astronauts to get married. Gibson is a former navy pilot who had joined the Astronaut Corps in the same TFNG class. The following year, the two had their son, Paul, who became the first son born of two astronauts and was soon nicknamed “the first U.S. Astrotot” by Time magazine, as Seddon recalls in her book, Go for Orbit (p. 142). Rhea Seddon was the fifth American woman to fly in space and was assigned as an MS to three Shuttle flights: STS-51D (1985), STS-40 (1991), and STS-58 (1993), on the last of which she also served as Payload Commander in charge of all science activities. On her three flights, she accumulated more than 722 hours (over 30 days) in space. She also had first-hand experience of the uncertainty of the assignment to a flight, which, in a very competitive environment such that of the astronauts, could put the crew through the wringer. Seddon recalls in her book (p. 188) the moment when she received an unusual phone call from Mr. Abbey’s secretary, saying “Mr. Abbey would like you to come over to talk to him”: “It was unusual for George to assign flights from his office. It was traditionally done off in a corner at some party or during happy hours. Since the baby, I hadn’t been partying much, and my happy hours consisted of collapsing in a heap on the floor to play with Paul on a Friday evening. Still, the call to his office caused a nagging fear that I had not measured up or committed some unpardonable sin, and he was going to tell me I wasn’t suited for this job”.

Originally, Seddon was due to have been the third American woman to fly in space. When Judy Resnik was selected as one of the first six female astronauts in January 1978, it was widely expected that either she or Sally Ride would be the first to fly. In fact, Seddon remarked in her Oral History that Resnik and Ride had received “the sorts of technical assignments that really prepared them for flight,” such as robot arm work and Capcom duties. But delays and cancellations to her scheduled flight pushed her further down the order, as she recalled in her book (p. 199): “I went from being the third woman in our ASCAN [AStronaut CANdidate] group to fly, to the fifth. I would also not be the first mother in space because

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Anna Fisher’s daughter Kristin had been born in 1983, a year after Paul, and she would be on Rick Hauck’s flight in the fall. In the grand scheme of life, perhaps these weren’t major losses, but they were important to me. Everyone wanted to be near the front of the line with their flights and to be the first in something”.

Seddon was originally assigned to mission STS-41F, which was scheduled to fly in August 1984 as the second flight of Shuttle Discovery and would deploy a pair of communications satellites and the Spartan solar observatory. Unfortunately, on June 26, during the maiden flight of Discovery, the three main engines shut down on the pad just a few seconds before lift-off, for the first time in the Shuttle’s history. The entire Shuttle mission was cancelled. Seddon and her crewmates were then reassigned to another mission, STS-51E, in the spring of 1985. That mission was due to deploy the second Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-2), but was itself cancelled days before launch, with Challenger already on the pad ready to go, when a problem with one cell of the satellite’s 24-cell flight battery was discovered and it required replacing. Seddon recalls her frustration while looking questioningly at the “butterfly bolted onto a bullet” (as astronaut Story Musgrave called the Space Shuttle): “And you go through that frustration of not being named to a flight, being named to a flight, having them cancel the flight, having to retrain for a different payload. We trained on three different payloads. We had Patrick Baudry, the French astronaut, with us for a while. We had Patrick and [Senator] Jake Garn for a while. We had Greg Jarvis for a while: unfortunately, he flew on Challenger 51L. Then we had Charlie Walker. We ended up with Garn and Walker. But it was that turmoil of, ‘Who’s really going to fly with us, what are we really going to fly on, and are we really going to get to fly’? It had its ups and downs. [Commander] Bo Bobko was just always cool and calm. He just never got upset about stuff like that. That’s the kind of commander to have. When they canceled the flight Bo said, ‘They’ll give us another one. Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to fly, we’ll have fun, let’s go take a vacation for a week and come back, and they’ll have decided’. That made it really easy. I think if Bo had been absolutely furious at NASA and the world and had led us in that direction we’d all have been furious at the world, but he just handled it with great aplomb, and so did we. We went home and put a fist through the wall, felt sorry for ourselves, and then we came back and started over. We eventually got to fly”.

Eventually, Seddon’s crew made it into orbit on mission STS-51D on April 12, 1985. They deployed two communications satellites: Telesat-I (Anik C1) and Leasat-3. Their flight made history when the Leasat failed to ignite its perigee kick motor upon deployment. After Seddon unsuccessfully attempted

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to activate a deployment switch with a makeshift flyswatter, a contingency Extravehicular Activity (EVA) was arranged. The mission was consequently extended by two days to ensure that the satellite’s spacecraft sequencer start lever was in its proper position. Dave Griggs and Jeff Hoffman performed the unscheduled EVA, assisted by Seddon who, with caution and great skill, maneuvered the robotic arm of the Shuttle to try to spin up a satellite containing six tons of very dangerous hydrazine propellant. Despite several attempts, they failed to revive the satellite. Ironically, the person whom Senator Garn had displaced on this crew was Greg Jarvis, a PS who had worked for the Hughes Aircraft Company in the Leasat program. The Public Affairs Officer (PAO) at Mission Control praised the work Seddon was doing: “She has the skill of a good seamstress”! Sally Ride, the Capcom at that time, corrected him promptly: “… of a good surgeon.” There was sometimes rivalry among the first women astronauts but, if necessary, they defended each other. During the mission, Seddon’s experience as a medical doctor was pivotal and she performed several medical experiments to study the cardiovascular system in microgravity (Fig. 2.7). Given her medical background, Seddon was

Fig. 2.7.  Rhea Seddon conducting an experiment on Jeff Hoffman during mission STS-51D.  Figure Credit: © NASA (Courtesy of Ed Hengeveld). Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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then assigned to the Spacelab-4 mission scheduled for March 1987. The mission was cancelled due to the Challenger disaster and the subsequent grounding of the Shuttle fleet. On the day of the tragedy Seddon was in training, sitting in the conference room at a contractor facility, and remembers that they turned on the TV to see the launch of Challenger: “We watched it, and it was like, ‘What was that’? Then I realized, maybe before the others, that this was something really bad. When you began to see these big chunks of stuff falling into the ocean it was clear to me that this was not just an early separation of the boosters, this was a catastrophic failure”.

The aftermath of the Challenger tragedy was a horrible time, not only for the loss of close friends, but also because it called into question the very future of the US space program. Seddon recalled: “We started raising the issue: ‘Should we do away with human spaceflight? Is my job going to go away? Even if my job doesn’t go away, are we ever going to fly again, and if so, how many years is it going to be’”?

The Spacelab-4 mission was eventually renamed Spacelab Life Sciences (SLS) and split into SLS-1 and SLS-2. Seddon was assigned to both missions and flew on Shuttle STS-40 (SLS-1  in 1991) and STS-58 (SLS-2  in 1993) (Fig. 2.8).

Fig. 2.8.  Cover commemorating the launch of the STS-40 mission that carried the Spacelab Life Sciences-1 (SLS-1) payload into orbit. From the Author’s collection.

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During the SLS-1 mission, the crew performed experiments to explore how humans, animals, and cells respond to microgravity and readapt to Earth’s gravity on return. STS-40 was the first mission on which three women flew together in space, with Tamara Jernigan and Millie Hughes-Fulford – both on their first flights – joining Seddon on the crew. The countdown for the launch of Shuttle STS-58 (SLS-2), scheduled for October 14, 1993, was halted 31 seconds before the lift-off due to a malfunction in the on-board computer. After a further attempt the following day, it was rescheduled for October 18 and this time launched without glitches. Dr. Seddon was responsible for the laboratory as the Payload Commander on this life science research mission, which received NASA management recognition as the most successful and efficient Spacelab flown to date. During the 14-day flight, the seven-person crew performed some 650 neuro-vestibular, cardiovascular, cardiopulmonary, metabolic, and musculoskeletal medical experiments on themselves and 48 rats. NASA later declared that this mission had significantly expanded our knowledge of how the human body responds to an extended exposure to the weightlessness of spaceflight. Seddon recalls: “I think the experience I had on SLS-1 was really valuable in helping things to work so smoothly on SLS-2. Everything went well. I think they told us we got 115 percent of the data that we were supposed to get, because the hardware worked well, we had timelined it right, we had a great crew, and we worked really well and we worked really hard and we were willing to stay a little bit late at night. And we did a lot of what I call preplanning. In other words, we took a little bit of time at the end of the day to say, ‘How can we get ready for tomorrow’”?

Between her second and third flights, Seddon served as a Capcom: “It was one of the best jobs that you could have. It really kept you in the loop of what was going on currently with the flying world. As a Capcom, you really got involved. You were representing the crew, and you had to pull in resources. You were in charge of explaining everything to the crew or explaining the evolution of what was going on. So I gained a lot of appreciation for what went on on the ground, and I really enjoyed the job. It gave me a greater appreciation of what went on on my first flight, where they had to do all the re-planning and lots and lots of people had to work on lots and lots”.

After SLS-2, Seddon worked for a while on the development of the NASA-­ Mir payloads, in preparation for the Shuttle/Mir STS-71 flight of Norman Thagard and his Mir-18 expedition in 1995. She was the liaison with Thagard and Bonnie Dunbar and verified the difficulties of going to live in Russia,

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especially living in Star City. “I felt so bad for Bonnie”, she remarked, “because she got sent over there at the last minute, and it was tough on her”. Seddon therefore declined the offer to participate in a Mir long-duration mission: “You were going to have to be willing to learn fluent Russian and you had to be willing to uproot your family and go live there for two years. The food was different; the daily life was different. They had no washer and dryer when they got there. They scrubbed things in the sink. The electrical connections were not good, so that they’d blow up your computers. They had trouble with the phone lines”.

Seddon was largely baffled by the Russian command structure, which was completely different. While the Space Shuttle commander was the final authority on everything, the Russians waited instead for permission from the ground before proceeding. They received a bonus for doing what they were supposed to do during the mission and, if they did something they weren’t supposed to do, their bonus was cut. This was why they would never do anything without asking the ground. Also different was their passive attitude to scientific experiments. Seddon recalled: “At NASA I had worked on the Bioethics Task Force, and it surprised me about the different ways different cultures addressed doing experiments on humans, and so we had to factor that in as we wrote the NASA rules about informed consent. Flying with the Russians and eventually flying on the International Space Station opened up a lot of other issues and questions on how are we going to ethically perform human experiments. It wouldn’t necessarily be the way we would do it in our country, but the way other countries insist upon doing it. The Russians had to be paid to be subjects, and that’s against the law in the U.S. You had to work those things out. With the Japanese it would not occur to them to refuse to do anything. You could have proposed all kinds of horrible things, because in their culture you bow to authority. They didn’t care about informed consent. It was their duty, it was part of what they did for the good of the mission and the team”.

With the arrival of her third baby, Seddon decided to leave NASA. However, she needed one more year with the agency to qualify for a pension, so she agreed to return to Tennessee and work from the Vanderbilt University, Nashville. Vanderbilt had been working with the Neurolab people for the last Spacelab mission and there was a Neurolab experiment being prepared. After retiring from NASA in 1997, Seddon was appointed Assistant Chief Medical Officer in the Vanderbilt Medical Group of Nashville until 2008. While there, she also led an initiative aimed at improving patient safety, quality of care, and team effectiveness by the use of an aviation-based model of Crew Resource

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Management. She said: “After NASA, I applied the aviation-based lessons I learned about teamwork and communication to the healthcare world to help avoid errors that harmed patients”. Now with LifeWings Partners, LLC, she teaches this concept to healthcare institutions across the US. On Saturday May 30, 2015, Rhea Seddon became the eighth woman to be inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame. Later that year, on October 26, she was inducted into the Tennessee Women’s Hall of Fame® (TWHOF). One week prior to her induction into the Astronaut Hall of Fame, she released her book entitled Go For Orbit about her career at NASA. As she mentions on her website, she had the privilege of presenting a copy of her memoirs to President Obama for his daughters the week following the ceremony, during a visit to the White House with husband and fellow inductee Captain Robert Lee “Hoot” Gibson. Seddon is now a consultant, a speaker and an author who, with humor and a positive outlook, “encourages young and old alike to ‘Go for Orbit’ and reach for the stars.”

Sources For This Section astronautrheaseddon.com Briggs, C.S. Women Space Pioneers, pp. 49–56. Lerner Publications, Minneapolis (2005). Evans, B. “‘For All Womankind’: America’s First Female Astronauts’, americaspace. com (February 10, 2012). Evans, B. Tragedy and Triumph in Orbit: The Eighties and Early Nineties. Springer/ Praxis, New York (2012). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 55–56, 66–67, 73, 76–77. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Official NASA biography of Margaret Rhea Seddon, jsc.nasa.gov/Bios (November 1998). Personal communication through e-mail in April/May 2016. Ross-Nazzal, J. “Margaret Rhea Seddon: Oral History Transcript”, jsc.nasa.gov (May 20, 2010). Ross-Nazzal, J. “Margaret Rhea Seddon: Oral History Transcript”, jsc.nasa.gov (May 10, 2011). Seddon, R. Go for Orbit. Your Space Press, Murfreesboro, Tennessee (2015). Woodmansee, L.W. Women Astronauts, pp. 60–61. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

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2.3 SHANNON LUCID: AMERICA’S FIRST FEMALE LONG-DURATION ASTRO-COSMONAUT Mission

Launch

Return

STS-51G STS-34 STS-43 STS-58 STS-76 STS-79

June 17, 1985 October 18, 1989 August 2, 1991 October 18, 1993 March 22, 1996

June 24, 1985 October 23, 1989 August 11, 1991 November 1, 1993 September 26, 1996

Shannon Lucid (Fig. 2.9) was the oldest and tallest in the class among the first six American female astronauts, and was the last of them to fly in space. She is one of six women who have rocketed into space five times, but she made history as the first and only American female astronaut to fly on a Russian space station, in the “NASA-2 increment” to Mir, the second American residency following that of Norman Thagard. Her mission in 1996 broke the record for endurance in space by a woman, held until then by Elena Kondakova. Lucid said: “My arrival on MIR, eight months after the end of the mission of Thagard, was the beginning of a continuous American presence

Fig. 2.9.  Shannon Lucid. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Fig. 2.10.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-34, signed by Shannon Lucid. From the Author’s collection.

in space, which lasted for more than two years”. She lived and worked on Mir for more than 188 days, the longest stay of any American on that space station. The duration record she set for females in space was only surpassed in 2007 by Sunita Williams on the ISS (Fig. 2.10). Shannon Matilda Wells Lucid was born in Shanghai, China, on January 14, 1943, to Baptist missionary parents. When she was six weeks old, her family became Japanese prisoners of war. After a year in an internment camp, they were released in a peaceful exchange of noncombatant prisoners and returned to the US. Having spent the rest of the war years in Fort Worth, Texas, the family, including her newly-born brother Joe and sister Ann, returned to China after the war and lived at times in Shanghai, Nanking and Anking. Lucid also remembers being enrolled at an early age in a Chinese-speaking elementary school, due to her fierce desire to learn how to read. But the family had to leave China again when the communists took control. Those who know Lucid describe her as a person of innate patience, faith, and good humor; qualities she likely learned from her parents at a very young age, but also developed herself by working hard at them as she grew. She was 14 years old when the space age began with the launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957. When the US announced it would soon have its own manned space program, her dream of exploring space began:

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“It was a long time before there ever was such a thing as a space program. I was just real interested in the American West. I was interested in exploring when I was a child. Then I thought by the time I grew up that the world would be explored, so what would be left for me to do when I grew up? Then I read about Robert Goddard and the rockets that he’d been doing out in New Mexico. I started reading a little bit of science fiction, and it just sort of clicked. ‘Well, you can go explore the universe and that wouldn’t get used up before you grew up’”.

After graduating from Bethany High School, Oklahoma, Lucid attended the University of Oklahoma and earned a BSc in Chemistry in 1963. Just weeks before getting her degree, she recalled talking with her professor about how to get a job: “‘A job’? he said to me ‘You plan on working? But you’re a girl’”. She then earned an MSc and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the same school in 1973 and devoted herself to academic work, as a research biochemist. Lucid was selected for the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1978 and already had three children when selected, the only applicant with offspring at the time of selection. Her first spaceflight came in June 1985 on STS-51G. She then flew missions STS-34 (1989), STS-43 (1991), and STS-58 (1993), and finally visited Mir in 1996. During her first mission on Discovery (STS-51G), three communication satellites were released into space for Mexico (Morelos), the Arab League (Arabsat), and the US (Telstar). Her second flight, aboard Atlantis (STS-34) was a five-day mission that deployed the Galileo spacecraft toward the planet Jupiter and carried out a mapping of atmospheric and radiation measurements. She flew again on Atlantis for her next mission (STS-43), which released the fifth TDRS satellite. There were also 32 scientific experiments conducted during this mission, mostly relating to the Extended Duration Orbiter (EDO) and Space Station Freedom, then in its design phase. Her next mission was aboard Columbia (STS-58), a record-duration 14-day mission that was recognized by NASA management as the most successful and efficient Spacelab mission. But Shannon Lucid made history mainly for her fifth and final flight in 1996, when she spent 188 days in space, including 179 days on board the Russian space station, Mir. In doing so, she set space endurance records for an American astronaut in one single mission, for any non-Russian spacefarer and, of course, for a female. In 1996, NASA was in the early years of its partnership with the Russian space agency. Pressed by financial constraints, the Russians had invited the Americans, their former enemies, to enter into an extraordinary partnership in preparation for the ISS. In exchange for its investment of US$400 million,

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NASA would send seven American astronauts to live and work for months at a time on Russia’s orbiting space station, Mir, to familiarize themselves with long-duration missions (which the Americans had not experienced since Skylab in 1973/74). However, the assignment was not so appealing when compared to the Shuttle flights of the day. Astronauts had to learn Russian and leave home to train in Star City near Moscow for a year. Once on Mir, they would spend months conducting science experiments with two non-­ English-­speaking cosmonauts. Lucid recounts: “I had been a NASA astronaut for 15 years and had flown on four Shuttle missions when, one Friday afternoon, I received a phone call from my boss, Robert ‘Hoot’ Gibson, then the head of NASA’s Astronaut Office. He asked if I was interested in starting full-time Russian-language instruction with the possibility of going to Russia to train for a Mir mission. My immediate answer was yes. Hoot tempered my enthusiasm by saying I was only being assigned to study Russian. This did not necessarily mean I would be going to Russia, much less flying on Mir”.

Lucid viewed the Mir mission as a perfect opportunity to combine two of her passions: flying and working in laboratories. She said: “For a scientist who loves flying, what could be more exciting than working in a laboratory that hurtles around the earth at 17,000 miles [27,000 kilometers] per hour”? She was also happy to do the training with her friend and colleague, John Blaha, with whom she had already flown twice on the STS-43 and STS 58 missions. After three months of intensive language study, she got the go-ahead to start her training at Star City, the cosmonaut training center outside Moscow. “They couldn’t find anybody else who had volunteered. So they said: ‘Well OK, go do it’”.

Lucid arrived at Star City in January 1995, in the depths of a Russian winter – and the phones were not working: “You’d try to make a phone connection and you might try forty-five minutes to an hour to get a connection, and then many times it was so poor, you couldn’t hear. So it was very, very unsatisfactory. But my daughter sent me over CompuServe, which she bought, and I installed it on my computer. With CompuServe, I was able to make a connection back home every day and to pick up e-mail messages”.

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The training was intense, and all in Russian: “It was as if you walked around all day with glasses on that were out of focus, and you saw the whole world and it was out of focus, and you were always trying to figure out what it was you were looking at. That’s what it felt like”.

Lucid had to work harder during that year than at any other time in her life: “Every morning I woke at five o’clock to begin studying. As I walked to class I was always aware that one misstep on the ice might result in a broken leg, ending my dreams of a flight on Mir. I spent most of my day in classrooms listening to Mir and Soyuz system lectures – all in Russian, of course. In the evenings I continued to study the language and struggled with workbooks written in technical Russian. At midnight I finally fell exhausted into bed”.

She would have to learn the systems and operations for Mir and Soyuz in case of an emergency requiring evacuation from the station. “It’s very different from training in the US”, she said. “Basically you’re in the Soyuz, you put on your ‘skafander’ [spacesuit], you sat in the Soyuz, and my job was to be quiet and not interfere”. She never met other cosmonauts: “All my training in Russia was with John Blaha. We sat in a classroom together. It was just the two of us and the instructor for whatever classroom it was. We just talked to each other all day long and that was it. I mean, we didn’t interface with anybody else. Only toward the end did we do just a very few sims with the Russian crew. I mean, we got in the Soyuz and went through a simulation. But it was very, very minimal. There wasn’t training with a crew like you think in the US”.

A few weeks before launch, she realized that the Russians were nervous about sending another woman aloft. They had sent four into space before her: Valentina Tereshkova, whom they considered a failure; Svetlana Savitskaya, whom they had not liked very much; Helen Sharman, who – they said – did not count because she was more of a tourist than a cosmonaut; and Elena Kondakova, whose temperament some found trying. Suddenly, the media assaulted Lucid with pedantic and sometimes heavy questions. Luckily, that did not last long: “At last, in February 1996, after I had passed all the required medical and technical exams, the Russian spaceflight commission certified me as a Mir crew member. I traveled to Baikonur, Kazakhstan, to watch the launch of the Soyuz

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carrying my crewmates – Commander Yuri Onufriyenko, a Russian air force officer, and flight engineer Yury Usachev, a Russian civilian. Then I headed back to the US for three weeks of training with the crew of Shuttle mission STS-76. On March 22, 1996, we lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on the Shuttle Atlantis”.

Her long mission began on Saturday evening, March 23, 1996, when the Atlantis STS-76 crew delivered Lucid to Mir to begin the increment known as NASA-2. She later said: “It was just pretty neat to look out the window and see Mir, and know that it was going to be your home… It was great to see Yuri and Yury. They’d been up there a month before I got there. They acted very happy to see me. I believe that they really were. So, as soon as the hatch opened, I moved over and became part of the Mir-21 crew”.

Although there was some concern about the legendary Russian chauvinism, Lucid’s colleagues – Onufriyenko and Usachev, whom the Russian media had affectionately dubbed “the two Yuris” – turned out to be particularly harmonious. Lucid said: “They’re both very, very nice people and I’ve enjoyed working with them very, very much. They have different personalities… I think the personalities mesh quite well together. Yuri the commander tends to be a little more quiet, and Yury the flight engineer always has something to say. We really had a good time together. We really enjoyed being there together. Yuri and Yury were absolutely fantastic to work with. I mean, I could not have picked better people to spend a long period of time with. We just lived every day as it came. We enjoyed every day. We enjoyed working together and joking around together. It was just a very good experience, I think, for all of us”.

Soon after arriving, Lucid had to diffuse a polemic in the media that had been started by a comment from a Russian space official. General Yuri Glaskov, Deputy Commander of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City, had earlier hinted that the two male cosmonauts would welcome Lucid “because we know that women love to clean.” He then tried to rectify the gaffe by saying: “The simple presence of a lady onboard the Mir station helps… because our crewmembers simply pay more attention to the way they behave, they act, they speak, and so on”. Lucid had to address the subject in a press conference from space: “That kind of thinking doesn’t bother me. We all work together to keep the place pretty tidy”. Commander Onufriyenko said that all

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three crewmates on Mir would share housekeeping and that Lucid would improve the “cultural level” on board the station. The three returned to this topic during the long Mir expedition. One evening, she was talking with Yuri and Yury, who repeated the usual arguments that it was right that there weren’t more females in the Russian Space Program, and Lucid objected: “Now, you guys, that’s not the way that you are, and that’s not the way you’re treating me”. They said: ‘Oh, but you’re an American, so it’s okay for American women to do’”! Usachev had welcomed Lucid and offered her the Spektr module as her private apartment where she could sleep and take her personal belongings, including her Bible (“I have a small Bible I always carry when I travel. I brought it up on the Shuttle, so I had it with me the whole time I was there”), and she found a Gideon New Testament that was there already. She had taken several books with her. Because she was in Russia and could not buy her own books to bring, before launch, she said to her daughter: “Go to Half-Price Bookstore and just get some things that you think I haven’t read. The only requirement is they have to have a lot of words per page”. Her daughter, who was an English major, picked out a lot of books by English authors of the seventeenth century. One of these was David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Lucid recounts: “I thought ‘Wow, here was this guy that lived in a totally different era than we’re living, and it had never ever crossed his mind that his book would be being read by an American on a Russian space station’. I just thought about that a lot, about the power that authors have and that his ideas and his story was transcending the centuries”.

In fact, on Mir, there was “the first library in space.” After her mission, Lucid said: “I left most of my books up there. Obviously, I couldn’t bring them back, and I thought the other guys would enjoy reading them. The Russians have a fairly extensive library up on Mir, because over the years, there’s lots and lots of Russian books that have come up. Behind one panel was just full of books. There were even a few English [ones] in there, because the foreign astronauts have brought [some] up”.

Her positive dealings with the Russians and her humor helped to create huge warmth between two distant partners in what was, at times, a difficult relationship. As a surprise, Kevin Chilton, the Commander of STS-76, had presented Lucid with two pink socks that she took with her over to Mir. She

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decided to wear them on Sundays and to make Sunday a special day during her stay on Mir, where she established funny traditions such as sharing a bag of Jell-O every Sunday night. But the key to the success of the mission involved the few rules that the team chose to adopt, for example meeting together for meals: “We ate all our meals together and spent a lot of time talking to each other over mealtimes. Then many times we did take a small break in the middle of the late afternoon where we’d have tea and cookies together. Lots of times we would have tea and cookies together just before we went to bed at night”.

Every day, before lunch, they had 45 minutes of exercise developed by Russian physiologists to prevent muscles from atrophying in the weightless environment. “I’ll be honest: the daily exercise was what I disliked most about living on Mir”, Lucid observed. On April 26, the seventh and final Mir module, the Priroda Laboratory in which Lucid had placed many of the US experiments, finally arrived. Its launch was supposed to have taken place six weeks earlier, on March 10, so that the laboratory would be ready for the start of her residency, but it was delayed. Once the module was in place, she spent a lot of time conducting most of her 28 scientific experiments there. “As a graduate student years ago, I fantasized about having my own laboratory”, she said. One experiment determined that the average radiation exposure on Mir was equivalent to undergoing eight chest X-ray radiographs per day. NASA scientists believe, however, that an astronaut would have to spend at least several years in orbit to suffer any appreciable risk of developing cancer. Lucid was also involved in a long-running experiment to grow wheat in a greenhouse on the Kristall module and to study the chemical, biochemical, and structural changes in plant tissues and their contribution to spaceflight life support, as they produce oxygen and food while eliminating carbon dioxide and excess humidity from the environment: “John Blaha, the American astronaut who succeeded me on Mir, harvested the mature plants a few months later and brought more than 300 seed heads back to the earth. But scientists at Utah State University discovered that all the seed heads were empty”.

(Unfortunately, precisely because of this mission and this handover – which Blaha thought sketchy – there was some tension between the two astronauts. But the misunderstandings were resolved and the old friendship was restored.)

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Lucid discussed her experiments at least once per day with colleagues Bill Gerstenmaier and Gaylen Johnson at the Mission Control Center in Moscow. Unlike the Space Shuttle, which transmitted messages via a pair of communications satellites, Mir was not in constant contact with the ground. The cosmonauts could talk to Mission Control only when the space station passed over one of the communications ground sites in Russia. These “comm passes” occurred once per orbit, about every 90 minutes, and generally lasted for about ten minutes. Lucid explained: “Commander Onufriyenko wanted each of us to be ‘on comm’ every time it was available, in case the ground needed to talk to us. This routine worked out well because it gave us short breaks throughout the day. Often, when we started a new experiment, Gerstenmaier made sure that our conversations were heard by interested researchers, who could answer all my questions. Our work schedule was detailed in a daily timeline that the Russians called the ‘Form 24’. The cosmonauts typically spent most of their day maintaining Mir’s systems, while I conducted experiments for NASA”.

Many investigations were aimed at evaluating the effects of microgravity on the human immune system, while others were devised to provide useful data to the designers of the ventilation systems and firefighting equipment for the ISS: “We found out lots of interesting things. What I thought was most interesting was that it didn’t answer all the questions. All it did was pose lots more questions that they need to have answered in the future. But this is important work, not only from the science perspective, but also because we need to know how things propagate in space, in case there ever is a fire or something like that so that we know how to put them out, because flames are different. Fire is a little bit different and propagates differently in a microgravity environment than it does down here on Earth”.

Lucid was involved in many Earth observation projects from the Kvant-2 module and she also documented some unusual events on Earth’s surface. On one occasion as part of her Earth observation work, she took photographs of giant plumes of smoke over Mongolia, as if the whole country was burning. She noted with concern that she had never seen fires of such ferocity on any of her previous four Shuttle missions and immediately informed the Control Center. A few days later, the crew was informed that news was arriving from Mongolia that massive forest fires were devastating parts of the country. She also photographed the devastation left by a volcanic eruption on the Caribbean Island of Montserrat.

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Having been dormant for centuries, the Sufriére Hills volcano erupted in July 1995, quickly destroying and burying the Georgian-­era capital, Plymouth. Only one of her 28 scheduled experiments failed to yield results because of equipment breakdown. The crew also deployed an aluminum and nylon pop­up model of a Pepsi Cola® can, which they then filmed against the backdrop of Earth. The soft-drink company paid for the procedure and planned to use the film in a TV commercial, but it was never used, reportedly because Pepsi® later changed the design of the can. Aboard the Mir, Lucid and her Mir-21 crewmates spoke exclusively in Russian. She said: “At the beginning communication was at times adventurous. Yuri and Yury at that time didn’t speak English. We used Russian. We made a lot of jokes about it. A lot of times I would just take an English word and pronounce it like a Russian word, and put an ending on it, and that worked. You’d be surprised the number of times that worked. If they didn’t understand it, then I would tell them that they ought to go to Russian class. Little by little we developed a new language, a ‘cosmic language.’ If a Russian teacher had been listening to me, they would have stuck their hands over their ears. I know that a lot of the times I wasn’t saying anything correctly. But Yury Usachev had really a great ability, what a linguistic would call restorative ability. He always knew what I was saying”.

On April 12, Lucid and her crewmates observed Russia’s Cosmonautics Day and celebrated the 35th anniversary of the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin in 1961, and the 15th anniversary of the first US Space Shuttle launch, Columbia in 1981. She recounts: “One evening, Onufriyenko and Usachev were very curious about my childhood in Texas and Oklahoma. Onufriyenko talked about the Ukrainian village where he grew up, and Usachev reminisced about his own Russian village. After a while we realized we had all grown up with the same fear: an atomic war between our two countries. I had spent my grade school years living in terror of the Soviet Union. We practiced bomb drills in our classes, all of us crouching under our desks, never questioning why. Similarly, Onufriyenko and Usachev had grown up with the knowledge that US bombers or missiles might zero in on their villages. After talking about our childhoods some more, we marveled at what an unlikely scenario had unfolded. Here we were, from countries that were sworn enemies a few years earlier. I was living on a Russian space station working and socializing with a Russian air force officer and a Russian engineer. Just ten years ago such a plot line would have been deemed too implausible for anything but a science-fiction novel”.

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After her 150th day in space, on September 19, Soyuz TM-24 arrived with the crew of Valeri Korzun, Alekandr Kaleri, and French ESA astronaut Claudie André-Deshays (Haigneré), for whom Lucid had prepared a bed and a place for her belongings. Lucid also helped André-Deshays to unravel the intricacies of the station. After the departure of the “two Yuris,” Lucid spent her last few days on Mir with Korzun and Kaleri. “I had seen Valeri quite a bit in Star City”, she recalled, “but I had never seen Sasha at all. I met him for the first time when he came out of the hatch”. Lucid’s stay on Mir lasted longer than expected, firstly because of a problem with the Shuttle’s solid rocket boosters (SRBs) and then – when the technical problems were solved – because of Hurricane Fran which further delayed the launch of Shuttle STS-79. Her return was delayed by six weeks and one of her first thoughts upon hearing of the extension was: “Oh, no! Not another month-and-a-half of treadmill running”! The delayed landing would mean that she had to miss both her son’s 21st birthday in August and her daughter’s 28th birthday in mid-September. She said: “That’s life, you know. And we’ll just go on and I’ll continue to have an enjoyable time. My family would be surprised at the patience I’ve developed in space. I hope I can bring some of that back with me”.

On September 7, Lucid broke Elena Kondakova’s 169-day record for the longest stay in space by a woman. During a NASA news conference at about this time, Yuri Glaskov, Deputy Commander of Russia’s Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, was asked what he thought about Lucid taking the Russian record. Glaskov said: “I don’t think you’ve taken the record from us. We have offered this record to you”. He also said: “As far as Dr. Shannon Lucid is concerned, I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to the management of the program for making such a selection. Because everybody is fond of her… Everybody loves her”. Lucid prepared for the end of her own stay and the arrival of Atlantis by conducting a thorough inventory of experiment supplies and equipment in the Spektr and Priroda modules of Mir for her handover to John Blaha. Finally, on September 26, 1996, she was able to return home after a flight of 188 days. By the end of her fifth mission, she had spent a combined total of 246 days in space. For Lucid, the Mir experience was “just awesome.” Fellow astronaut Ellen Baker, who worked with Lucid for over 20 years and flew with her on Shuttle Atlantis in 1989, said: “She is probably the most positive and optimistic person I know, who basically thinks nothing is impossible and really has proven that in her life”.

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“The reasons that people want to go into space are the same; it doesn’t make any difference what country you come from”, Lucid has said. “Leaving aside the political level, on a personal level, the working level, people’s motivations are the same. It was a neat thing to be able to associate with the cosmonauts and find out about the history of all they had accomplished. We at NASA have learned from working with the Russians, and hopefully, the Russians have learned from us. We both have stronger space programs because of our cooperation”. For her achievements on Mir, President Bill Clinton awarded Lucid the Congressional Space Medal of Honor after her Shuttle/Mir mission. She is the only woman (apart from the four who were killed in the two Shuttle accidents) to have received this award. Russian President Boris Yeltsin awarded her the Order of Friendship Medal, the highest Russian award that can be presented to a non-citizen. After her last mission, Lucid became NASA’s Chief Scientist at the agency’s headquarters located in Washington, D.C., from February 2002 until September 2003, where she oversaw the development and implementation of projects and programs to communicate NASA’s scientific goals to the wider world. Her suggestions after this experience were important for setting up the work and life balance aboard the ISS. On the one hand, a stressful program had to be avoided, such as those in the mid-seventies that had led to the rebellion of the Skylab-4 crew, harassed by a Mission Control that did not understand that operations in a lack of gravity took longer. On the other hand, her concern was to ensure that teams had enough productive things to do during long-duration missions, so that they were using their time wisely and avoiding make-work from the ground or a low level of productive activity which could lead to depression. Lucid’s workload on the Mir had been too low and she had run out of all her duties for a while. When the delay of her return Shuttle was announced, she knew she had to find a way to occupy her time. Luckily, she was prone to talking, despite the language barriers, and was an avid reader. In 2004, Lucid returned to JSC in Houston and resumed technical assignments in the Astronaut Office. She was Capcom in Mission Control during some 15 Shuttle and ISS missions, between the STS-114 mission in 2005 and the end of the Shuttle program with STS-135 in 2011. In September 2006 she returned to the land of her birth, accompanying NASA Administrator Michael Griffin on his historic five-day trip to China at the invitation of the administrator of the China National Space Administration, Laiyan Sun. The visit took in Beijing, Shanghai and several aerospace facilities around the country, in an effort to establish preliminary ties between the Chinese and US space programs.

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After working as an astronaut for more the three decades, Shannon Lucid retired from NASA on January 31, 2012. On May 3, 2014 Lucid, together with veteran Jerry Ross, was inducted into the prestigious “Astronaut Hall of Fame” (AHoF) group – the elite group of American space explorers which includes some 30 famous space legends such as Neil Armstrong, Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Sally Ride, Jim Lovell, Tom Stafford, and Gus Grissom.

Sources For This Section Briggs, C.S. Women Space Pioneers, pp. 70–78. Lerner Publications, Minneapolis (2005). Davison, M. “Interview with Shannon Lucid”, history.nasa.gov (June 17, 1998). Evans, B. “‘A Job? But You’re a Girl!’ The Triumphant Career of Shannon Lucid”, americaspace.com (February 2, 2012). Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 105–111. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Haven, K. Women at the Edge of Discovery: 40 True Science Adventures, pp. 150–156. Libraries Unlimited, Westport, London (2003). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 157–163. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Lucid, S. Six months on MIR. Scientific American, 278(5), 46–55 (1998). Mihelich P.,Legendary astronaut still finds herself star-struck, in edition.cnn.com (April 10, 2007) Morgan, C. NASA-2 Shannon Lucid: Enduring Qualities. In: Morgan, C. ShuttleMIR: The United States and Russia Share History’s Highest Stage, pp. 54ff. NASA SP-4225, Houston (2001). Official NASA biography of Shannon Lucid, jsc.nasa.gov/Bios (February 2012). Personal communication through e-mail with the Author in May 2016.

2.4 BONNIE DUNBAR: THE FIRST FEMALE ASTROCOSMONAUT Mission

Launch

Return

STS-61A STS-32 STS-50 STS-71 STS-89

October 30, 1985 January 9, 1990 June 25, 1992 June 27, 1995 January 22, 1998

November 6, 1985 January 20, 1990 July 9, 1992 July 7, 1995 January 31, 1998

Fig. 2.11.  Bonnie J.  Dunbar. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Bonnie J. Dunbar (Fig. 2.11) was the first astro-cosmonaut in history and is one of the six female astronauts who have flown in space five times (Figs. 2.12 and 2.13). Dunbar was one of the first NASA astronauts to move to Star City as part of the agreement for the Shuttle-Mir program. NASA had a hard time trying to find enough people among its 120 active astronauts who were willing to train in Russia for about a year and a half. Russia and Star City did not have a good reputation in Houston. Dunbar was one of the first to accept, and initially with great enthusiasm. She had already studied some Russian and had been to the Soviet Union, specifically Tashkent, Uzbekistan, for a scientific meeting in 1991. Afterwards, she had accepted an invitation to visit Star City and had liked what she had seen. The spartan conditions in the Russian center were not dissimilar to those she had become accustomed to in her military family since childhood and, as the daughter of a Marine, she had a great sense of duty: her country was looking for volunteers and she felt compelled to make herself available. In 1994, Dunbar arrived in Russia as the backup for Norman Thagard, who would inaugurate the new Shuttle-Mir program. Her assumption was that she would be assigned to the next long-duration Shuttle-Mir mission, according to an unwritten “rotation” rule  – at least, that was the way it usually worked. However, she was never assigned to a long-duration mission and instead visited Mir twice as a crewmember of two Shuttle missions.

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Fig. 2.12.  Bonnie Dunbar’s signature on a cover commemorating the launch of Soyuz TM-21, whose crew she met during her STS-71 mission, the first Space Shuttle mission to dock with the Russian Mir space station. The TM-21 crew have also signed the cover. From the Author’s collection.

Fig. 2.13.  Bonnie J. Dunbar’s astro-cosmonaut patch. Figure Credit: © spacepatchdatabase.com. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

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Roberta (“Bonnie”) J.  Dunbar was born in Sunnyside, Washington, on March 3, 1949, the first of four children, and grew up on an isolated ranch near Outlook, five miles from Sunnyside, where her father, a Marine Corps veteran, had bought 40 acres of rocky, savage land in a government raffle opened to veterans after World War II. It would be years before the ranch got electricity or running water. In this environment, Dunbar developed tenacity and a strong work ethic: “I just don’t see obstacles”, she says. “I see challenges”. She could drive a tractor by age nine and, with her two younger brothers and sister, helped to round up cattle, milked cows, and worked in the fields. Both her parents were self-­ sufficient, inventive, entrepreneurial people, who placed a high value on education. They did not treat the girls any differently from the boys and encouraged all their children to reach for their dreams. They also set high standards, and expected their children to do their best at whatever they chose to do: “My parents started with nothing”, she said. “They built something. They are also very good people. All my parents ever expected is that we be good, productive people, not that we be famous. They encouraged us to take whatever God-given talents we had and use them. I came out of that environment thinking I could do just as well as anyone else”. Also, she recalls: “My father used to say ‘I fought for my sons and my daughters to be able to become what they want to become, if they wanted to work hard enough to do it’”. Dunbar began dreaming about space in 1957, when Sputnik was launched. She remembers going outside with her parents when she was eight and looking up at the starry sky for traces of the tiny satellite. She also remained impressed when she visited the “Century 21 Exposition,” the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle, where a major theme was to show that the US was not really “behind” the Soviet Union in the realms of science and space: “That was the only vacation we ever took when I was a kid”, she said, “and I was very interested in these futuristic things”. In the eighth grade, when her principal asked her what she wanted to do or become, Dunbar was a little too embarrassed to tell him she wanted to be an astronaut, so she just told him she wanted to build spaceships. “Well, you’ll have to know algebra”, he said. She signed up for algebra in the ninth grade and later discovered that it was a key choice. After graduating at the Sunnyside High School in 1967, Dunbar decided she wanted to go to college. She recalls: “I really wanted to go to college. And I promised my parents that if I had that opportunity, I would. They believed that education was a gift and they didn’t have that opportunity. I was very interested in going to college. I applied to be an astronaut the first time when I was 18. I received a very nice letter back from

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NASA… which basically said that I needed a college education and they would post the announcements in trade journals of some kind”.

Her physics teacher suggested that she should study engineering as a way to reach her goals, so she did: “I was very, very fortunate. People gave me good advice at the right time. I had a very supportive family”. Dunbar was just finishing her junior year when she suffered the first, and most searing, loss of her life. Her younger brother Robert, who had followed in their father’s footsteps and joined the Marines, was killed in Vietnam on May 31, 1970. Only 16 months apart in age, she and “Bobby” were very close as children, always doing things together. She said: “My brothers and I were very close, but we would always [pursue] one-upmanship, whether it be in athletics or anything. It was a healthy, friendly competition, but it made me a better person”. In June 1971, she earned her cum laude BSc and MSc degrees in Ceramic Engineering from the University of Washington and, in 1975, obtained a Ph.D. in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering from the University of Washington: “There was the hippie environment, but I was not part of that. One of the first things I did when I arrived on campus was try to join the Air Force ROTC [Reserve Officers’ Training Corps], but they weren’t yet accepting women. I joined the auxiliary at that time called Angel Flight and there were 50 of us selected from across the campus. It was a community development, community service, and also an Air Force mission-related organization, which still exists as Silver Wings right now. It gave me an opportunity to meet people of like interests, people who loved flight”.

It was not an auspicious time for anyone to be looking for work, especially for women, who, in a male-dominated society, represented less than one percent of the workforce. Dunbar applied to any company that even remotely had anything to do with aviation and also applied for an engineering position at Boeing: “They offered me a position in a new organization called Boeing Computer Services. Since I had studied Fortran IV programming as an engineer, they knew I could program computers”. So she became a Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL) systems analyst and programmer. After two years, sponsored by her former professor and adviser in ceramic engineering, Dr. Suren Sarian, she succeeded in taking a position as Visiting Scientist at the AERE (Atomic Energy Research Establishment) in Harwell, near Oxford, UK. This was one of the few places overseas that were doing research in the field of ceramic engineering. After a few months, Dunbar learned that the Space Division of Rockwell International was offering her a

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job, so she returned to the US and was immediately sent to Palmdale, California, to provide support and oversee the startup of the tile-production facility for the Space Shuttle program. In 1978, she won a company-wide award as the “Rockwell International Engineer of the Year” for her solution to a problem involving waterproofing the tiles. The first application that she sent to NASA in 1977 to become an astronaut was not accepted. She recalled: “I was not a part of the class, but I was extremely honored to become a finalist. There were several thousand who had applied”. Although she had not been selected, she was interviewed for some positions at NASA’s JSC. Since all the successful astronaut candidates (except those who were pilots) had doctoral degrees, she decided to go back to graduate school. In July 1978, Dunbar was invited to join Payload Operations at JSC. She took the job and, at the same time, began working toward a doctorate in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Houston. At about this time, NASA discovered a problem with the re-entry of the old Skylab space station. Dunbar was trained as a Guidance and Navigation Controller for Skylab and sat on the console for nine months until the station came down in July 1979. After that, she went back to her Payload Officer job and started preparing for STS-1. She applied again in 1980 and this time she was accepted as an Astronaut Candidate (ASCAN). Her success reinforced another lesson she had learned as a child: “If you fall off the horse, you get back on. Failure is a part of life; success is getting up and trying again”. Her very first assignment was to SAIL, the Shuttle Avionics Integration Lab. In 1983, she completed her Ph.D. in Mechanical/Biomedical Engineering from the University of Houston, Texas. Her multi-disciplinary dissertation on materials science and physiology involved evaluating the effects of simulated spaceflight on bone strength and fracture toughness. Dunbar flew in space five times. In October 1985, she launched as an MS on the STS-61A mission, with Spacelab D-1, the first Spacelab entirely managed and controlled by West Germany. The media were very interested in that mission, especially in Germany, “but not always for the right reasons,” she said. A German reporter once asked her what she thought of Dallas. She replied: “Well, you know, I’ve only visited it once or twice, but I hear it’s a pretty city”. She did not realize that the reporter was referring to the TV show with J.R. Ewing that at the time was quite popular in Germany, but of course Dunbar had never seen it or knew much about it. STS-61A was the first time the Shuttle carried eight astronauts, and the first time that an activity carried out on the Shuttle was fully controlled by a non-American country. During the mission, 75 experiments were conducted

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in various scientific disciplines, including physiology, biology, materials science, and navigation. Bonnie Dunbar was responsible for Spacelab operations and was involved in several experiments for which she had contributed to the preparations, traveling for seven months in Germany, Switzerland, France, and the Netherlands to become familiar with the protocols of the different experiments. STS-61A was the last completed mission of Shuttle Challenger, which was tragically lost the following January. In 1988, Dunbar was assigned to the STS-32 mission and, that same year, she married Ronald M.  Sega, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado and Officer of the Air Force Reserve. The STS-32 mission, which deployed the telecommunications satellite Syncom 4 into space, was launched in January 1990. During the mission, the news arrived that her husband had also been selected for the NASA Astronaut Corps. As MS, Dunbar operated the robotic arm to recover the Long-Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) platform which, with its burden of long-term experiments, had been placed in low orbit by the STS-41C mission more than five years earlier in April 1984. Its recovery had been delayed because of the Challenger accident in 1986. During her first two missions, Dunbar had been trained for a possible contingency spacewalk: “There was still a sizing problem for some of the females. It was driven by economics more than anything. Back during Gemini, Mercury, and Apollo the astronauts wore custom suits. When we started the Shuttle program, they decided so many more astronauts were going to fly it would be economical to build suits that had interchangeable arms and lower waists. On my first flight, I flew a medium suit. Then Challenger happened and there were budget cuts. On my second flight they forgot to certify my configuration and I had to get into a small hard upper torso. So, I could hardly breathe because it was small. And in the other one the arms were too long; my fingers didn’t reach the end of the gloves. And they said, ‘Well, we don’t have enough money to change it’. You need to be able to function. It’s like putting on your father’s gloves and being asked to do brain surgery. But these decisions were being made in Washington, D.C., while the training was happening in Houston. Your suit tech and trainer are not in the position of changing the budget”.

In 1992, Dunbar was the Payload Commander during the STS-50 USML-1 Spacelab mission (United States Microgravity Lab-1). For almost 14 days, the astronauts, led by Dunbar, conducted 30 experiments in materials science and life science in microgravity, in four shifts a day, with the participation of over 100 American scientists on the ground.

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As mentioned earlier, Dunbar arrived at Star City in 1994 to train as a backup for Norman Thagard, who was to participate in the Mir-18 expedition. She said: “I’d actually been taking Russian lessons before I went to Russia, but I hadn’t been speaking it. All of the training there was being delivered in Russian. It’s all technical. So you’re still learning the language, how to speak it, but you’re also expected to grasp all of the technical concepts. It was like being in first grade and grad school at the same time”.

She felt herself suddenly plunged into a culture far away from what she was used to, with Russian colleagues who saw nothing wrong with putting their arms around her and paying her gallant compliments. She was not allowed to use the cosmonauts’ gym because there was no women’s dressing room available  – the Cosmonaut Training Center was indeed a military base. Dunbar experienced at first hand the aversion of the space environment for Russian women. She remembers that one Russian instructor told her  – with no scientific data to support him – that it was unlikely that she would ever fly on Mir because women needed special toilets, as “the female urine has a different chemistry than males’ urine and Mir toilets are not able to treat them.” She felt very alone. What hurt her was that even when Norman Thagard was there and heard such comments or saw this sexist behavior, he would never come to her support. It caused a rift between them and the two stopped talking to each other. She realized that, despite the precedent of Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya, women in the Russian program had only appeared sporadically, as dictated by propaganda purposes at the time. In the end, Dunbar was not assigned to a Mir long-duration expedition, but was part of the crew for the Atlantis STS-71 mission (1995), the first Space Shuttle mission to dock with the Russian space station Mir. Atlantis had been modified to carry a docking system compatible with Mir. This was also the first time that a Shuttle crew had switched members with the crew of a station. Dunbar served as MS-3 on this flight, which carried another Spacelab, the European laboratory built in Turin, Italy, by Alenia Spazio, in the Shuttle’s payload bay. In the Spacelab, the crew performed medical evaluations on the returning Mir crew, including investigations on the effects of weightlessness on the cardiovascular system, the bone/muscle system, the immune system, and the cardiopulmonary system.

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For the first time, ten crewmembers were in space at the same time in the same orbital complex, a record for Mir and for space in general. Prior to this, Mir had normally had a crew of three people, only rising to six during crew exchanges that were usually carried out using the small Soyuz spacecraft. In January 1998, Dunbar participated in the STS-84 mission, her second as Payload Commander. STS-84 was the eighth Shuttle-Mir docking mission (and the fifth and last exchange of US astronauts via the Shuttle). As Payload Commander, Dunbar was responsible for the delivery of more than four tons of scientific equipment, supplies, water, and logistical hardware to Mir. Besides all the payload activities, she was also responsible for conducting 23 technology and science experiments. After her last mission, she stayed at NASA for another seven years, working in senior management in a number of different positions, including Associate Director of Technology Integration and Risk Management, and five years as the Assistant Director for University Research, both at JSC. In her five space missions, Dunbar logged 1,208 hours, or more than 50 days, in orbit aboard four of the five NASA Shuttles: Atlantis, Challenger, Columbia, and Endeavour. Bonnie Dunbar left NASA in September 2005 and began a new chapter of her life, serving as President and CEO of the Seattle Museum of Flight, Seattle, Washington, where she established a new Space Gallery and expanded its K12 STEM educational offerings. The position appealed to her because it involved “trying to inspire the future by preserving the past.” She said: “History shows us when you invest in technology and lead, it translates right back into the quality of life for every American, and their influence in the geopolitical environment. We’re risking our nation if we don’t have scientists and engineers – the infrastructure of the nation. Where are the engines of the economy? Where are the solutions to the environmental problems, the energy problems? Those are scientists and engineers. It’s not just about appropriating the money out of your government. It’s what you do with it. The pyramids were not materialized out of ether. They were built by engineers and mathematicians. Navigation came from astronomers and the stars, and the mathematics that came along with that”.

Having worked at NASA, Dunbar is strongly convinced that: “… to address the grand challenges of the future, we need the new ideas, new companies, and new industries created by STEM careers. This has been historically, and will be in the future, the key to great progress in the United States.”

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She seeks to stimulate the general public and Congress and make everyone understand that, on the one hand, there should be more investment in scientific education and, on the other, there is a need to encourage students into these fields: “When we went to the moon in the ’60s, the whole world watched that, and we ought to be proud that we were leaders doing it because this has benefited our society in many ways. Not just the quality of life and the technology. The quality of life has freed us for other pursuits and learning. Philosophy, political leadership, democracy. So we should never underestimate the role that science and technology has had in every major civilization since the dawn of time. Do away with science and technology and you start to undermine the very form of government”.

The fundamental question she asks is: “Are we a spacefaring nation or are we not? If you’re saying no, then let the Sun set on our civilization. We’ll sit back and be a nation of watchers and not doers. Our quality of life will not quite be the same and we could even become another Third World country. But if the answer is yes, you have to ask yourself how do we move forward? We invest in education. We invest in research. We invest in technology”. In April 2010, Dunbar undertook the fourth career of her life with passion, leading the new STEM Center (science, technology, engineering and math) of the University of Houston until the end of 2015. Currently, she is a professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University and serves as Director of the Institute for Engineering Education and Innovation (IEEI), a joint entity in the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University. In 2012, Dunbar was elected to the Executive Committee of the International Association of Space Explorers (ASE), thus becoming the first woman in that committee’s 25-year history. On April 20, 2013, together with Curt Brown and Eileen Collins, she was inducted into the prestigious “Astronaut Hall of Fame” (AHoF) group. The 2013 class was the first to include more women than men, coincidentally on the 30th anniversary of the first American woman flying in space, the late Sally Ride, who was herself inducted in 2003. Among other awards, Dunbar was inducted into the Omega Alpha Association (OAA) Systems Engineering Honor Society in 2016, and was elected as the president of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE) in 2017. She is the recipient of the 2020 Sigma Xi John P.  McGovern Science and Society Award, for her achievements as a scientist/engineer who transcended her career as a researcher and impacted on society.

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Sources For This Section Briggs, C.S. Women Space Pioneers, pp. 64–70. Lerner Publications, Minneapolis (2005). Heffernan, T. “Bonnie Dunbar: An Adventurous Mind”, sos.wa.gov/legacyproject/oralhistories (June 18, 2009). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 154–157. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Official biography of Bonnie J. Dunbar, jsc.nasa.gov/Bios (September 2005). Ross-Nazzal, J. “Bonnie Dunbar: Oral History Transcript”, jsc.nasa.gov (September 14, 2004). Ross-Nazzal, J. “Bonnie Dunbar. Oral History Transcript”, jsc.nasa.gov (December 22, 2004). Ross-Nazzal, J. “Bonnie Dunbar. Oral History Transcript”, jsc.nasa.gov (January 20, 2005). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space—Following Valentina, pp. 245–246, 321. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Tate, C. “Dunbar, Bonnie J.”, HistoryLink.org Essay 9865, HistoryLink.org (June 27, 2011). Wright, R. “Interview with Bonnie Dunbar”, spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir (June 16, 1998).

2.5 MARY CLEAVE: FLYING AT AGE 14 Mission

Launch

Return

STS-61B STS-30

November 26, 1985 May 4, 1989

December 3, 1985 May 8, 1989

Mary Louise Cleave (Fig. 2.14) was born in Southampton, New York, on February 4, 1947. The eldest of three sisters, she soon proved very athletic and keen on sport, and started to practice field hockey, lacrosse, volleyball and basketball early on, until she was told she was too short. She also dreamed about flying and her mother drove her to the local airport so she could take flying lessons. She said: “No one’s really sure why I was so crazy about airplanes when I was a little kid, but I was crazy about airplanes. Nobody else in my family flew except for my mother’s brother, who was a pilot that was killed in World War II, so I didn’t even know him”.

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Fig. 2.14.  Mary L. Cleave. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Her instructor, an old retired Army Air Corps test pilot, confirmed to her parents that Cleave had an affinity for flying: “This is the first person I’ve ever had in an airplane that doesn’t have anything to forget about driving mechanics; her whole interaction is with the airplane”. Working in her spare time as a baby-sitter to earn the money for flying lessons, she soloed when she was aged 16 years and received her pilot’s license at the age of 17. But her parents still had to drive her to the airport so she could fly (Fig. 2.15). She recalls: “Since I lived in New York City, you had to be eighteen to drive a car, so there was a period of my life where I was legal to fly people before I was legal to drive, which is a very bizarre thing”.

People would take her to the airport in the car and then she would take them for a ride in the airplane. In 1969, when she graduated from college, Cleave applied to become a commercial pilot but was told that women could not do that. Still wanting to fly, she applied to become a flight attendant instead, but this time it was not her sex that was the problem, it was her size. Once again, she was told that, at 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m), she was too short. At that time, women were required to be at least 5 ft 4 in (1.62 m) tall to be an airline stewardess.

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Fig. 2.15.  Commemorative cover for the launch of the STS-61B mission, signed by Mary Cleave. From the Author’s collection.

As she liked animals, Cleave started a pre-veterinary medicine program. That year, the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine accepted only two women and, after realizing that she preferred dissecting plants rather than animals, she changed her major to Biological Sciences. In 1969, she earned a BSc degree in Biological Sciences from Colorado State University. After practicing teaching in Denver for a few months, she obtained a job on a “floating campus”, tutoring college students in biology as the ship tramped from port to port. Wherever she went, Cleave took samples of the water. In 1971 she decided to return to studying, at Utah State University. She specialized in phycology, the study of algae, and worked in the Utah Water Research Laboratory (UWRL) until 1980, carrying out research on a number of microbial, environmental, and engineering projects. These included the productivity of algal components of cold desert soil crust in the Great Basin desert south of Snowville, the prediction of the minimum river flow necessary to maintain certain game fish, and the effects of increased salinity and oil shale leachates on freshwater phytoplankton productivity. In 1975, Cleave earned her MSc degree in Microbial Ecology from Utah State University. She said: “My co-workers in the lab encouraged me to move to engineering because they saw I was more of a problem solver than a scientist”. In 1979, she earned a doctorate in Civil and Environmental Engineering, becoming the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in engineering at Utah State University.

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When she was working at the UWRL, Cleave learned from a fellow research engineer working at the lab that there was an advertisement from NASA in the local post office which stated that they were looking for scientists and engineers to work in space: “My colleague handed me the flyer because he said I was the only one crazy enough to pursue it”. So she applied: “Space flight was great, but my interest was airplanes, and, in fact, when I found out there was a possibility of flying in T-38s, I really thought that was neat because I never thought I’d get to fly in a high-performance jet”.

This time, her size was no barrier; instead, it would often be an asset, since she was the only astronaut small enough to carry out repairs in tight spaces, such as fixing the Shuttle’s commode when it malfunctioned. In 1980, Cleave was invited to Houston for an interview: “I was too short to serve coffee in flight, but tall enough to fly into space”. Although she had applied for the astronaut selection in 1978, she was not chosen, but she did succeed in 1980. The news that she had made the first cut did not come as a totally unexpected surprise. When federal investigators dropped by Wellsville to conduct a “discreet” background check, everybody in town kept her apprised of what they were asking: “The first inkling I had was they start doing a background check on you. Although nobody was supposed to know they were doing this and they asked everybody not to talk about it, if you live in Wellsville, Utah, which is a town of 2,000 people, I mean, forget it. This stranger shows up, and I was getting phone calls saying, ‘All right. He’s just left the building. It looks like he’s driving down to 23rd Street. I bet he’s going to see Maude’. So those poor guys, I knew where they were the whole time they were in the valley”.

Finally, in the last week of March 1980, Cleave received an invitation to go to Houston for an interview. She knew her chances of selection were remote, because there were 2,880 applicants for mission specialist (396 of them women) and 583 applicants for pilot (18 women applied to be pilots, but none of them qualified). Interviews for each group lasted from Monday until Friday. Some applicants, who might have forgotten that there is always the prospect of mortal danger in the space program, emerged from an excursion in the Shuttle simulator feeling quite shaken. During the claustrophobia test, while some of the applicants panicked, Cleave fell asleep. After her selection in May 1980, she was the first in her class to be assigned a real job. Based on her background of microbial ecology and water sewerage

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and pollutants, John Young, the moonwalker (Apollo 16) who at that time was the Chief of the Astronaut Office, assigned Cleave as “sanitary engineer” to fix the Shuttle’s waste-management systems, which hadn’t worked properly on the first flight of the Shuttle. She was then assigned to the SAIL to test flight software and helped to develop crew equipment, including the personal-­ hygiene kit, as well as flight documentation such as the Malfunction Procedures Data Book. She also served as Capcom on five missions and was Capcom for the first female-to-female link-up during mission STS-7, when Sally Ride flew. In November 1985, Cleave was assigned as an MS to mission STS-61B, which deployed three communication satellites: MORELOS-B, AUSSAT II, and SATCOM K-2. She also conducted a few experiments for 3M and several for the Mexican government. The mission carried the heaviest payload thus far into orbit by the Space Shuttle. During the flight, Cleave, who was the only civilian astronaut and the only non-test pilot in the crew, was responsible for operating the Shuttle’s Remote Manipulator System (RMS). She explained: “They couldn’t fit me in a spacesuit because I was too small, and they decided not to buy these small hard upper torsos to save money. They were going to fit the mid-range of the astronaut corps, so they ended up having to train me as a flight engineer. So I was a flight engineer on that flight, and I flew the arm”.

She was a bit disappointed at first but, in the end, she was happy with how it turned out. As she later explained to the NASA oral historian, “It seemed like they assigned women to fly the arm [RMS, or Canadarm] more often than guys, and the rumor on the street was because they thought women did that better”. Cleave had experienced quite a difference between using the training model on the ground or in the water tank and using the real arm in space: “We were facing the Earth and I was working the arm. We had the Earth going at Mach 25 underneath, and it was a moving target and really distracting. Somebody pointed out [that] in the Gemini Program, they almost missed a rendezvous because of the same phenomena. What they did was, they always did it against deep space, and I went, ‘Well okay, so we made the same mistake twice’”.

The recommendations she provided in the debriefing after this experience helped to improve RMS operations. The view of our planet from space reinforced Cleave’s passion for the environment: “You get an appreciation for just how small the atmosphere is. Just a very thin layer that separates us and our planet from a really nasty vacuum out there. So

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you get real respectful for how we should treat the atmosphere, how we should treat the oceans, how we should treat the land. Really, being in space changes a person’s attitude. Our planet is quite finite and is 70% ocean. Whereas we know these things intellectually from our Earth-bound field trips and from science books, the finite nature of our planet and the small portion that we actually inhabit instantly becomes real when you look down from low Earth orbit”.

But mainly she enjoyed the weightlessness: “Weighting nothing is great fun. You don’t need a stool to reach things”! In 1989, Cleave took part in the STS-30 mission, becoming the first woman to fly after the Challenger accident. During the ascent phase, as there was a crew of five and only four seats on the flight deck, she accepted to fly by herself ‘downstairs’ – “I was by myself and I got to enjoy the ride” – taking pictures and having a good time. The mission successfully deployed the Magellan Venus-exploration spacecraft. It was the first time that a spacecraft that was going to another planet had been deployed from the Shuttle. Magellan has been one of NASA’s most successful scientific missions, which arrived at Venus in August 1990 and mapped over 95 percent of its surface, providing valuable information about its atmosphere and magnetic field. Cleave commented: “It was great work. We ended up working real hard until we deployed it: the thing is that as it gets it out of the payload bay, then it’s not JSC’s [NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas] problem anymore, it belongs to JPL [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California]. Working with the guys from JPL was great”.

For the rest of the mission, Cleave continued to enjoy herself and take pictures. This was four years after her first spaceflight and, looking down, she realized as an environmental engineer that there were huge differences and she was bothered by how quickly Earth was changing. She therefore decided to take care of the environment and to leave Houston’s JSC and move to Greenbelt, Maryland, working at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). When she told colleagues of her plans, they tried to discourage and dissuade her. She comments: “The amount of pressure that goes in to people when you decide you don’t want to do what most people consider to be the best job on the planet was really pretty tough: ‘What do you want to go to Goddard for? God, work with those unmanned spacecraft. Don’t do this. It’s a one-way gate’. It was standard military practice; ‘don’t do any traumatic decisions until you think about it for a year’”.

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Cleave left JSC in May 1991 to join GSFC, where she worked in the Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes as the Project Manager for SeaWiFS (Sea-viewing, Wide-Field-of-view-Sensor), an ocean color sensor aimed at monitoring vegetation globally and providing global measurements of all of chlorophyll A on Earth every 48 hours. The spacecraft launched in August 1997 and operated successfully for 13 years, developing the first global measurement of plant life on Earth. The data from the spacecraft helped to increase understanding of climate change, oceanography, and atmospheric science. From 2004 onwards, Cleave served as Deputy Associate Administrator (advanced planning) and then Deputy Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., where she was responsible for an array of research and scientific exploration programs for planet Earth, space weather, the solar system, and the universe beyond. Mary Cleave retired from NASA on March 2, 2007 and that October she joined Sigma Space, a company based in Lanham, Maryland, which provides optoelectronic aerospace instrumentation for NASA, the Department of Defense (DOD), and commercial customers. She currently serves on corporate boards and advisory committees in both for profit and not for profit sectors, and is a member of the Society for Professional Engineers, Women in Aerospace, Tri-Beta, Sigma XI, and Tau Beta Pi. Cleave logged a total of 262 hours in space, orbited Earth 172 times, and traveled 3.94 million miles on her two missions.

Sources For This Section Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 67–68. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 68–69. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Official biography of Mary L. Cleave, jsc.nasa.gov/Bios (2007). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space—Following Valentina, pp. 184–185, 246–248. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 67–68. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002). Wright, L. “Space Cadet”, Texas Monthly (July, 1981), 114–119. Wright, R. “Interview with Mary Cleave”, jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories (March 5, 2002).

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2.6 ELLEN BAKER: AN INTERNIST PHYSICIAN ON THE SHUTTLE Mission

Launch

Return

STS-34 STS-50 STS-71

October 18, 1989 June 25, 1992 June 27, 1995

October 23, 1989 July 9, 1992 July 7, 1995

Growing up in New York, Ellen Baker dreamed of playing baseball for the Yankees, but at that time girls were not accepted to play in major-league baseball. She said: “I’ve always been interested in the space program and I thought it was exciting and challenging, but they didn’t let girls go into space when I was little. So I didn’t really think about it as a possibility for me until I was out of medical school. The first group of women were selected in 1978 and that’s the year I graduated from medical school”.

Ellen Louise Shulman Baker (Fig. 2.16) was born on April 27, 1953, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, but considers New  York City to be her

Fig. 2.16.  Ellen Baker. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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hometown. She graduated from Bayside High School, New York, in 1970 and earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in Geology from the State University of New  York at Buffalo in 1974, and a Doctorate of Medicine from Cornell University Medical College in 1978. She recalls: “When I was finishing medical school, I saw an article in the newspaper that NASA was accepting astronaut applications and women were urged to apply. I started to think about the possibility. Of course, it seemed an unreachable goal”.

After training in internal medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas, she was certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and, in 1981, joined NASA as medical officer at the JSC Flight Medicine Clinic. Baker was one of the 17 astronaut candidates chosen by NASA in May 1984 (out of 4,934 applicants) for their Astronaut Corps Group 10 – known as “The Maggots” – together with two other women: Kathryn Thornton and Marsha Ivins (Fig. 2.17). Baker once told the author: “What I like best are the people. I work with a wonderful group of people and it’s hard to imagine that there’s a better group of people anywhere. And of course I like the program, the excitement, the challenge and I like working for something that I think is important. I like to make a difference”.

Fig. 2.17.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-34, signed by Ellen Baker. From the Author’s collection.

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She received much encouragement from the women who went before her, including close friend Shannon Lucid. Baker first flew in space as an MS on STS-34 Atlantis in October 1989. The crew successfully deployed the Galileo probe to explore Jupiter and also mapped atmospheric ozone on Earth and conducted medical and scientific experiments. She was accompanied in this flight by Lucid, who was flying her second mission and whom Baker described as being “completely at home” in space. Having set Galileo on its way, the primary mission of STS-34 was completed and the crew turned their attention to the array of secondary experiments, including the first flight of the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SSBUV) instrument in the payload bay. This was part of an ongoing NASA effort to calibrate ozone on free-flying satellites and verify the accuracy of atmospheric ozone and solar irradiance data. During the rest of the mission, Baker took stunning photographs documenting the impact of human activity upon the world’s ecosystem: “We took pictures of everything and brought them back to the experts to analyze”, she said. The images from space eloquently conveyed our planet’s fragile beauty. She was also responsible for some experiments, including the GHCD (Growth Hormone Concentration and Distribution) that studied the effect of microgravity on the distribution and concentration of growth hormones in plants. Baker next flew in June 1992, together with Bonnie Dunbar, aboard Columbia on STS-50, which was the first flight of the United States Microgravity Laboratory (USML-1) and the first Extended Duration Orbiter (EDO) flight. Over a two-week period, again flying as an MS, Baker was also the Flight Engineer (FE), tasked with monitoring and operating vehicle systems during the flight, especially assisting the commander and pilot during launch and landing. The payload crew conducted scientific experiments involving crystal growth, fluid physics, fluid dynamics, biological science, and combustion science. At 13 days 19 hours, this mission surpassed the flight of Gemini 7 in 1966 to become the longest duration American manned spaceflight to date not to include a space station residency. Describing some side effects of weightlessness, Baker pointed out that fluids tend to flow toward the head, meaning that “your legs look skinny, which is good, but your face looks fatter, which isn’t.” Baker flew for the third time in 1995, on the first of the Shuttle-Mir missions, flown by Atlantis as STS-71. This was the 100th manned space launch by the US and was the first Space Shuttle mission to dock with the Russian space station Mir (and the first US mission to dock with another vehicle since Apollo-Soyuz in 1975). The Orbital Docking System (ODS) of Atlantis was equipped for this purpose with a special Androgenous Peripheral Docking

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System, developed by Russians to link the Orbiter to a similar “Kristall” docking module aboard Mir. Everything performed flawlessly. The mission involved an exchange of crews: launched from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) with a seven-member crew, Atlantis returned with an eight-member crew. The crew also performed various life-sciences experiments and data collections. On this mission, Baker again flew with Bonnie Dunbar and was responsible for the operation of the Spacelab-Mir module and several of the biological experiments. She referred to this experience with their Russian colleagues as “a fascinating but linguistically challenging information exchange.” On her three Space Shuttle missions, Baker logged a total of 686 hours (over 28.5 days) in space. She then served for many years in different positions in JSC and became Chief of the Education/Medical Branch of the NASA Astronaut Office. After more than 30 years with NASA, she retired in December 2011 to pursue other interests, planning to return to work in the medical field. In 2014, Baker joined the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas in Houston, where she is Director of Community-Based Cancer Prevention and Control Initiatives, and leads, among other things, Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), offering tele-­ mentoring programs to reach providers in rural and underserved communities with the ultimate aim of improving access to cancer prevention services and cancer specialty care in rural, isolated communities worldwide. She has also co-authored several researches and contributions to scientific journals about Human Response to Space Flight, especially regarding Reproductive Concerns for Women in Space.

Sources For This Section AA.VV. “Astronaut Ellen Baker’s Post-NASA Career”, collectspace.com (January 2012). Anon. “Women Shaping History 2014: Ellen Baker”, educationupdate.com (March/ April 2014). Official NASA biography of Ellen Baker, jsc.nasa.gov/bios (January 2012). Communication with the Author through e-mail in May 2016. Roa, G. “Astronaut Baker’s Talk Inspires NIH Audience”, nihrecord.nih.gov (April 21, 1988). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space – Following Valentina, p. 255. Springer/ Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 70-71. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

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2.7 MILLIE HUGHES-FULFORD: THE FIRST FEMALE PAYLOAD SPECIALIST Mission

Launch

Return

STS-40

June 5, 1991

June 14, 1991

Biochemist and molecular biologist Millie Hughes-Fulford made history in 1991 when she became the first American woman to complete a spaceflight as a working scientist rather than a professional astronaut. “You have the shuttle pilots who get you there and they get you home”, she explained in an interview. “Then you have mission specialists, who are career astronauts who train for a specific mission. And then you have payload specialists who know the topic”. Sadly, Hughes-Fulford passed away on February 4, 2021, aged 75, after a seven-year battle with lymphoma. Millie Elizabeth Hughes-Fulford (Fig. 2.18) was born on December 21, 1945, in Mineral Wells, a small city 80 miles west of Dallas, Texas, where she

Fig. 2.18.  Millie Hughes-Fulford. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Fig. 2.19.  Commemorative cover canceled on the day of launch of the STS-40 mission, with the autograph of Millie Hughes-Fulford. From the Author’s collection.

grew up. She wanted to be an astronaut since the age of five (Fig. 2.19). She explained in one interview: “I watched Buck Rogers on channel 8, out of Dallas, that we could get in Mineral Wells. And their pilot was a woman named Wilma Deering. I wanted to be Wilma Deering because she could wear pants. At that time a little girl could not go around in pants. She flew a spaceship and was a professional woman. I watched as many sci-fi programs I could see and fell in love with space”.

At age 11, she helped her father, who was crippled with arthritis, in his grocery store alongside a male cousin. She recalls that she climbed ladders hauling signs for Green Giant peas, and aspired to fly to outer space from childhood: “No one told me I couldn’t do it. I was changing oil in the car. I was doing everything the boys were doing. I didn’t see that there were limits. It wasn’t until I was sixteen that it occurred to me that perhaps women were not treated the same. And I realized that all the real astronauts were men and were all fighter pilots, and women couldn’t be fighter pilots. So I decided that I just would be a government scientist. Scientists always save people and they were good and honorable”.

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But, as she explained later, “it ended up coming full circle, and my science got me into space. It was a life’s dream, and not many of us get our life’s dream.” In 1962, at age 16, Hughes-Fulford graduated from Mineral Wells High School. She then earned her BSc degree in Chemistry and Biology from Tarleton State University in 1968 and her Ph.D. in Medicine from Texas Women’s University in 1972, specializing in plasma chemistry. Upon completing her Ph.D., Hughes-Fulford joined the faculty of Southwestern Medical School at the University of Texas, Dallas, as a postdoctoral fellow, where her research focused on the regulation of cholesterol metabolism. In 1981 she joined the US Army Reserve Medical Corps, studying cancer growth regulation. She contributed to over 120 papers. In 1977, Hughes-Fulford applied to be a NASA astronaut, but did not pass the penultimate cut and was not among the 35 astronauts selected in 1978. She succeeded five years later, however, and in 1984, having recently married, she took leave from her job in San Francisco and moved to Houston – with her daughter and her husband, Captain George Fulford, pilot for United Airlines – to start her training at the Astronaut Office as a Payload Specialist (PS). She was the first woman to hold that position. Payload specialists were scientists that were experts on a particular mission’s experiments, or “payload.” Although they undertook rigorous training, PS were not career astronauts who expected to make space travel their life’s work. Instead, their goal was to fly on a science-dedicated space mission and to carry out a group of experiments for other scientists who remained on Earth. Hughes-Fulford expected to stay in Houston for two years, but her mission, Spacelab-4, the first Spacelab mission entirely devoted to biomedical investigations and originally scheduled for launch in late 1985, was delayed several times. Firstly, the construction of cages for the rats, jellyfish, and test animals to be carried turned out to be more difficult than expected, then came the Challenger tragedy, and finally there were other organizational problems with the complex mission. She was at KSC, watching on that cold morning of January 28, 1986, when Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff. In 1987, her family decided to return to California. It would be another five years before Hughes-Fulford flew her mission. The original Spacelab-4 mission was eventually split into two “Spacelab Life Sciences” missions: SLS-1 and SLS-2, and Hughes-Fulford flew the first of these in 1991, on Columbia STS-40. At the beginning, she experienced space motion sickness, or Space Adaptation Syndrome (SAS), a discomfort suffered by 80 percent of astronauts, although few admit to it. She recovered within few hours, however, and in only nine days, under her direction, this long-­planned mission completed 18 experiments – including ten on humans (herself and her

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six crew mates while floating around to measure the effects of weightlessness on the heart, lungs and balance), seven on rodents and caged animals, and one with jellyfish – and brought back more medical data than any previous NASA mission. “We’re at 140 percent of what we expected to do”, Hughes-Fulford said in a televised interview while in space. As a cell biologist, one of her tasks was to help in the collection of her crewmates’ blood. “Normally, if there is any medical part, the crew is the guinea pig. Whom else are you going to test? All the medical data from the flight comes from the crew”. This research shaped the rest of her career. It took several years to analyze all the data that they collected on the human skeleton, heart, and calcium loss, and compare it with baseline pre- and post-flight test data collected on Earth. This was the first Shuttle flight to include three women, with Hughes-­ Fulford joined by Rhea Seddon, a surgeon who had already flown in 1984, and Tammy Jernigan, a rookie astrophysicist who had joined in the class of 1985. One of the experiments that Hughes-Fulford carried out during the mission had been designed by Switzerland-based researcher Augusto Cogoli to examine how the immune system fares in space. The weakening of the immune system in microgravity had first been observed in returning Apollo astronauts. Hughes-Fulford said: “During the Apollo era, over 15 of the 29 astronauts had an infection either during flight or during the first week of return”. Up until then, scientists had believed that perhaps hormones were to blame for space travelers’ weakened immune systems, but Cogoli’s experiment confirmed that the lack of gravity in space affected the immune system. Hughes-­ Fulford said: “Our research on the one hand demonstrates that permutations in space take place with a lower frequency; on the other hand, it confirms that the efficiency of the immune system also depends on gravity”. After completing her mission, Hughes-Fulford returned to her world as a scientist and served for three years as Scientific Advisor to the Under Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. After retiring from the US Army Reserve Medical Corps in 1995 with the rank of Major, she continued her research at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco, where she opened the Hughes-Fulford Laboratory that she directed until her death in 2021. She cooperated in preparing biomedical experiments to investigate the root causes of osteoporosis that occur in astronauts during spaceflight and to study the effects of weightlessness on the immune system, and why astronauts returning from space are susceptible to infection. A lab instrument she modified was able to study bone cell structures in a condition that mimics outer space: “One of our goals is to use microgravity as a novel model system of aging to investigate the molecular mechanisms of immune suppression commonly seen in the elderly population”.

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In 1996–1997, she sent several experiments into space. She was the Principal Investigator (PI) on a series of Spacehab/Biorack experiments which examined the regulation in the growth of osteoblasts (bone cells). These experiments flew on three different missions: STS-76  in March 1996, STS-81 in January 1997, and STS-84 in May 1997. These studies examined the root causes of the osteoporosis that occurs in astronauts during spaceflight. She found changes in anabolic signal transduction in microgravity. Eventually, in collaboration with Dr. Augusto Cogoli, she prepared another experiment for STS-107  in 2003 that was ultimately lost in the Columbia disaster. An ESA/NASA joint experiment to examine changes in T-cell gene induction in spaceflight was sent to the ISS aboard Soyuz TMA-9  in September 2006. Professor Hughes-Fulford’s studies have verified that microgravity causes diminished T-cell activation. T-cells are specialized immune-system cells that recognize infections within the body and initiate a defensive response. Several key changes in the immune systems of the elderly, such as diminished immune-­ system function and impaired T-cell activation, are the same as those found in astronauts returning from spaceflight. Hughes-Fulford explained: “It is difficult to study the genetic and molecular changes associated with aging-­ related immune suppression because the condition develops over decades, and the elderly often have illnesses that can complicate research studies. Instead, changes in the immune system, including T-cell behavior, quickly occur in space”.

The results of this research will hopefully help with understanding the biochemical mechanisms that underlie diminished T-cell activation and develop treatments for a range of auto-immune diseases – ranging from suppression to hyper-reaction of the immune-system function – that are the origin of disorders such as arthritis, thyroiditis, and diabetes in the general population (Fig. 2.20). Her research continued even after the Shuttle era. Hughes-Fulford also flew experiments aboard Soyuz and SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to the ISS, to continue to study the decrease in T-cell activation in spaceflight. The experiment flown aboard SpaceX-3, launched on April 18, 2014, was the first to go up on a privately operated rocket (Fig. 2.21). “If you think of it, we all evolved in a gravity field. When we go into spaceflight and we have microgravity, we have eliminated one variable. In mathematics, if you get rid of a variable, you can solve the equation, and we’re able to look at the

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Fig. 2.20.  Professor Millie Hughes-Fulford at the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Life and Physical Sciences and Life Support Laboratory at ESTEC technical center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, in April 2013. Figure Credit: © ESA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fig. 2.21.  Patch from the “T-cells Activation in Aging” experiment, the first to go up to the International Space Station (ISS) on a privately-operated rocket. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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immune system in a whole new way that has not been possible”, Hughes-Fulford said in a video interview for the ISS National Laboratory in 2015.

Millie Hughes-Fulford was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Society for Gravitational Science and Biology, American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, American Society for Cell Biology, American Society of Hematology and the Association of Space Explorers.

Sources For This Section Anon., “Our T-Cells Came Back from Space!”, hughesfulfordlab.com. Anon., “T-Cell Activation in Aging”, hughesfulfordlab.com. Figliozzi, G. “T-Cell Activation in Aging, (SpaceX-3)”, nasa.gov (April 21, 2014). Official NASA biography of Millie Hughes-Fulford, jsc.nasa.gov (March 2014). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 118–122. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Mendonca, K.B. “VA’s First Astronaut: Millie Hughes-Fulford, PhD”, sanfrancisco. va.gov (March 13, 2014). Nimon, J. “NIH Grant Recipient Dr. Millie Hughes-Fulford”, nasa.gov (October 29, 2010). Pearlman R.Z., “Millie Hughes-Fulford, NASA’s first female payload specialist in space, dies at 75” in www.space.com (February 05, 2021) Quirós, G. “Millie Hughes-Fulford: Scientist in Space”, Video Story for QUEST Northern California (November 26, 2014). Sandomir R., “Millie Hughes-Fulford, NASA Shuttle Scientist, Dies at 75” in www. nytimes.com (Feb. 11, 2021) Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space – Following Valentina, pp. 233, 257. Springer/ Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 77–79. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

2.8 MAE JEMISON: OUR LIMITS ARE THE STARS Mission

Launch

Return

STS-47

September 12, 1992

September 20, 1992

Mae Jemison (Fig. 2.22) was the first female African-American astronaut. A resourceful personality, she is a determined breaker of boundaries and dispels the commonplace: “The best way to make dreams come true is to wake up”! The author met her in Turin in July 2003 at the Exhibition on Women

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Fig. 2.22.  Mae Jemison. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

In Space organized by ASITAF (the Italian Astrophilately Society) to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Tereshkova’s flight (Fig. 2.23). Jemison was there to give a paper at the 8th International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Symposium that was being held in Turin at the time. After visiting the exhibition, Jemison commented: “It is a reawakening of many memories and brings a smile to my face. I remember being young girl and hearing of Tereshkova’s flight and how it proved my contention. I saw a picture of me during my flight and realized that so much of what we do may have an impact in places we don’t expect. And it spurs me to continue the effort to expand involvement in space exploration”.

The topic of the IAA Symposium on the Future of Space Exploration in Turin was “Towards the Stars” and Jemison was there as the representative of the 100 Year Starship or 100YSS Foundation. She explained: “100YSS is an international, non-profit, non-governmental organization established to promote the research, technological development and societal capabilities required to enable human travel beyond our solar system to another star within the next 100 years”.

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Fig. 2.23.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-47, signed by Mae Jemison. From the Author’s collection.

100YSS was started with seed funding through a competitive grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and support from NASA, which was “won in February 2012 by the team I led,” Jemison added. “100YSS’ raison d’être is to foster the explosive innovation, radical leaps in knowledge, technical achievement and societal advances that will happen as a result of tackling such an audacious challenge”. It is more of a thought experiment than a construction project: “100YSS is not focused on mounting its own interstellar mission at any particular time, but rather creating, inspiring and nurturing and maintaining an environment such that in the years to come, so bold an endeavor can be accomplished by someone”.

The idea itself may spark some other pretty audacious proposals, such as the one by J. Craig Venter to send human genomes toward the stars and reconstruct them upon arrival: “Our overall vision is encompassed in the name of our proposal to DARPA – ‘An Inclusive Audacious Journey Transforms Life Here on Earth and Beyond’”. Jemison explained: “100YSS is inherently transdisciplinary. Successful human interstellar travel will only happen through engaging the full spectrum of human experience, including people across ethnicity, gender, disciplines and geography. And as impor-

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tantly, the space-derived knowledge, technological advances and innovations must be actively applied to enhancing life on Earth every step of the way. Working with international partners, we are building a global aspiration. By convening and supporting R&D, education, entertainment, and business consortia, 100YSS implements its commitment to inclusion. While the grand challenge is interstellar travel, again, the immediate and overarching goal is enabling explosive, beneficial innovation worldwide”.

To the question “Why travel to the stars?” Jemison answered: “This is a good question! Because it is very, very difficult and at the same time a comprehensible challenge, that is, I believe, an indelible part of the human spirit, with the potential to yield seismic benefits across the world. One might call it a ‘North Star’ for high impact collaboration among nations, universities, governments, industry, non-profits and philanthropists. In so many ways, just starting to address the myriad advances needed will create new industries and jobs in the years to come, accelerate creativity and give the world something to rally for that is bigger than any one of us individually or as a nation. “When we explore space, we garner the greatest benefits here at home. People often take very much for granted (but would be loath to surrender) the benefits space exploration has provided right here on Earth. I know the readers of Ad*Astra already know this, but I think it is important to state just a few examples of benefits we already have from space exploration. They include: global positioning satellites [GPS]; remote sensing for water, minerals, and crop and land management; weather satellites; arms treaty verifications; high-­ temperature, lightweight materials; revolutionary medical procedures and equipment; pagers, beepers, and television and internet to remote areas of the world; geographic information systems [GIS] and algorithms used to handle huge, complex data sets; physiologic monitoring and miniaturization; atmospheric and ecological monitoring; and insight into our planet’s geological history and future. The list goes on and on. “Another way to look at space exploration is the remarkable boom across science and engineering fields – and the accompanying wave of social creativity, artistic expressions, and educational innovation – that followed the Apollo missions and each successive leap in space exploration. The challenge of traveling to another star system could generate transformative activities, knowledge, and technologies that would dramatically benefit every nation on Earth in the near term and years to come”.

With NASA scaling back its manned space programs, the idea of a manned trip to the stars may sound audacious and appear fantastical, but Jemison disagreed: “No more so than the fantasy of reaching the Moon was in the days when H. G. Welles published his ‘First Man on the Moon’, considerably less than 100 years before humans landed on the Moon [1901 vs. 1969], at a time when we knew very little about propulsion, the universe, human health and sustainability, while the rapidity of scientific advances were not nearly as great as today. Today, the arc of our knowledge acquisition and technological advancement is much, much greater”.

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The truth is that the best ideas sound crazy at first. And then there comes a time when we cannot imagine a world without them. When asked “Which are the main issues to be addressed and the main capabilities to be developed”? Jemison responded: “At this point, I do not consider establishing a roadmap; the task is to understand what capabilities will be required and our current capacities rather creating a capabilities map. Some of what is needed is of course development of revolutionary technologies to generate, harness, control and store enormous quantities of energy reliably and safely; radical advancements in closed-loop life-­ support systems and sustainable habitats; understanding microbiomes; reimagining of financial investment and benefits; human behavior, health and governance; advances in robotics, automation, intelligent systems, and manufacturing techniques, just to name a few”.

Born in Decatur, Alabama, on October 17, 1956, the youngest of three children, Mae Carol Jemison became the first black woman ever admitted into the astronaut training program. When she was three, her family moved to Chicago, Illinois, to take advantage of better educational opportunities there, and it is that city she calls her hometown. Involved in extracurricular activities including dance and theatre productions, Jemison began dancing at the age of 11 and wanted to turn professional. Her mother encouraged her to follow on with her studies after college: “You can always dance if you’re a doctor, but you can’t doctor if you’re a dancer”. She was introduced to science by her uncle and developed interests throughout her childhood in anthropology, archaeology, evolution, and astronomy. While still a high school student, she became interested in biomedical engineering. After earning a double degree in Chemical Engineering and African-­ American studies at Stanford University in 1977, Jemison continued her education and entered medical school at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she pursued an interest in international medicine. She graduated in Medicine at Cornell University in 1981. After a short stint as a general practitioner with the Los Angeles University of Southern California Medical Center, Jemison joined the Peace Corps and worked as a staff physician in Sierra Leone and Liberia, where she also taught and did medical research. Following her return to the US in 1985, she made a career change. Inspired by Sally Ride, the first woman in space, and by Lieutenant Uhura, the first black woman in space in the Star Trek television series (played by the African-­ American actress Nichelle Nichols), Jemison decided to follow a dream she

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had nurtured for a long time. In October of that year, she applied for admission to NASA’s astronaut training program. The Challenger disaster of January 1986 delayed the selection process, but when she reapplied a year later, she was one of the 15 candidates chosen (from a field of about 2,000) on June 4, 1987 for Astronaut Group 12 (nicknamed GAFF, or George Abbey’s Final Fifteen). At that time, Nichelle Nichols was working with NASA as a recruiter. After serving as an Astronaut Office representative with KSC at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and working to process Space Shuttles for launching and to verify Shuttle software, Jemison was then assigned to support Spacelab-J, a cooperative Spacelab mission between the United States and Japan that was designed to conduct experiments in materials processing and the life sciences. On September 12, 1992, she flew into space as an MS aboard Shuttle Endeavour on the Spacelab-J mission STS-47, with six other astronauts. During her eight days in space, Jemison conducted experiments on weightlessness and motion sickness on the crew and herself. Altogether, she spent just over 190 hours in space before returning to Earth on September 20 (Fig. 2.24).

Fig. 2.24.  Mae Jemison floating aboard Shuttle Endeavour during the STS-47 Spacelab-J mission. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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In recognition of her accomplishments, Jemison received several honorary doctorates. She left the Astronaut Corps in March 1993 and although her departure from the agency was amicable, NASA was not thrilled to see her leave after less than six years given the time and money required to train any astronaut. She accepted a teaching fellowship at Dartmouth and also established both the Jemison Group, a company that seeks to research, develop, and market advanced technologies, and the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, named in honor of her mother. One of the goals of her foundation is to promote science and technology, as well as providing an inspirational and educational message for young people to motivate them to fulfill their potential; in particular to encourage young girls toward careers in the sciences by stimulating three C’s of science – curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking. Jemison also appeared in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as Lieutenant Palmer in the episode “Second Chances,” the first real astronaut ever to appear on Star Trek. Mae Jemison now acts as a science ambassador who speaks about the need to democratize access to technology for the future of humanity and works to empower young women to engage with STEM and pursue careers in these areas. She continues to lead the US government-funded 100YSS project in its aim to help develop the technology needed to achieve interstellar space flight within a century. Her foundation also runs a science camp for young people called The Earth We Share. Her book for children, Find Where the Wind Goes, is a testimony to the power of setting goals and the strength of character necessary to achieve them. Jemison adds: “I had to learn very early not to limit myself due to others’ limited imaginations. I have learned these days never to limit anyone else due to my limited imagination”.

Sources For This Section “Mae Jemison, American physician and astronaut” in www.britannica.com (last updated: October 13, 2021) Briggs, C.S. Women Space Pioneers, pp. 57–62. Lerner Publications, Minneapolis (2005). Cavallaro, U. “Mae Jemison: Our Limits Are the Stars.” AD*ASTRA, ASITAF Quarterly Journal, 18(September), 9–11 (2013). Conlon A.M., “Mae Jemison, The first Black woman to go into space” in www.newscientist.com Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 112–118. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014).

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Interview by the Author on July 5, 2013, and e-mails in the following days. Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 129–133. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Official biography of Mae Jemison, jsc.nasa.gov (March 1993). Sainato M. & Skojec C., “Mae Jemison, First Black Woman in Space, Celebrates 25th Anniversary of Her Flight” in www.observer.com (September 11, 2017)

2.9 ELENA KONDAKOVA: THE FIRST FEMALE LONG-DURATION MISSION Mission

Launch

Return

Soyuz TM-20 STS-84

October 3, 1994 May 15, 1997

March 22, 1995 May 24, 1997

Elena Kondakova (Fig. 2.25) was the third Russian woman to fly in space, ten years after the second, Svetlana Savitskaya, although unlike her predecessor, Kondakova did not have an influential father. Her only link to the space world, which she insists had no influence on her selection as a cosmonaut, was

Fig. 2.25.  Elena Kondakova. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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her marriage in 1985 to Russian cosmonaut Valeri V. Ryumin, 18 years her senior. Ryumin was a three-time space traveler who had twice been named a Hero of the Soviet Union after having spent over 350 days aboard the Salyut 6 space station on two missions. He had been appointed Director of the Russian side of the Shuttle-Mir program in 1992. Not only did he not support her, Kondakova says, but he was her nightmare for a long time. She explained: “My husband vehemently opposed this idea. He had already been in space three times. He finally agreed to let me apply because he was convinced that I would not pass the medical tests. When I did pass them, he told everyone: ‘I never doubted that I had a healthy wife’. But he was not pleased with the success”.

As Deputy Chief Designer at NPO Energia, Ryumin had signed an order forbidding the assignment of women cosmonauts to long-duration missions. At the time of Kondakova’s selection, those rules were still in force. Like Svetlana Savitskaya had done ten years before, Kondakova also set a record with her first flight (Fig. 2.26). She was the first woman to perform a long-­duration mission in space, setting a new female endurance record with her 169 days on Mir. Observers did not miss that her assignment had

Fig. 2.26.  Cover issued by the Philatelic Club of ALENIA AEROPAZIO (currently THALES ALENIA SPAZIO-ITALY) to celebrate the visit of the STS-84 crew to the ALENA plant in Turin, Italy on December 1, 1997. From the Author’s collection.

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suddenly appeared immediately after the announcement that Norman Thagard would be the first American astronaut to participate in a long-duration flight in two decades, and would beat the records set by his colleagues on Skylab. According to American observers, this was just the latest in a long history of cynical propaganda used by Russia to score political points over the US, pretending to apply disproportionate levels of political importance to their female cosmonauts. Elena Vladimirovna Kondakova was born in Mitischi, Moscow Region, on March 30, 1957, the year of Sputnik. She was raised near Kaliningrad, where the historic OKB-1 Special Design Bureau 1 of Sergei Korolyov was based. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, this became the private NPO Energia and today is known as RSC-Energia, the state organization that traditionally leads Russian aerospace production and is involved in all spacecraft construction and all the Russian components of the ISS.  Both of Kondakova’s parents worked there: her father headed one of Energia’s labs and her mother worked as an accountant. So Elena did not learn from science-fiction movies. She said: “I lived in a real city where real people worked, real cosmonauts returned after their flights. I saw around me a real thing. We were very proud that it was in our city that spacecraft were built and cosmonauts trained”.

Kondakova’s parents sent her and her older brother to the prestigious Moscow Bauman High Technical College, where she graduated in Engineering in 1980. “They knew that I was mathematically and technically inclined”, she said. A lover of the quiet life, in both the sports she practiced (cycling and river fishing) and the entertainments she enjoyed (theater and reading), unlike her female predecessors Tereshkova and Savitskaya, she did not learn to jump with a parachute or pilot a plane. Upon graduation in 1980, Kondakova began work at RSC-Energia, completing science projects, experiments, and research work, such as navigation systems for long-duration space flight. She was soon noticed for her skills and recommended for her candidacy as a cosmonaut, but received little support from her family: “My father worked in this area and dealt with actual tests. He knew how really dangerous it was”. He did not want his only daughter to be in danger. However, Kondakova decided to apply to enter the space program and, in 1989, was selected with three male classmates in the first mixed-gender cosmonaut class. They were sent to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center to start their space training. She was assigned to the 17th Mir mission, “Euromir-94”, and was the flight engineer when she blasted off on October 4,

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1994, on board the Soyuz TM-17 spacecraft to reach the orbital complex. Ryumin protested often and loudly, and provided many interviews maintaining that he would have preferred a wife who worked only a few hours a day, took care of their child, and always had dinner waiting for him. In one interview, he said: “It’s my opinion that a wife should stay at home, not at work and not in spaceflight. I think the majority of men will support me because the majority of us would prefer that everything in our homes is taken care of, and everything is quiet”.

In the end, he accepted the situation and, since there were no baby-sitters in Russia, Energia reassigned Ryumin to his home to take care of their daughter until her mother returned. When she came back, Kondakova said: “In principle, life is the same as here on Earth: we have an eight-hour working day and we have time for personal rest, we have time when we can watch movies and what is going on Earth and life is easier onboard because you don’t have to do laundry there, you don’t have to cook there. So I think that, for a woman, being in space is kind of a vacation from home work”.

She was on Mir in February 1995 when STS-63, the Space Shuttle Discovery – with Eileen Collins as pilot – performed its first rendezvous test with Mir, though it did not dock. Kondakova said: “I was very happy because, when we were on orbit in February, STS-63 approached the station with Jim Wetherbee, but they only approached us to a distance of ten meters. We wanted so badly for them to dock to our station and visit us and we were so certain that we could just see them but we didn’t have an opportunity to work together”.

Jim Wetherbee, the Commander of Shuttle STS-63, recalls that during the approach of the Shuttle towards Mir, he saw Kondakova waving and holding a little cosmonaut doll up to the window. “At 30 ft you could see their eyes and their smiles and they were waving and we were waving”, he said. Mike Foale, who eventually flew with Kondakova during mission STS-84, reported: “Elena had described how unexpectedly beautiful it was when the Shuttle came up and how disappointed they were when flew away without actually docking”.

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On Mir, the crew had to contend with power failures and mechanical problems, and had to perform lot of maintenance on the aging space station. As Kondakova explained in 1996: “When the station was launched initially, we had planned to fly the station for only three years. Of course, like any mechanical system, device, or machine, it has its own resource which should be extended at some point. Periodically, we have to replace devices and elements and conduct unplanned activities, but it proves one more time that our technology has great achievement; we had planned to fly it for three years and it has been in flight for 11 and we plan to extend this flight even more”.

In May 1997, Kondakova made her second spaceflight, aboard the US Shuttle Atlantis on STS-84, and returned to Mir for nine days within the Shuttle-Mir program. She was the seventh Russian cosmonaut to fly on the Shuttle as MS, with Eileen Collins as pilot for the second time. That expedition eventually earned Kondakova a medal from NASA. “I picked a winning lottery ticket”, she said. She was the first Russian female cosmonaut to fly on both Soyuz and the Shuttle. In an interview with Voice of Russia, she said that she felt safer on the Russian spacecraft: “We all remember the disaster of US Shuttle Challenger in 1986. Unlike Russian spacecraft, American ones lacked a reliable rescue system. Our astronauts also did go through very risky situations but life-saving equipment at Soyuz capsules was very good. It helped Vladimir Titov and Gennady Strekalov survive an accident during a spaceflight in 1983”.

On March 23, 2001, Kondakova traveled with several other cosmonauts and private citizens to the South Pacific, where they watched the Mir space station re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. It was a sad thing for her and many others to watch the end to the place they had called home for a time. Kondakova logged over 178 days in space on her two missions and she was the last Russian woman to fly until Elena Serova launched to the ISS in September 2014. In 1999 she left the cosmonaut program and was elected as a deputy in the Duma – the lower house of the Russian parliament – for the Fatherland-All Russia party (which after 2001, was renamed the United Russia party, the largest party in the country since the early years of Vladimir Putin’s presidency).

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Sources For This Section Borenstein, S. “Husband’s Remarks Don’t Fly with Cosmonaut”, orlandosentinel.com (May 3, 1997). Evans, B. “A Cog in a Political Machine: The Career of Svetlana Savitskaya”, americanspace.com (February 10, 2012). Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 62–65. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Interview with Elena Kondakova, NASA SP-4225, history.nasa.gov (September 6, 1996). Intervista, voiceofrussia.com (April 10, 2011). Lewis C., “The First Mixed-Gendered Cosmonaut Candidates” in airandspace.si.edu (March 30, 2017) Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 145–151. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Official NASA biography of Elena Kondakova, nasa.gov (July 1997).

2.10 DOROTHY METCALF-LINDENBERGER: FROM SPACE CAMP TO SPACE STATION Mission

Launch

Return

STS-131

April 5, 2010

April 20, 2010

Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger became NASA’s fourth educator astronaut and launched aboard Shuttle Discovery on STS-131 to the ISS. She explained: “I am the daughter of two teachers – a high school math teacher and a junior science teacher. So no big surprise that I love math and science. Their background in education, the environment of my native state, Colorado, and the excitement of space in the 1980s, resulted in my passion to work at NASA”.

Dorothy “Dottie” Marie Metcalf-Lindenburger (Fig. 2.27) was born on May 2, 1975, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. When she was a child, the family moved to Loveland, where she grew up and received her elementary education, and they finally settled for junior high and high school in Fort Collins, which she considers her hometown. She told a NASA interviewer: “I think just growing up along the front range provides you with a lot of opportunities. First of all, you take topography for granted, until you move to a place like Houston and you don’t have the mountains”.

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Fig. 2.27.  Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenberger. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Geologist, astronomer, marathon runner, Metcalf-Lindenberger also likes scuba-diving, drawing, and singing. Attracted by the historic environment in Colorado, she frequently spent time with her sister Neva, just three years younger, digging up fossils that were really abundant in her backyard. She adds: “I didn’t know until later, when I became a geologist, just how lucky I was, because when you’re in geology it’s pretty hard to actually find fossils often, and you may spend a lot of time digging before you get one”.

She also recalls how she was impressed by the dinosaurs, mineral displays, exotic animals, and a planetarium that she saw before she started school, when her parents took her to visit the Denver Museum of Natural History. All this ignited her interest in geology and astronomy. Voyager’s discoveries were just coming out as part of shows at the planetarium, with a lot of data coming back into museums. Metcalf-Lindenberger recalls that she asked lot of questions and became really interested in space: “As a result, I fell in love with our solar system. My parents continued to fuel this love, by taking me to see the film ‘The Right Stuff’ and talking about the

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Shuttle launches in Florida. They helped me search for Halley’s Comet, and they watched lunar eclipses through the telescope Santa brought me for Christmas in 6th grade”.

The launches of the Shuttle ignited her interest in manned space exploration: “I remember watching launches on the TV when I was in the elementary school. I just thought it was so amazing to watch these, and I never thought I was going to be on one”. In 1989, she entered a Martin Marietta writing contest about space exploration. The first prize was an all-expense-paid trip to Space Camp in Huntsville. While she did not win, her second place consolation prize was a nice T-shirt from NASA: “My parents knew that I really wanted to go, so they sent me to Space Camp the following year during the spring break in April. It was there that I realized if I keep working hard in math and science, it’s a possibility that I could work at NASA. I kind of saw behind the scenes of what different people would do during a mission. Not just what astronauts do, but what the ground does as well, and I thought, ‘I really would like to work at NASA’. So, that’s why I wanted to go and study math and science in college”.

Her trip took place in April 1990, the month the Hubble Space Telescope was launched. After graduating from Fort Collins High School, Colorado, in 1993, Metcalf-Lindenberger joined the Whitman College, at Walla Walla, near Washington: “It’s a small, liberal arts school in the middle of pretty much nowhere, in like a wheat field, and that was a really great place for me to learn, away from distractions”. Her original plan was to study math, following in her mother’s footsteps, but she ended up taking a geology course during her freshman year and enjoyed it so much that she pursued it as her major. She earned a BSc degree with honors in Geology and Earth Science in 1997. After graduating, Metcalf-Lindenberger decided to pursue a career in education, or to do something to give back to society. She was accepted to the Peace Corps and was assigned to teach English in Kazakhstan. At that a time there were some upheavals in that part of the world, so she decided instead to teach in the US. In 1999, she attained her teaching certification in science and history at Central Washington University, and for five years she taught Earth Science and Astronomy in Vancouver School District at Hudson’s Bay High School. In addition to teaching, she coached cross-country running and Science Olympiad, considering herself a science teacher even when she was outside of the classroom. “My husband and I built a telescope and took it on our summer vacation, and wherever we stopped, we showed people things like Jupiter

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or the Moon”, she said. “So many of the adults had never even looked through a telescope”! In the spring of 2003, a question from a student would change her life forever: “When I was teaching astronomy at high school, one of my students asked, ‘How do astronauts go to the bathroom in space’? It’s kind of a common question we get when we’re doing PRs. To find the answer that night I went to Google, which took me to the NASA website, and I found that they had posted that educators could become astronauts. So, I had the answer to my student’s question, but I also got an answer to a dream that I had for a long time, and so I applied to be an educator astronaut”.

Metcalf-Lindenberger was one of 8,000 applicants in 2003. She recalls: “A little over one year after applying for the job, I received a call from Colonel Robert Cabana, head of the Astronaut Office. I was in my classroom and, once I realized he was calling to hire me, I burst into a shout of excitement. I called my mom and we cried on the phone together, it was just so exciting to have my dream fulfilled”.

Metcalf-Lindenberger joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in 2004 as an educator MS in Group 19. Less than a year after the Columbia accident, she was one of three educators selected out of the 8,000 applicants, and the only woman. She moved to Houston. “Life certainly changed after we moved to Houston”, she said. “I went from being a teacher to being a learner all over again”. She flew in space in April 2010 on board the Shuttle Discovery for mission STS-131: “As I look back at Space Camp in April 1990, it takes on more meaning. Not only did I decide then that I wanted to someday be a part of space exploration, but also it was the month the Hubble Space Telescope was launched. And, 20 years later, it would be during the same month that I took my first journey to space”.

The STS-131 mission set several records. Not only was it the longest flight for Space Shuttle Discovery and carried the most payloads since STS-107, but this mission marked another first for women in space with four on orbit at the same time. When Discovery docked with the ISS, Metcalf-Lindenburger, together with Stephanie Wilson and Naoko Yamazaki, met up with Tracy Caldwell, who had arrived on the station a couple of days earlier aboard Soyuz TMA-18 (Fig. 2.28).

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Fig. 2.28.  For the first time in history, four women meet in space. (Clockwise from bottom left): Tracy Caldwell Dyson (in red), Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenberger, Naoko Yamazaki, and Stephanie Wilson. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Mission STS-131 was ISS assembly flight 19A, which delivered over 12 tons of supplies, equipment, spare parts, and experiments to the space station, including the third and final Minus Eighty Degree Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI), an extra sleeping compartment, and a fresh ammonia tank for the cooling system, whose installation was a cumbersome job requiring three spacewalks. On its return flight, the Italian Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) “Leonardo” brought three tons of results from scientific experiments and materials that were no longer needed on the station back to Earth. After completing the space mission, Metcalf-Lindenberger served as “Cape Crusader” for the last three Shuttle missions (Fig. 2.29). In June 2012, she commanded the 12-day NEEMO 16 (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) undersea exploration mission in the Aquarius underwater laboratory, where techniques to explore an asteroid were tested. Metcalf-Lindenberger has been a long-time lead singer with the all-­ astronaut rock band, Max Q, performing space-themed songs during the Shuttle era. She said: “We tried to pass on the band to the next classes of

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Fig. 2.29.  Commemorative cover of the landing of mission STS-131, signed by Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenberger. From the collection of Jürgen P. Esders. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

astronauts, but those classes were small; they had musicians within them, but they were already overtasked with so many other things in their life that adding in music was challenging”. She left NASA in June 2014 after more than ten years, and moved to Seattle with her family. After finishing her MSc degree in Applied Geosciences at the University of Washington, in August 2016 she joined the environmental consulting firm Geosyntec LLC, where she serves as consulting geologist and uses her experience and expertise to solve problems for remediating soil, groundwater and sediment at complex sites. Additionally, Metcalf-Lindenberger is Education Committee Chair of the Challenger Center and continues to speak to various audiences about her experiences as an astronaut, and to promote STEM and STEAM education: “Always be curious. Curiosity took me a lot of different places. It’s allowed me to climb mountains, go to space, and also just enjoy every day – some little piece of the day will always be new or different. Curiosity will keep you going and excited about each new day. In their lifetime, their jobs are not even created yet! By being curious, they get to create their own futures! Be curious: explore & discover”.

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Sources For This Section Antoun, C.; Antoun, M. “Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger”, women.nasa.gov (March 29, 2016). Evans, B. “Education Can Take You Anywhere”, americaspace.com (May 2, 2015). “Interview: Dorothy M. Metcalf-Lindenburger”, STS-131, nasa.gov (April 27, 2010). “Metcalf-Lindenburger”, Encyclopedia Astronautica (astronautix.com) (May 2004). Official biography of Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, nasa.gov (May 2014). Rush, C., “Interview with Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger”, in fcmod.org (Fort Collins Museum of Discovery - April 23, 2018)

Sunseri, G. “Discovery Teacher-Astronaut Breaks the Mold”, abcnews.go.com (April 5, 2010).

2.11 ELENA SEROVA: THE FIRST RUSSIAN FEMALE COSMONAUT ON ISS Mission

Launch

Return

Soyuz TMA-14M

September 25, 2014

March 11, 2015

Elena Serova, the first female cosmonaut in the history of modern Russia (Fig. 2.30), blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday September 26, 2014, at 02:26 a.m. local time (20:26 GMT, on Thursday September 25), together with her crewmates, NASA astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Russia’s Alexander Samokutyaev (Fig. 2.31). About nine minutes after lift-­off, a soft toy with a tiny Russian tricolor flag attached that Serova was carrying started floating in weightlessness. Six hours later, at about 08:15 a.m. (02:15 GMT), the Soyuz safely and punctually docked to the ISS, despite a malfunction when one of the solar arrays of the space capsule failed to deploy. Serova was the only female cosmonaut in service in the Russian Cosmonauts Corps until the selection of Anna Kikina in 2012, and – in more than 60 years of space exploration  – is only the fourth Russian woman to fly into space. However, unlike Valentina Tereshkova (the first woman in space), Svetlana Savitskaya (the world’s first female spacewalker and the first woman ever to fly in space twice), and Elena Kondakova (the first woman to live in space for a long-duration mission), Serova did not look to set new records, although she was the first Russian woman to visit the ISS: “I don’t think I’m doing anything extraordinary. I will do things that have already been done by colleagues, cosmonauts and astronauts who have preceded me. Space is what I do for work, and that’s what I think about it: It’s my work”.

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Fig. 2.30.  Elena Serova. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fig. 2.31.  Commemorative cover of mission Soyuz TMA-14M, signed by Elena Serova. From the Author’s collection.

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Perhaps this is a sign that the Russian space program is finally integrating women. Anna Kikina has completed her cosmonaut training and, prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, had been chosen to fly on the SpaceX Crew-5 mission to the ISS, which launched in October 2022. In an interview, Serova said that she had long dreamed about proving that Russian women are able to return to spaceflights: “If I was to choose, I had taken ‘Phoenix’ as my personal call-sign for this mission”, recalling in some way the name chosen 45 years before by the Apollo 7 astronauts for their return to flight following the Apollo 1 tragedy. She also said that the term “woman cosmonaut” is not one she likes: “There’s no such profession. You can be a space test engineer or a space researcher, but the gender makes no difference”, she said. She also stressed: “My flight is my job. I feel a huge responsibility towards the people who taught and trained us and I want to tell them: we won’t let you down”. Integration was her dream, but it was clear there would still be a long way to go. Despite her long preparation, her vision, and her commitment, at the news conference before lift-off in Baikonur, Russian reporters bombarded Serova with irrelevant questions focusing on gender and parenting. At first she humored them, even offering to give a demonstration of washing her hair in space, but her patience seemed to run out when she was repeatedly asked if she was taking makeup to orbit and how she would wear her hair during her six-month mission: “I have a question for you – why don’t you ask the question about Alexander’s hair, for example”, she said, referring to crewmate Alexander Samokutyaev seated next to her at the news conference. “I’m sorry, this is my answer. Thank you. More questions”? Serova was personally chosen by the then-head of Russia’s space agency, Vladimir Popovkin. “We are doing this flight for Russia’s image”, he was reported to say. “She will manage it, but the next woman won’t fly out soon”. The editor of Russian magazine Space News, Igor Marinin, who referred to this, said that the Soviet Union had wanted to win the space race with Ms. Tereshkova, but then rejected the use of women for many years because they were not seen as physically strong enough. “In space, it’s men’s work”, he concluded. “The leadership then were military, they decided not to take women as cosmonauts any more”. Then he added: “Six months with five men in a confined space is complicated. Elena is a charming, attractive woman”. Needless to say, this sentence caused surprise and controversy among those who did not expect such a comment from a space news specialist. Elena Olegovna Serova was born on April 22, 1976, in Vozdvizhenka, a village near the town of Ussurijsk in the region of Primorsky Krai, Eastern Russia, where her father was stationed in the military. “When I was asked in my childhood who I dream to be, I told everyone that I was a doctor. Once,

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having watched a wonderful Soviet film, where a soldier with a dog was shot and wounded, I felt terribly sorry for them. I decided that I simply had to help people. This dream also partly came true  – on board the ISS, I was, among other things, also a doctor”. When she was young, her father moved the family to Germany for a while. They then returned to Russia and settled in Moscow, where Serova graduated in 2001 as a test engineer in the aerospace department of the prestigious Moscow Aviation Institute. In 2003, she graduated in Economics from the Moscow State Academy of Instrument Engineering and Information. “Love for space began at school”, she said. “The teachers told us a lot about what was happening, who was flying. They knew all the first cosmonauts by heart… This is how the fascination with space began. Therefore, after finishing school, I entered the Aerospace Faculty of the Moscow Aviation Institute and graduated from it”. Serova worked as a test engineer at the Rocket Space Corporation RSC Energia, the Russian spacecraft manufacturer in Korolyov, and served in the Mission Control Center in Moscow as a specialist in the Soyuz-Progress spacecraft system. She said: “When I was a little girl, my father was in the military. He used to take me to the airfield where I could feel the atmosphere of the military, of the air force. I could feel everything that was related to flight and missions. I also was impressed by the starry sky. Once I felt myself drowning in the starry night, and I felt that the stars were so close. It was so near, and I felt like I was flying when I was looking into the starry sky. That impression, that feeling, overwhelmed me; many times, in my dreams, I would fly. Also, when I was in school I liked astronomy a lot, so after I graduated from high school I decided to join the Moscow Aviation Institute. I graduated there, and I also met my future husband, Mark Serov, there. Since we shared the same interests, we decided to go and apply for work at the rocket and science corporation Energia. I never thought that I would join the cosmonaut corps, but even unconsciously all my life I was making steps to actually one day fly to space. So when I had a chance, and when we heard that we could join the new cosmonaut corps, I applied”.

Serova was selected in October 2006, “as a young mother, when my daughter was three years old,” she said. In December of the same year – with a resolution from the Ministry of Defense  – she was included in the 15th Group of the Cosmonaut Corps as a cosmonaut candidate and began basic training in February 2007. On June 9, 2009, at the end of her two-year training period, the Interdepartmental Committee certified her as a test cosmonaut of RSC Energia. With the recent unification of the three independent cosmonaut organizations previously existing in Russia, Serova became part of the Cosmonaut Corps of the Russian Federal Space Agency, known as Roscosmos, or RKA (Russian Aviation

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and Space Agency; Российское авиационно-­космическое агентство in Russian). She was one of the five cosmonauts chosen to carry the Russian flag during the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014. Serova was assigned to Expedition-41/42 on the ISS and was launched aboard Soyuz TMA-14M to begin her long-term mission on the station. “It has been a long time since the previous woman made this trip and I realize that my flight will affect the future of other girls who want to become cosmonauts as well”, she said in a pre-launch press conference. For 170 days, she was kept busy with experiments and observations: “We have to perform several medical and biological experiments. Also planned are several Earth observations ranging from the water surface to the forests and several sites of ecological interest. Observations will be important not only for our country but also for the international partners. In preparation for longer space trips that humanity will embark in the future to explore deep space and venture outside the solar system, we also need to better understand the changes that occur in our body when we travel through space. So we continue to do more experiments to understand how [space] changes our blood, our skin, the bone mass and density”.

Serova shared Expedition-42 with the Italian female astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, who joined her on the ISS on November 23, 2014 (Fig. 2.32).

Fig. 2.32.  Elena Serova (left) and Samantha Cristoforetti aboard ISS (2015). Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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On March 11, 2015, after 167 days in space, Serova successfully returned to Earth to a remote landing near the town of Zhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. After returning from her spaceflight, Serova received an offer to join the State Duma. “It was very unexpected”, she said, “but, weighing up all the pros and cons, I decided to do it. Who knows when my next flight will take place; time is running out, I do not want to waste it. As a deputy, I can help many more people than as a cosmonaut”. In 2016, Serova retired from the cosmonaut corps and was elected to the State Duma, the Russian Federation’s Parliament, as a member not belonging to a political group. She has served as member of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons and is now in the Ecology Committee: “I believe that we need to improve legislation, which is what we are doing. This issue is very relevant not only for Russia, but in general for all countries. On board the ISS, I conducted a series of experiments, including those on ecology. I took a huge series of pictures of glacier melting in Patagonia, saw how fast this is happening”. Serova is married to Mark Serov, who joined the Cosmonaut Corps in May 2003 as a candidate for the 13th Group (RKKE-13) but retired for health reasons without flying into space and now works as a manager for the RSC Energia. They have a daughter, Elena Markovna, born in 2004.

Sources For This Section Agence France-Presse in Moscow “Female Cosmonaut Bats Back Questions about Hair and Parenting”, theguardian.com (September 25, 2014). Burks, R. “Watch a Female Cosmonaut Respond to Sexist Questions about Her Hair during a Press Conference”, techtimes.com (September 26, 2014). Garcia, M. “Preflight Interview: Elena Serova”, nasa.gov (August 1, 2014). Official biography of Elena Serova, energia.ru (March 2014). Official NASA biography of Elena Serova, nasa.gov (January 2013). Parliamentary Assembly “Ms Elena Serova”, in pace.coe.int (January 24, 2021) Solovyov, D. “First Russian Woman Lifts Off to International Space Station”, reuters. com (September 26, 2014). Stallard, K. “Female Cosmonaut Angry over Hair Questions”, news.sky.com (September 25, 2014). Халид Аль-Джабури, «Чувство полёта — особенное ощущение»: космонавт и депутат Елена Серова — о работе на МКС и в Госдуме (“«The feeling of flight is a special feeling»: cosmonaut and deputy Elena Serova - on work on the ISS and in the State Duma”) in russian.rt.com (April 12, 2021)

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2.12 KATHLEEN RUBINS: LABORATORY MICROBIOLOGIST TURNED ASTRONAUT Mission

Launch

Return

Expedition 48/49 (Soyuz MS-01) Expedition 63/64 (Soyuz MS-17)

July 7, 2016

October 30, 2016

October 14, 2020

April 17, 2021

As a microbiologist and an astronaut, Kate Rubins has followed quite an unconventional educational and career path. A doctor in cancer biology, she was the first researcher to sequence DNA in space. NASA has stated that “A space-based DNA sequencer would be an important tool to help protect future explorers’ health during long duration missions. With a way to sequence DNA in space, astronauts could diagnose an illness, or identify microbes growing in the International Space Station or in the spacecraft, and identify DNA-based life forms beyond Earth, and determine whether or not they represent a health threat”. Kathleen Hallisey “Kate” Rubins (Fig. 2.33) was born in Farmington, Connecticut on October 14, 1978, the year when NASA opened the space program to female applicants. Only one woman had flown in space at the time. “There’s never been a time when I was a kid that I couldn’t remember wanting to be an astronaut. It was always my standard ‘little kid’ answer when I was four, five, six, eight, twelve years old”.

Always fascinated with science and exploring our world, from microbes to the solar system, as a child she was an avid reader of Sky and Telescope magazine, and recalls both learning the constellations with her dad and going to local science museums in the San Francisco area. Raised in Napa, California, Rubins graduated from Vintage High School in 1996. In seventh grade, she helped with the chores around the house to earn her trip to Space Camp. She left camp knowing she needed to apply herself with dedication to math and science if she wanted her dream come true (Fig. 2.34). In high school, fascinated with molecular biology and viruses, she started to work with public health HIV prevention, and in 1999 she earned her BSc degree in Molecular Biology from the University of California, San Diego. Her research focused on HIV-1 integration, and she continued along that path for more than ten years. She conducted her undergraduate research in

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Fig. 2.33.  Kathleen Rubins. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fig. 2.34.  Commemorative cover postmarked in Baikonur on the day of launch for Soyuz MS-01, signed by the crew, including Kathleen Rubins. From the Author’s collection.

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the Infectious Diseases Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, where she analyzed the mechanism of HIV integration, including several studies of HIV-1 integrase inhibitors and genome-wide analyses of HIV integration patterns into host genomic DNA. Rubins earned her Ph.D. in Cancer Biology in 2005, from Stanford University Medical School Biochemistry Department and Microbiology and Immunology Department, in Palo Alto, California. With the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she was part of the team that developed the first model of smallpox infection. Rubins developed a complete map of the poxvirus transcriptome and studied host-pathogen interactions using both in-vitro and animal model systems, focusing on a number of very famous filoviruses (such as Ebola and Marburg), and arenaviruses (such as Lassa). In addition, she conducted collaborative projects with the U.S. Army to develop therapies for Ebola and Lassa viruses. From 2007 to 2009, Rubins worked at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she started her own research lab as Fellow/ Principal Investigator and led a team of 14 researchers studying viral diseases that primarily affect Central and West Africa. She traveled to the heart of the rainforest in the Democratic Republic of Congo to conduct research and supervise study sites. After this experience, Rubins was involved with health care/medical supply delivery to Africa and started a non-profit organization to bring supplies to Congo. Her work was published in several scientific journals and presented in numerous papers at international scientific conferences. In 2009 she was selected by Popular Science magazine as one of its “Brilliant 10.” While she was at the Whitehead Institute – when she was intent on running her lab and being a faculty member for the rest of her life  – Rubins learned about NASA’s latest call for astronauts. “They had astronaut applications online”, she recalls. “It was a childhood dream of mine, to be an astronaut, biologist and a geologist. I didn’t think I had a chance, but I did apply” (Fig. 2.35). Encouraged by one of her co-Principal Investigators, Rubins applied for the NASA program, as one of over 3,500 applicants, and was selected in July 2009 as one of the 14 members of the 20th NASA astronaut class, also known

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Fig. 2.35.  Biberpost private stamps celebrating the Soyuz MS-17 mission. Figure Credit: © Ralf Schulz/Biberpost. Reproduced with permissions. All rights reserved.

as “The Chumps” (9 NASA and 5 international candidates). She confesses to being stunned, humbled and overwhelmed when she knew she had been selected: “There were so many truly amazing candidates during the interview process; I was counting myself lucky just to get to interact with them”.

Rubins completed her training in November 2011, officially becoming available for future flight assignments. This was the first group of astronauts selected for the post-Space Shuttle era, as the Shuttle had been retired earlier that year. In September 2013, together with the astronauts Joseph Acaba (NASA), Andreas Mogensen (ESA) and Soichi Noguchi (JAXA), Rubins participated in SEATEST II (Space Environment Analog for Testing EVA Systems and Training), a four-day NASA underwater mission in the Aquarius laboratory – formerly known as NEEMO XVII. The test focused on engineering evaluations of new technologies for extravehicular activities (EVAs), testing crew procedures that might be used on the ISS and practicing spacewalks underwater. Rubins was assigned to Expedition-48/49 on the ISS and was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on July 7, 2016, aboard Soyuz MS-01, the first flight of the newly upgraded Soyuz spacecraft. Together with the international crew on the ISS, Rubins conducted or participated in more than 275 different scientific experiments, including tests to study the effects of weightlessness and combat the loss of bone and muscle mass during long-term space flight. Many of the tests were designed to prepare for a mission to Mars, a journey of several months that would far exceed any manned flight in microgravity to date.

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One of the most publicized experiments during this mission was NASA’s “Biomolecule Sequencer” experiment performed in August 2016. This was a technology demonstration of a tiny new device called the MinION™, developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies, that was already being used to sequence DNA on Earth. The investigation’s objective was to evaluate the operability of the DNA sequencer in the microgravity environment on the ISS to see if DNA could be sequenced and analyzed in real-time, to yield fast results in space environments. This operation had been planned for a long time, with a team that included scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC), NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), NASA’s Ames Research Center, Weill Cornell Medical College, the University of California San Francisco and Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Rubins said: “It was so exciting to be able to do the experiment, get the reaction, and see the data come through in real time. It was such a great moment for all of the researchers that worked so hard for so many years on this project”.

The experiment demonstrated the feasibility of quickly assessing the genetic material of a sample in space. “We really wanted to look at anything to get a real-time answer while sequencing information”, Rubins explained. “Transferring data back down via spacecraft can take months. If you want an answer about infection or an environmental sample [in space], now we can do that in real time”. Real-time analysis on the space station or on Mars could quickly identify microbes, diagnose infectious disease, collect any form of genomic and genetic data concerning crew health, measure the impact of spaceflight on the human body, inform medical interventions and define the effectiveness of countermeasures. During the long investigation, crew members sequenced over two billion base pairs of DNA of bacteria, including E. coli bacteria, bacteriophage (a virus that infects and replicates within a bacterium) and rodents, from samples prepared on Earth that had known genomic characteristics. Researchers on Earth were also running synchronous ground controls to evaluate how well the hardware was working in microgravity. Rubins also grew heart cells (cardiomyocytes) in cell culture, and performed quantitative, real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and microbiome experiments in orbit. In April 2016, Rubins and her colleague Jeffrey Williams successfully captured SpaceX CRS-8, the tenth flight of a Dragon commercial resupply spacecraft, using the station’s robotic arm. CRS-8 had brought over 3,100 kilograms of cargo to the ISS, including the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module

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(BEAM), a prototype inflatable Space Station Expandable Habitat which was attached to the ISS for two years of in-orbit viability tests. Once BEAM was attached to the station, it was expanded and correctly pressurized at the end of May in an effort to test and validate expandable habitat technology. Rubins was tasked with inspecting the new module and entered BEAM to install temporary monitoring equipment inside. Early results from these monitors revealed that galactic cosmic radiation levels were comparable to those in the rest of the space station.1 On October 16, Rubins and crewmate Takuya Onishi used the station’s robotic arm to grapple Orbital ATK’s Cygnus OA-5 resupply spacecraft, which was carrying several tons of supplies and research experiments for future work on the orbital outpost. Rubins conducted two spacewalks with veteran spacewalker Jeff Williams, totaling 12 hours and 46 minutes. During her first spacewalk, on August 19, 2016, they installed the first International Docking Adapter, a new docking port for U.S. commercial crew spacecraft being developed by SpaceX and Boeing. During the second, on September 1, 2016, they performed maintenance on the station’s external thermal control system and installed high-­ definition cameras, enabling never-before-seen images of the planet and space station. Rubins returned to Earth on October 30, 2016 after 115 days in space, just in time to experience the home stretch of the presidential election race won by Donald Trump. “The one thing that I’m pretty glad I’m missing, frankly, is the U.S. election season. It’s a little nice to be off the planet right now”, she said before undocking. She also managed to leave behind the hard-fought battleground and final rush of the bitter US presidential campaign in 2020, leaving Earth almost three weeks before the end and casting her vote from space. Her assignment to a second flight in fact came unusually quickly for a NASA astronaut of the current ISS-only era, at just under three years after her return from her first flight. Rubins became the first member of her astronaut group to fly in space twice when she was launched aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-17 from Baikonur on October 14, 2020, her 42nd birthday. This Soyuz flight successfully completed a new “ultrafast” two-orbit rendezvous method that allowed the fastest ever journey from Earth to the ISS, halving the time it had previously taken to complete, although even that time had been a  After exceeding performance expectations, the two-year test of BEAM was progressively extended and has now expanded to a planned 12 years, to become a core cargo storage module on the volume-­ restricted ISS. 1

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Fig. 2.36.  Commemorative cover for mission Soyuz MS-17, launched from Baikonur on October 14, 2020. The cover is signed by the crew. From the Author’s collection.

definite improvement in comparison to the traditional 34-orbit flights prior to 2013 that kept the crew inside the small spacecraft for over two days (Fig. 2.36). This new flight profile was made possible by the introduction into service of the new launch vehicle Soyuz-2.1a, which has performance and control system capabilities that enable high-precision orbital insertion of the spacecraft. In a re-ignited space race between the two countries after the relaunch of manned spaceflight from the United States with NASA’s Commercial Crew program, this upgraded vehicle was of immense importance to Russia’s space agency Roscosmos. “A new record for flights to the International Space Station was set: for the first time in the world, a manned spacecraft docked to the ISS having completed only two orbits around the Earth. In addition, a new record was set for flights to the International Space Station: the total time from launch to docking of the Soyuz MS-17 was three hours and three minutes”, Roscosmos said in a statement. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, stringent precautions were needed as the crew prepared for their journey to the ISS, including tighter quarantine and mask-wearing before launch, in order to avoid any risk of infection on the ISS. Rubins was quite at home with the personal protective equipment, thanks to her earlier career experiences. In replying to birthday wishes after entering the ISS, she said: “It’s been the best birthday I ever had”.

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The long-duration Expedition-64 officially began on October 21, 2020 with the undocking and departure of Soyuz MS-16, and reached its full complement with the arrival of SpaceX Crew-1, the first operational flight of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP). As Crew-1 consisted of a crew of four, Expedition 64 marked the beginning of operations for crews of seven on the ISS. Among some of the hundreds of experiments during her mission, Rubins conducted research using the Cold Atom Lab to study the use of laser-cooled atoms for future quantum sensors, worked on a cardiovascular experiment that followed up on an investigation she worked on during her previous mission, and continued her study on the microbial environment of the Space Station as a whole. The ISS marked its 20th anniversary of continuous human presence on November 2, 2020. Before launching, Rubins said: “We’re trying to understand the microbiological environment of space station. We normally carry bacteria with us all the time. We would expect that there is a lot of bacteria up there. The space station is a very nice and clean environment, but it’s not a sterile environment. It has been separate from Earth for 20 years. How is it different? The space station is its own biome with its own resources, with humans coming and going. We want to see what these closed environments do when they’ve been separate for a long time. It’s a huge opportunity that may not present itself again because nothing has ever been isolated from Earth for 20 years”. Since her previous stay, the station had been equipped with new high-­ resolution microscopes that Rubins was able to use to study cells. Experience gained on the orbiting lab will also support NASA’s Artemis program to return to the Moon and go on to Mars. As part of the NASA Artemis generation of astronauts, Rubins is one of the nine women who have a chance at being the first to walk on the Moon.

Sources For This Section Cavallaro U., “Kathleen Rubins: microbiologist turned astronaut” in AD*ASTRA, #47 (December 2020) pages 8-11 Girard L., “Whitehead Connects: An Evening With NASA Astronaut Kathleen Rubins” in wi.mit-edu (September 15, 2017) NASA HQ “Statement by Kate Rubins: Hearing: NASA’s Future in Low Earth Orbit: Considerations for International Space Station Extension and Transition” (Statement of Dr. Kate Rubins Astronaut National Aeronautics and Space Administration before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics Committee

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on Science, Space, and Technology U.S. House of Representatives), in www.spaceref.com (September 21, 2021) Rura N.G., “AudioHelicase: NASA Astronaut and Former Whitehead Fellow Kathleen “Kate” Rubins” in wi.mit-edu (October 23, 2017) Whiting, M, “Kathleen “Kate” Rubins (PH.D.) NASA Astronaut”, in www.nasa.gov (April 17, 2021). Wright J., “NASA - In Their Own Words: Kathleen (Kate) Rubins”, in www.nasa.gov (August 23, 2010)

2.13 SERENA AUÑÓN-CHANCELLOR: PHYSICIAN AND ASTRONAUT Mission

Launch

Return

Expedition 56/57 (Soyuz MS-09)

June 6, 2018

December 20, 2018

The second Hispanic woman to become a NASA astronaut, after Ellen Ochoa, Serena Maria Auñón-Chancellor (Fig. 2.37) was born into a Cuban immigrant family in Indianapolis, Indiana, on April 9, 1976. Her mother, Margaret Auñón, is a novelist who writes murder mysteries under the pen name Maggie Sefton. Her father, Dr. Jorge Auñón, is a Cuban exile who arrived in the United States in 1960 when he was just 18 and worked at any odd job to make money, setting an example of hard work and perseverance. He eventually went to George Washington University and became a professor of electrical engineering, then became the dean of the college of engineering at several universities and ultimately Dean of Engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville until he retired in 2005. Her father’s golden words highly inspired Auñón-Chancellor and aided her in achieving her goal: “Respect everybody regardless of their position: whether they are a janitor or an executive, everybody deserves respect” (Fig. 2.38). As a child, the family moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, which Auñón-­ Chancellor considers to be her home town. In Fort Collins, she graduated from Poudre High School in 1993. Auñón-Chancellor became fascinated with space flight as a child: “I knew I wanted to become an astronaut when I saw my first Shuttle launch as a kid in elementary school. The Shuttle is a wonderfully complex and beautiful vehicle. It’s hard not to be inspired by its sheer power”.

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Fig. 2.37.  Serena Auñón-Chancellor. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fig. 2.38.  Commemorative cover postmarked in Baikonur on June 6, 2018, at the launch of Soyuz MS-09. Signed by Serena Auñón-Chancellor and crew. From the Author’s collection.

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Seeing her interest, her father suggested that she should follow in his footsteps and become an engineer. Auñón-Chancellor enrolled for Electrical Engineering studies at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., from which she graduated cum laude in 1997. After obtaining her BSc in Electrical Engineering, she changed course to pursue a passion for medicine and applied to enter the Health Science Center at the University of Texas, Houston, receiving her Doctorate of Medicine in 2001. In 2006 she earned a Master of Public Health degree from The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB). Auñón-Chancellor said: “It may be difficult to see a connection between engineering and medicine, but both require that you examine problems from all angles and reason through multiple solutions. I also saw what a difference you could make in a person’s life during a particularly difficult time. I made the decision to enter medical school and loved every minute of it. You quickly realize how much trust people place in you when you assume responsibility for their medical care. While going through medical school, I knew I still wanted to work for NASA and discovered that the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas, offered a combined residency program in Internal Medicine and Aerospace Medicine”.

In her fourth year of medical school, Auñón-Chancellor saw an advertisement for an aerospace medical clerkship at JSC. She applied and was hired in August 2006 as a flight surgeon serving NASA under the UTMB/Wyle Bioastronautics contract. She recalls: “I spent several months in Russia supporting ISS crews during their training. It was a great time to learn what an astronaut’s life would be like while training for long-duration missions aboard ISS”. Auñón-Chancellor spent over nine months in Russia supporting medical operations for ISS crewmembers in Star City, including water survival training in the Ukraine. She then supported the launch of spaceflight participant Charles Simonyi from Baikonur, and participated in the medical evaluation of other spaceflight participants through Space Adventures. After returning to Houston she was one of the deputy crew surgeons for STS-127 and Expedition-22. She also served as the deputy lead for Orion  – Medical Operations. In 2009, Auñón-Chancellor “threw her hat in the ring” and applied to become a NASA astronaut. “It was the right time”, she said, and she was selected from more than 3,500 candidates as one of 14 members of the 20th NASA Astronaut Class. She reported for duty in August 2009 and took

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courses in robotics and space station systems, spending hours in virtual reality simulators and models, and on wilderness survival training. Between 2010 and 2011, she also spent two months in Antarctica, living on the ice 200 nautical miles from the South Pole as part of ANSMET.2 “It’s a lot of hard work, a lot of time away from your family. But it’s totally worth it when you look at the end game result of what you’re doing”. While waiting for a space assignment after completing her astronaut candidacy training program, Auñón-Chancellor participated in two NEEMO missions, In June 2012, she operated the Deep Worker 2000 submersible as part of the NEEMO 16 underwater exploration mission, and in 2015 served as an aquanaut aboard the Aquarius underwater laboratory during the NEEMO 20 undersea exploration mission. Certified as an ISS Capcom, Auñón-Chancellor served as the lead Capcom for the SpaceX-4 and SpaceX-8 cargo resupply missions and handled medical issues for both the International Space Station Operations Branch and Commercial Crew Branch. She was assigned to Expedition-58/59 in March 2017 and started her training. One year later, in January 2018, a NASA press release announced that Auñón-Chancellor had been reassigned to the Expedition-56/57 crew, and would take the place of astronaut Jeanette Epps. Epps had been removed from the mission for unexplained reasons several months prior to the scheduled launch and would “return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to assume duties in the Astronaut Office and be considered for assignment to future missions.” Auñón-Chancellor was launched on June 6, 2018 aboard the Soyuz MS-09, and joined Expedition-56. She started to work with the station crew on several experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science. In particular, her work focused on research on a potential new cancer therapy, on microgravity-induced changes in the contraction, growth, and gene expression of the cardiomyocytes to better understand the mechanisms behind heart muscle cell function, and on a protein crystal growth experiment to better understand Parkinson’s disease. The crew also installed a new Life Sciences Glovebox, a sealed work area for life science and technology investigations.

 ANSMET (Antarctic Search for Meteorites) is a program funded by the Office of Polar Programs of the National Science Foundation that looks for meteorites in the Transantarctic Mountains. Collectively, Auñón-Chancellor’s expedition returned over 1,200 meteorites trapped in a vast sheet of flowing ice. While the contrast of the dark meteorites against the white snow, and lack of terrestrial rocks on the ice, makes such meteorites relatively easy to find, the vast majority of such ice-embedded meteorites still slide undiscovered into the ocean. 2

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A critical activity for Auñón-Chancellor was her daily physical exercise: “It’s very important to maintain fitness while you’re up, and also to stave off bone mineral density loss and also muscle mass loss, and we did that by working out every day for two and a half hours”. On August 29, 2018, ISS controllers at NASA’s JSC in Houston noticed a minor pressure decrease aboard the station. Not deemed to be in imminent danger, the crew was alerted to the problem after waking up the next day, August 30. The crew was quickly able to trace the leak to a small, 2 mm breach discovered in the orbital compartment of the Soyuz MS-09, one of two Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked to the Rassvet module on the Russian segment of the ISS. After consulting with both Russian and US flight controllers, flight engineer Sergey Prokopyev immediately applied an epoxy to a gauze wipe and sealed the hole, and the station’s air pressure returned to normal.3 On October 11, a Soyuz rocket failed two minutes after launch, and the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft was forced to abort and make an emergency landing, leaving the ISS with a three-person crew: commander Alexander Gerst of ESA, Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA and Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos, Only Auñón-Chancellor and Gerst were available to perform experiments on the station’s US segment until December 3, when Soyuz MS-11 arrived and docked to deliver Roscosmos Commander Oleg Kononenko, NASA’s Ann McClain and Canadian Colleague David Saint-Jacques. Despite the reduced numbers, the crew still performed some 250 experiments. Many NanoRacks experiments could still be completed as planned since they could be controlled remotely from a control room in a NanoRacks facility in Houston. On December 11, 2018, the day before Soyuz MS-09 undocked, the two Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Prokopyev ventured outside the ISS to obtain more data on the mysterious hole, conducting a 7-hour and 45-minute spacewalk. After inspecting the repair area from the outside, in an effort to discover what caused the leak they cut through the exterior insulation on the Soyuz vehicle using a knife and a pair of long-arm scissors, and collected samples of the epoxy that had extruded through the hole from  Initial reports indicated that the hole could have been caused by space debris or a micrometeorite strike. Some Russian media initially reported that it had been caused by a manufacturing or testing defect, but sources in the Russian government started baseless rumors that perhaps a disgruntled NASA astronaut had drilled the hole. Rogozin stopped short of accusing crew members, but the statement caused some friction between Roscosmos and NASA and the head of Roscosmos, renowned for his intemperate remarks, back-pedaled from the statement, blaming the news media for twisting his words. TASS later quoted a Russian technical expert, Alexander Zheleznyakov of the K. E. Tsiolkovsky Russian Academy of Astronautics, as saying the hole was almost certainly drilled on Earth. 3

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the inside. They took high-definition images and GoPro video of the exterior of the leak site to help Russian investigators determine what had caused the hole. After 197 days in space, Serena Auñón-Chancellor returned to Earth on December 20, 2018. While she was still in space, the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the Louisiana State University (LSU) approached her husband, Jeff Chancellor, offering both of them a faculty position at the Baton Rouge Campus. Though remaining a member of NASA’s Astronaut Corps, Auñón-­ Chancellor accepted the position at LSU Health Sciences as an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine. Her only requirement for moving to Baton Rouge was the existence of an Internal Medicine residency program: “I’m doing absolutely one of my favorite things, which is teaching residents and medical students. I’m super excited to be here. Being in an academic medicine faculty is one of the most, if not the most, important things to me”.

In January 2020, Auñón-Chancellor released a report describing a previously unrecognized risk of spaceflight discovered during the study of an unnamed astronaut involved in a long-duration mission, who was suspected to have internal jugular venous thrombosis following an ultrasound examination performed in space as part of a vascular research on the ISS, and had to be treated in space.4 Eleven astronauts were involved in this vascular study, which could be critical for the health of astronauts during future space exploration missions to the Moon and Mars. On July 29, 2021, Russia’s long-awaited research module Nauka docked with the ISS, but a few hours later the module accidentally fired its thrusters and destabilized the station, causing it to spin one-and-a-half revolutions – about 540 degrees – before flight controllers managed to regain control an hour later. Because of the incident, Mission Control Moscow ordered the Zvezda module to be evacuated. In a period of increasingly poor relations between NASA and Roscosmos, NASA managed to keep a low profile. An international commission was formed to investigate the Russian Nauka module mishap. A couple of weeks after the criticism by the international community, on August 12 Russia’s state-owned news service TASS issued a report reopening the case of the still-unexplained ‘hole in the Soyuz’ incident. Quoting an  Serena M Auñón-Chancellor, James M Pattarini, Stephan Moll, Ashot Sargsyan, Venous Thrombosis during Spaceflight in New England Journal of Medicine, 2020 Jan 2, #382 (1), pages 89–90. The case report published in www.eurekalert.org, is co-authored with Stephan Moll, a blood clot expert, professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine at Chapel Hill. 4

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unnamed “high-ranking official in the Russian space industry” – believed to be the head of Russian space corporation Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin  – TASS asserted that a NASA astronaut on board at the time, Serena AuñónChancellor, had experienced a medical problem involving blood flow that “could have provoked an acute psychological crisis” which, in turn, might have led her to sabotage the space station, seeking a way to return to Earth early, before the end of her mission. According to the Russian investigators, the hole could only have been drilled from inside the Soyuz spacecraft and “had been drilled in weightlessness by a person not acquainted with the spaceship’s design.” Other “news” circulating on Russian media suggested that the hole had been drilled after Auñón-Chancellor had fought with her boyfriend, a fellow crewmember. “We do not believe there is any credibility to these accusations”, said Kathy Lueders, chief of human spaceflight for NASA. This stance was immediately echoed by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. These defamatory statements, with no evidence, caused new friction between Roscosmos and NASA and inflamed an already difficult relationship between the two agencies, which was increasingly under strain due to unrelated geopolitical tensions and had been exacerbated by Roscosmos’s financial problems now that NASA was utilizing private US-based space companies. Observers fear that the recent deterioration in US-Russia ties could have an impact on space cooperation. In November 2021, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken lashed out at Russia for testing an anti-satellite missile that sent debris in the direction of the ISS, forcing the crew to take evasive action. “The long-lived debris created by this dangerous and irresponsible test will now threaten satellites and other space objects that are vital to all nations’ security, economic, and scientific interests for decades to come”, he said. Auñón-Chancellor now works with NASA and LSU, hoping to build an aerospace medicine program at the Louisiana University: “I still work in the NASA Astronaut Office, and I spend a good portion of my time covering medical issues with other astronaut physicians. That can be for the Space Station, for our commercial crew vehicles. It can be for lunar habitats because we are going back to the Moon. It can be for exploration class missions to Mars”.

As well as teaching, Auñón-Chancellor returned to patient care about six weeks after her return to Earth, once she was able to walk again and could handle again a 12-hour shift. She was in a hospital ward during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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“When Louisiana was seeing its peak of cases that first half of April 2020, I was actually on the COVID ward at the hospital with my team of residents. It was probably the most memorable internal medicine in-patient service I’ve ever been on. It was very difficult at times because these people were very sick, many of them dying. This is a disease where there really is no standard of care. The research is still up in the air. We’re looking at new treatments all the time, so we were using whatever experts you could and our best clinical judgement”.

Besides practicing medicine in the hospital and teaching at LSU, Auñón-­ Chancellor also supports medical-related issues for the Astronaut Office. In particular, she was responsible for all Covid-19 protocols there. Serena Auñón-Chancellor loves to play basketball, softball, and cricket and also enjoys hiking at home in the mountains of Colorado and jet-skiing in the Galveston surf. Her personal interests include providing medical care to the underserved: “Being a physician is one of the most human professions, and it requires finding a way to approach every patient from where they are”, she says.

Sources For This Section Berger, R., “NASA stands by its astronaut after incendiary Russian claims”, in arstechnica.com (Augusr 13, 2021) Capo, L., “Dr. Auñón-Chancellor Publishes Paper Describing First Reported Occurrence and Treatment of Spaceflight Medical Risk 200 Miles Above Earth” in www.medschool.lsuhsc.edu (February 24, 2020) Capo, L., “From the Space Station to the COVID Ward” in www.lsuhsc.edu (May 27, 2020) Davenport. C., “Tensions with Russia are now spilling into space, complicating International Space Station partnership” in washingtonpost.com (December 21, 2021) Evans, B., “Soyuz MS-09 Launches U.S., Russian, German Spacefarers to Space Station” in www.americaspace.com (June 6, 2018) Kauderer, A., “In Their Own Words: Serena M.  Auñón” in www.nasa.gov (August 23, 2010) Marmaduke, J., “Q&A: Fort Collins native going to space next year” in eu.coloradoan.com (November 2, 2017) Northon, K., “NASA Announces Updated Crew Assignments for Space Station Missions” in www.nasa.gov (January 18, 2018) Pearlman, R., “Cosmonauts on Spacewalk Cut Into Soyuz Spacecraft to Inspect Patched Hole”, in space,com (December 12, 2018) Roskosmos/TASS “Двенадцать тезисов американских претензий к Роскосмосу и ответы на них” (Twelve theses of American claims to Roscosmos and answers to them) in tass.ru (in Russian) (August 12, 2019)

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Stott, N., “Back to Earth - What Life in Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet— And Our Mission to Protect It”, Seal Press, New York, October 2021, pages 23-33 (interview with Serena Auñón-Chancellor) Web Desk, “How alleged lovers’ tiff, hole on spacecraft triggered US-Russia spat” in www.theweek.in (December 07, 2021)

2.14 JESSICA WATKINS: THE FIRST BLACK WOMAN ON A LONG-DURATION SPACE MISSION Mission

Launch

Return

Crew Dragon-4

April 27, 2022

October 14, 2022

Jessica Andrea “Watty” Watkins (Fig. 2.39) is a NASA astronaut, geologist, aquanaut and former international rugby player. She was born on May 14, 1988, in Gaithersburg, Maryland, to Michael and Carolyn Watkins. Her family moved to Lafayette, Colorado, when she was a young girl and she considers this her hometown. She attended the Fairview High School there. Watkins earned a BSc degree in Geological and Environmental Sciences from Stanford University, where she was also a member of the rugby team. She played for national teams (2008) and placed third at the Rugby World Cup Sevens with the USA Eagles team in 2009. During undergraduate internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, Watkins also participated in a number of analog space missions. In 2009, her senior year at Stanford, she was chief geologist for a NASA analog mission at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, in support of the Phoenix Mars Lander mission. Her work there included participating in daily planning of rover activities, testing the physical properties of Martian rocks, using rover drill parameters, and investigating the planet’s geological history. Then, in 2011, Watkins worked as a science operations team member for a NASA Desert Research and Technology Studies analog mission. After Stanford, she earned a Ph.D. in Geology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her graduate research, under the supervision of Professor An Yin, focused on emplacement mechanisms for landslides on Mars and Earth, including the effects of water activity. For this research, she studied Earth and the Red Planet through geological mapping and the use of orbital images, spectral data and field work. At UCLA, Watkins also worked as a teaching assistant for various courses in Earth and planetary science, and won the UCLA Chancellor’s Prize (2010) as well as a scholarship for academic

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Fig. 2.39.  Jessica Watkins. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

excellence and outstanding original research (2012). As a graduate student, she participated in several internships at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), assisting, among others, in the analysis of near-Earth asteroids discovered by the NEOWISE mission. After completing her doctorate, Watkins continued in her research career, beginning a postdoctoral fellowship at the division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech). One of the projects she worked on while there was as a member of the science team that worked on planning missions for NASA’s Curiosity Rover mission on Mars, and did system design testing for the Mars 2020 and Mars sample return missions which, years later in 2021, would land the Perseverance rover on the Red Planet. At Caltech, Watkins also volunteered as assistant coach for the school’s women’s basketball team. She was selected for NASA Astronaut Group 22 in 2017 while attending Caltech. She said: “I think it really is just a tribute to the legacy of black women astronauts that have come before me, as well as to the exciting future ahead”. Her two-years training began that August. The preparation involved physiological training, practice flying in T-38 supersonic jets, geology training, and

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Fig. 2.40.  Cover commemorating the launch of SpaceX Crew Dragon-4. From the Author’s collection.

scientific and technical instruction that included extensive coverage of the systems aboard the ISS as well as information about spacewalks. She also spent time in the Aquarius underwater habitat as an aquanaut in 2019, when she participated in the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 23 mission, calling it “a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” In November 2021, NASA announced that Watkins would occupy the fourth and final seat on a Crew Dragon, serving as a mission specialist aboard Crew-4, the fourth rotation of astronauts on the Crew Dragon spacecraft to the ISS (Fig. 2.40). This assignment meant she would be the first black woman in history to accomplish a long-duration mission in space. She said: “The most exciting for me, especially as a geologist, is getting to look out the window and getting to see Earth from the unique vantage point that ISS provides, and being able to see geologic landforms and features from that perspective”.

The launch of Crew-4, initially planned for April 15, was delayed several times but finally occurred on April 27, 2022. It carried three NASA astronauts – Jessica Watkins together with Kjell Lindgren, and Robert Hines – and ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. The Crew-4 team’s program included over 200 experiments in space. One of the most promising is the study of Protein-Based Artificial Retina

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Manufacturing, an artificial retina investigated by US-based company LambdaVision that could restore meaningful vision for the millions of people on Earth who suffer from retinal degenerative diseases, including retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration. Another interesting experiment is Wireless Compose-2, an ESA investigation to demonstrate the capabilities of wireless networks to support science experiments and provide precise control and navigation of free-flying objects. Connected to this experiment is BEAT (Ballistocardiography for Extraterrestrial Applications and long-Term missions) developed by the German Space Agency DLR, that uses sensors built into ‘SmartTex’, a “smart T-shirt”, to monitor and measure astronauts’ vital signs and heart parameters, such as pulse and blood pressure. Normally, scientists can only access these data using sonograms and computer tomography, or computerized X-ray imaging. This technology could provide greater insight into performance of the cardiovascular system in space and how it changes during a long-term space mission (Fig. 2.41). Jessica Watkins’ assignment could be just the prelude to a much bigger space mission for her: a landing on the Moon under the Artemis program. In December 2020, she was announced as one of 18 NASA astronauts who would serve on the space agency’s “Artemis Team,” a group of astronauts that would train and eventually fly Artemis missions to the Moon. Together with her 17 Artemis teammates, Watkins will be trained to fly on NASA’s Orion spacecraft as well as the Moon landers for NASA’s Artemis missions. It would be another big dream that could come true for her. In a NASA video about the Artemis team, she said: “What a dream realized is, is just putting one foot in front of the other on a daily basis. And if you put enough of those footprints together, eventually they become a path towards your dreams”. Watkins also hopes that her space story will inspire other young people to pursue similar careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Fig. 2.41.  Biberpost private stamp celebrating the Dragon Crew 4 mission. Figure Credit: © Ralf Schulz/Biberpost. Reproduced with permissions. All rights reserved.

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Besides playing rugby, in her spare time Watkins also enjoys playing soccer and rock climbing, as well as skiing, writing short stories and watching movies.

Sources For This Section Official NASA biography, “Jessica Watkins (Ph.D.) NASA Astronaut” in www.nasa. gov (Apr 27, 2022) Anon. “Artemis astronaut feature: Jessica Watkins” in spacecenter.org (February 26, 202) Gamillo, E., “NASA Astronaut Jessica Watkins Becomes the First Black Woman to Join International Space Station Crew” in www.smithsonianmag.com (November 19, 2021) Gaskill, M:, “Crew-4 Astronauts Head to Space Station to Conduct Microgravity Science” in www.nasa.gov (Apr 18, 2022) Gohd, C., “Jessica Watkins: NASA astronaut and 1st black woman to fly a longduration spaceflight” in www.space.com (March 24, 2022) Ingalls, B., “NASA Assigns Astronaut Jessica Watkins to NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 Mission”, in www.nasa.gov (November 16, 2021) Philippe, J. & Yi-Jin Yu “NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins Becomes 1st Black Woman on International Space Station Crew” in www.goodmorningamerica.com (April 27, 2022)

3 Outside the Spacecraft

The first female to conduct an Extravehicular Activity (EVA, or spacewalk) was the Soviet Union’s Svetlana Savitskaya, who spent three hours and 33 minutes outside the Salyut 7 space station in July 1984, testing a space welding tool. Three months later, in October 1984, Shuttle astronaut Kathy Sullivan – one of the first six women selected to the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1978 – carved her name in the annals of history by logging three hours and 29 minutes as America’s first woman spacewalker. It would be almost a decade before the next woman ventured out on a spacewalk. In May 1992, on the maiden voyage of Shuttle Endeavour, Kathy Thornton performed an EVA of seven hours and 45 minutes – longer than the spacewalks of Savitskaya and Sullivan put together  – to demonstrate construction techniques for the Freedom Space Station (which eventually evolved into the International Space Station  – ISS) and test the ASEM approach (Assembly of Station by EVA Method). Thornton performed two more EVAs in December 1993 to repair the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), establishing herself as the most experienced female spacewalker at the time with a cumulative 21 hours and 11 minutes spent outside a spacecraft. It was a record she held for more than a decade. In March 1996, Linda Godwin became the first US female to float outside a space station, while Shuttle Atlantis was docked to Russia’s Mir. Later in her career, Godwin also spacewalked outside the ISS, becoming the first woman to spacewalk outside two different space stations. The first woman to walk in space from the ISS had been Tammy Jernigan in May 1999, after the disappointment of having her two planned spacewalks © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Cavallaro, To The Stars, Springer Praxis Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19860-1_3

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cancelled in-flight in November 1996 due to a jammed hatch on the airlock preventing access to open space from STS-80. Others were less lucky. Wendy Lawrence was prevented from flying a long-duration mission to Mir, in part because of difficulties sizing the Russian space suit for her small frame. The EVA by Susan Helms, together with Jim Voss, in March 2001 still remains the longest in space history, having lasted eight hours and 55 minutes. Nicole Stott was able to view the ISS both from the inside and from the outside during her first long duration mission, when she took part in a spacewalk of six hours and 39 minutes in October 2009 to prepare for the replacement of an empty ammonia tank on the station’s port truss. US astronauts Peggy Whitson and Sunita Williams passed the torch repeatedly between themselves to become the most experienced female spacewalker, across five ISS increments between 2002 and 2017. As of today, Whitson stands as the record-holder, with a combined 60 hours and 21 minutes across ten EVAs. Williams currently sits in second place, with her seven EVAs totaling 50 hours and 40 minutes. The third most experienced is Christina Koch with 42 hours 15 minutes across six EVAs, followed by Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper in fourth place with 33.5 hours on her five EVAs. Kathleen Rubins conducted two EVAs with veteran spacewalker Jeff Williams on her first mission in August 2016 during Expedition-48, and two EVAs in March 2021 on Expedition-63, totaling 26 hours 46 minutes EVA time. Tracy Caldwell Dyson’s three contingency spacewalks in August 2010 logged her nearly 23 hours outside the space station. On March 22, 2019, Anne McClain performed her first spacewalk with Nick Hague, which lasted 6 hours and 39 minutes, A second EVA with Christina Koch was scheduled on March 29, which would have been the first all-female spacewalk in history, but due to last-minute logistics and spacesuit availability on the ISS, and at the request of McClain herself, her male colleague Hague took her place, to widespread disappointment and outrage due to what Marsha Ivins called NASA’s “Obsession With ‘Gender Diverse’ Space Crews.” The world’s first all-female EVA was eventually performed few months later, by Christina Koch and Jessica Meir on October 18, 2019, during Expedition-61. Koch was making her fourth career EVA and served as “EV1”, with red stripes on her space suit for identification, while first-time spacewalker Meir was “EV2”, in a plain white suit, The pair spent seven hours and 17 minutes outside the ISS replacing a failed Battery Charge/Discharge Unit (BCDU) and performing other tasks.

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On July 11, 2021, Wang Yaping became the first Chinese woman to perform an EVA, spending six hours and 25 minutes outside, with Commander Zhai Zhigang, installing a grapple fixture for the robotic arm on the nadir side of the Tianhe core module of the new Chinese Space Station. (For a complete list of women spacefarers involved in spacewalks, see Appendix II: Extravehicular Activities.)

3.1 SVETLANA SAVITSKAYA: TWICE IN SPACE; A SECOND SOVIET “FIRST” Launch

Return

Soyuz T-7

August 19, 1982

Soyuz T-5

August 27, 1982

Soyuz T-12

July 17, 1984

Soyuz T-12

July 29, 1984

“When in orbit, one thinks of the whole of the Earth, rather than of one’s country, as one’s home. One may even land on water, somewhere in the world’s oceans, still the planet is home”, said the second woman in space. Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya (Cвeтлáнa Eвгéньeвнa Caви́цкaя) (Fig. 3.1) suddenly became a cosmonaut as part of a gender-specific selection of three women in response to the gender diversity of the 1978 American astronaut class. She flew in space twice, to the Salyut 7 space station in 1982 and 1984, almost 20 years after Valentina Tereshkova. In doing so, she became the first woman to fly in space twice, the first woman to stay on a space station, and the first woman to perform an EVA, spending more than 3.5 hours outside (Fig. 3.2). Savitskaya was born in Moscow on August 8, 1948, the daughter of a fervent activist of the Communist Party of Moscow and a General. Her father, Yevgenii Savitsky, was a renowned World War II fighter pilot and flying ace, twice decorated Hero of the Soviet Union, and Deputy Commander of the Soviet Union’s Air Defense Forces. Her lifelong dream was to follow her father into flight. Undeterred following rejection from a flying school due to her young age, Savitskaya secretly began to take parachute training instead, pretending to be 16 (the minimum age for admission). Her father discovered her parachute knife stashed in her school bag, but far from being angry he actively encouraged her interest. By her 17th birthday in 1965, the fearless parachutist had already logged 450 jumps and set a world record for stratospheric parachuting by skydiving from 14,252

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Fig. 3.1.  Svetlana Savitskaya on a USSR postage stamp issued in 1983 to celebrate the successful mission of Soyuz T-7. Figure Credit: © Почтовая марка СССР.

Fig. 3.2.  First Day Cover, signed by Svetlana Savitskaya. From the collection of the late Renzo Monateri. Reproduced with permission. All rights rdeserved.

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meters, opening her chute a mere 500 meters from the ground after a free fall of almost 14,000 meters. Supported by her father, at age 18 Savitskaya enrolled at the prestigious Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI). In 1970, aged 21, she soloed in a YaK-18 training aircraft and joined the Soviet National Aerobatics Team. In July that year, with her all-female team, she emerged as world champion at the Sixth FAI World Aerobatic Championships competition, held at Hullavington, UK, and drew the attention of the British press, who hailed her as “Miss Sensation.” Licensed as a flight instructor in 1971, the following year Savitskaya graduated from the MAI and became a flying trainer at DOSAAF (Central Technical Flying School of the USSR Voluntary Society for the Promotion of the Army, Air Force and Navy). She was also accepted into the Fedotov Test Pilot School. She qualified in 20 different types of aircraft and established three records for parachuting and 21 world records in turbo-prop and supersonic aircraft, including the women’s world speed record of 2,683 kilometers per hour set on June 22, 1975, in a MiG-21 supersonic aircraft. Some of her records still stand to this day. In May 1978, she became a test pilot for the Yakovlev design bureau and aircraft manufacturer. When the Soviet Union began recruiting its second group of female cosmonauts in the late 1970s, Savitskaya was readily selected for the Soviet Cosmonauts Corps (Fig. 3.3). She was well known to the powerful Valentin Glushko, who had been her instructor in Moscow and was now head of NPO Energia, responsible for assignments. The veteran rocket engine designer was also well aware of the powerful position held by her father, who was highly ranked in the Soviet Air Force. Savitskaya was the only female cosmonaut of her class to fly into space. As with Tereshkova, her assignment was emphasized as a triumph of the

Fig. 3.3.  USSR postage stamp issued in 1985 to celebrate the successful mission of Soyuz T-12. Figure Credit: © Почтовая марка СССР.

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emancipation of women under Soviet rule. The official Soviet press seized the opportunity to highlight that a woman would be flying into space for a second time and once again she was a Soviet woman; further proof of the “liberation acquired by women in socialist society.” It was also pointed out that she would fly eight months before Sally Ride, who had been chosen as the first US female astronaut to be launched as a Mission Specialist (MS) on the Space Shuttle. To mark the event, the Soviet Post also dedicated a stamp to Savitskaya. As previously mentioned, during a period of steady decline in East-West relations in the early 1980s – a sort of recurring Cold War – Savitskaya was undeservedly exploited for propaganda purposes, to restore the sense that the Soviets were ahead in space. In April 1982 she appeared, as if by magic, and was quickly assigned to the crew of the Soyuz T-7 mission, to be launched to the Salyut 7 later that same year. This was a response by the powerful and ambitious Glushko to the NASA announcement, released a few days before, that Sally Ride had been assigned to a Shuttle flight and would fly on STS-7 early in 1983. The Soyuz T-7 mission was scheduled for August of 1982, so that Savitskaya would therefore launch before the first American female astronaut. Despite being an accomplished pilot, her role in the spaceflight was as a researcher. The perfunctory acceleration of her assignment imposed by Glushko did not allow the normal rules that psychologists of the Moscow Institute of Biomedical Problems (IMBP) would request to ensure the harmony of the crew during the mission to be followed. Aleksandr Serebrov, the rookie who was flying with Savitskaya, was not reticent to show his hostility against women cosmonauts who “do the job that should be done by a man.” One episode connected to her arrival on the Salyut 7 space station underlined the ambiguities in Soviet attitudes toward women, which combined a vaunting pride in the advancement of women with a degree of sentimentality and deference that would jar many Western feminists, but also confirmed the ethos that pervaded the deeply sexist Cosmonauts Corps. By the time Soyuz T-7 carrying Savitskaya and her colleagues into orbit had docked with Salyut 7, the orbital space station had been home to Commander Anatoli Berezovoi and Flight Engineer Valentin Lebedev for a month; long enough for them to grow a bouquet of Arabidopsis (flowers from a scientific experiment) which Berezovoi gallantly presented to their female guest. However, an article issued in the New York Times on August 29, 1982 – which in turn quoted a report published by the Russian newspaper Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya – revealed that Lebedev had welcomed Savitskaya on board by handing her an apron and saying “Feel like you’re at your house”

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while pointing to the “kitchen.” Savitskaya did not retort. Following this, somewhat jokingly, aprons showing her image began to appear on the market. In his diary – published following the fall of the Soviet Union – Lebedev reported that after the T-7 crew had safely docked, Commander Leonid Popov and Serebrov entered the station as soon as the hatch was opened, but Savitskaya remained in the Soyuz. When the others looked into the docking module to see where she was, they saw her combing her hair and only when she was comfortable with that did she float into the station. Salyut Commander Berezovoi admitted that “the presence of a woman on the Station severely limited their freedom and complicated daily life.” He was also very frank about the lack of teamwork between Serebrov and Savitskaya, who were “like a cat and a dog” at each other, with Serebrov voicing his concerns about his female colleague and Savitskaya doing little beyond what was expected of her from the flight program. During their 211 days on the station, Berezovoi and Lebedev lived moments of tension, spending whole days without talking to each other and working at opposite ends of the station. With the arrival of the Soyuz T-7 and its crew, especially with a woman, the hassle for Berezovoi increased. He unleashed his resentment against Savitskaya in a letter to his wife, which was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York in 1993: “Isn’t there a superstition among sailors that a woman aboard a ship is a bad omen? At the moment, I don’t know for sure, but I can’t imagine all the difficulties that we will have with this mixed crew. I’m afraid this will not be limited to just the problem of shared facilities… I will say nothing of Svetlana. She is a woman and that says it all. It will not be easy”.

On August 27, Savitskaya and her two colleagues said goodbye and boarded the Soyuz T-5 for return to Earth. Neither Berezovoi nor Lebedev was particularly sad when they left. Lebedev would later note that hosting the visiting crew had been extremely tiring and that the Salyut crew would need two or three days to get life back to normal after the visit. Publicly, of course, the crew reported that everything had gone ideally and her colleagues eventually, if somewhat patronizingly, said that Savitskaya had been “as good as a man.” The daily newspaper Izvestia depicted her as “charming and gentle, a hospitable hostess who likes to make patterns and sew her own clothes when she has spare time.” As happened to Valentina Tereshkova, on her return to Earth Svetlana Savitskaya also became a favorite interview subject for the media but, unlike her predecessor, she did not make much of an effort to appear charming.

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Savitskaya preferred to promote the results of the flight, highlighting the medical and scientific data obtained. During her mission, she had performed experiments on the cardiovascular system, space sickness, and the movement of the eyes. She also performed the first experiment of electrophoresis on human cells. But she was extremely difficult to interview. She presented herself as just one of the crew and did not like questions that were not to the point, or were to do with the fact that she was a woman. One Western reporter who had arranged to interview Savitskaya almost missed out because none of the interpreters was willing to sit down with her, portraying her as a tough lady, as Lebedev had mentioned in his diary. One of her colleagues, Georgy Grechko, described her as “an Iron Lady, like Margaret Thatcher!” Soyuz T-7 was not only the second mission for a woman in space, but also the first mission of a mixed-gender crew. The usual secrecy that had surrounded the mission, with carefully controlled news reports, did yield a more tabloid side effect. In April 1983, the West German press agency Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA) reported that a German physician who had connections with the T-7 medical team had revealed that an attempt had been made during her mission to get Savitskaya pregnant as part of a medical experiment. Although the news was denied, and there has never been any evidence to confirm this story, it made headline news in several countries. After the successful completion of Savitskaya’s mission, it was decided that another female cosmonaut should be sent to the Salyut on a long-duration mission, to be in orbit during the time that Sally Ride was flying and score another coup over the West. Irina Pronina, who had served as Savitskaya’s backup, was assigned to fly the Soyuz T-8 mission that was planned to launch in April 1983 and last for more than three months, landing in July or early August. It would completely overlap and hopefully overshadow the flight of Sally Ride in June. Savitskaya was appointed as Pronina’s backup, but she was soon replaced by Serebrov. The crew prepared for this mission for six months, until the plan was changed shortly before launch when, according to space historians Dave Shayler and the late Rex Hall, “the internal politics of the Soviet program” led to “heavy pressure” to remove Pronina from the crew. When she launched on her second mission on Soyuz T-12, the 50th flight of a Soyuz, on July 25, 1984, Savitskaya became the first woman to complete a second space mission and the first to perform an EVA. Once again, this second assignment was the Soviet response to an American milestone, in this case the mission of STS-41G on which Sally Ride would fly for the second time and another female astronaut (Kathy Sullivan) would perform an EVA for the first time, in one fell swoop. Savitskaya’s mission appropriated these two firsts for the Soviet program.

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On seeing Savitskaya’s excitement to exit for the EVA, cosmonaut Valeri Ryumin, who was directing the operation from the Mission Control Center, ordered Commander Vladimir Dzhanibekov to let her go first. He “gallantly” floated aside to give her his place, one of the few gestures to her womanhood that Savitskaya seemed willing to accept. Incidentally, Valeri Ryumin married the third Soviet cosmonaut, Elena Kondakova, many years later. For more than three hours, Savitskaya worked hard outside the station, testing a new general-purpose hand tool called the Universalny Rabochy Instrument (or “URI”), a portable electron beam gun that had the capacity to cut metal, weld, and solder. Before returning to the station, she collected some samples to bring back to Earth for studying the impact of micrometeorites and the effect of aging on structures exposed in open space. In the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) reports following the end of the EVA, Savitskaya’s achievements were emphasized as a major contribution to the future participation of women in space missions: “Her successful performance of unique experiments in space conditions has clearly shown the possibility to make efficient use of women in complex research, not only aboard orbital manned complexes but also in open space”. Savitskaya had to fight against the prevailing machismo in the Soviet Cosmonauts Corps, trying not to be intimidated or discouraged by those who wondered  – during her training for the spacewalk  – why a woman should have been employed to perform welding and other maintenance tasks in orbit, apparently at the risk of burning her colleague’s suit and setting fire to the space station itself. “After my space flight, everyone had to shut up”! was her subsequent comment. During the press conference after the mission, she was unable to mask her irritation with references to the “pleasant atmosphere a woman brings to a Space Station.” She snapped: “We do not go into space to improve the mood of the crew. Women go into space because they measure up to the job. They can do it”. She then added: “At a minimum, women are equal to men in space; Women are actually better at some space tasks than men. They are better at dealing with precision tasks. They are more meticulous. They are more flexible at switching from one task to another. Men of course are better where heavy exertion is required”.

Savitskaya would return to the same issue frequently, whenever she had the opportunity. Yet, in an interview in 2011, she declared that “The ability to work in space depends on factors such as personal preparation, the physical and psychological, the ability to self-control, and personal goals… When there is professionalism, gender does not matter”.

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By the end of her second mission, Savitskaya had spent a total of 19 days, 17 hours, and 6 minutes in space. She was twice awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest honor bestowed by her country. Her patron, Glushko, eventually appointed her as the commander of a mission that was supposed to carry an all-female Soyuz crew to Salyut 7. The departure (probably aboard Soyuz T-14) would have taken place in November 1985, timed to coincide with the commemoration of the Bolshevik Revolution on November 7. Savitskaya would have been joined by engineer Yekaterina Ivanova and physician Elena Dobrokvashina. However, the plan had to be changed following the sudden loss of contact with the ageing Salyut 7 – which had temporarily been left uninhabited – when a hastily-organized emergency flight had to be launched to bring the station back to life. The all-female flight was rescheduled for Soyuz T-15 and conveniently timed to coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8, 1986, a major holiday in the Soviet Union. But Savitskaya’s (and Ivanova’s and Dobrokvashina’s) final chance to fly in space was lost when Vladimir Vasyutin fell ill aboard Salyut 7 and the crew was obliged to return to Earth ahead of schedule, on November 21, 1985. The final Soyuz T vehicle was used instead by cosmonauts Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyov in March 1986 to fly to the newly launched Mir station, before briefly flying over to the nearby orbiting Salyut 7 to complete some of the tasks planned for their predecessors and then finally returning to Mir. Officially, the all-female mission was eventually cancelled due to the pregnancy of Savitskaya (her son Konstantin was born in October 1986). Star City was temporarily left without an experienced woman cosmonaut who had previously flown and could therefore, according to the rules, take the role of commander. “She thought it was better making a child than doing a third flight”! was the subsequent sarcastic comment from the third Soviet cosmonaut, Elena Kondakova. In addition to Vasyutin’s accident, which was kept under wraps for a long time, rumors also suggested that there was strong opposition to the idea of an all-female flight at the higher levels of the Soviet space hierarchy. Ironically, the backup crew for the mission was all-male, further underlining the hypocritical reality that the all-female flight had little practical merit. By this time, half a world away at NASA, flights of women on the Shuttle had become almost “routine,” with more women on crews, so the female-only mission had lost its propaganda appeal. Although she remained on active duty as a cosmonaut, Savitskaya did not fly again. In 1987, Glushko appointed her as Deputy to the Chief Designer of the Energia project, a super-heavy lift launch vehicle that was designed by

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NPO Energia for a variety of payloads, including the Buran space shuttle – the USSR’s short-lived answer to NASA’s Space Shuttle. In 1993, Savitskaya left the space program and retired from the Russian Air Force with the rank of Major. In 1996, she was elected a member of the State Duma representing the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and was re-elected four times during the reforms of the 1990s. She currently serves as Deputy Chair of the Committee on Defense, and is also a member of the Coordination council presidium of the National Patriotic Union. Svetlana Savitskaya, the first and only female cosmonaut to walk in space, was one of the five cosmonauts who raised the Russian flag when the Sretensky Monastery choir sang the national anthem during the colorful opening ceremony for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Alongside her was the newest female cosmonaut, who would leave for space few months later: Elena Serova. Savitskaya is married to Viktor Khatkovsky, an engineer and pilot at the Ilyushin aircraft design bureau and has the one son who was born in 1986.

Sources For This Section Biography of Svetlana Savitskaya, astronautix.com. Briggs, C.S. Women Space Pioneers, pp. 42–47. Lerner Publications, Minneapolis (2005). Burns, J.F. “An Apron for Soviet Woman in Space”, New York Times (August 29, 1982), 18. Evans, B. “A Cog in a Political Machine: The Career of Svetlana Savitskaya”, americanspace.com (July 2013). Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 57–61. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Harnett, S. “Svetlana Savitskaya – Test Pilot and Cosmonaut”, australianscience.com. au (March 12, 2013). Hendrickx, B. Illness in Orbit. Spaceflight, 53(March), 104–109 (2011). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 83–91. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Mydans, S. “Female Soviet Astronaut Says that Women Have a Place in Space”, nytimes.com (August 11, 1984). Shayler, D.; Hall, R. Soyuz: A Universal Spacecraft, p. 294. Springer, London (2003). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space – Following Valentina, pp. 203–208. Springer/ Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Vis, B.  Soviet Women Cosmonaut Flight Assignments 1963–1989. Spaceflight, 41(November), 474–480 (1999). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 51–52. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

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3.2 KATHRYN SULLIVAN: THE “MOST VERTICAL PERSON IN THE WORLD” Mission

Launch

Return

STS-41G STS-31 STS-45

October 5, 1984 April 24, 1990 March 24, 1992

October 13, 1984 April 29, 1990 April 2, 1992

Kathryn Dwyer Sullivan (Fig. 3.4) was one of the first six women selected for the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1978 and holds the record as the first American woman to walk in space. She participated in three Space Shuttle missions, including the one that launched the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in 1990. Born in Paterson, New Jersey, on October 3, 1951, Sullivan considers Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, to be her hometown, since she moved there with her family when she was six. As they discovered when talking together about their childhoods, Sullivan was in the first grade at the Hayvenhurst Elementary School in Los Angeles at the same time as her friend Sally Ride, but neither could really remember the other.

Fig. 3.4.  Kathryn Sullivan. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Fig. 3.5.  Commemorative cover of Mission STS-41G, signed by Kathy Sullivan. From the Author’s collection.

An interest in space is among Sullivan’s childhood memories, something that intrigued her since she was a little girl when she remembers running out onto the front lawn with her father, an aerospace engineer working at Lockheed Corporation, to see whether they could watch the Sputnik (Fig. 3.5). “Sputnik happened when I was six; in fact, one day after my sixth birthday. I was born on October 3rd, so I’m almost a Sputnik baby”, she said, recalling the anxiety that the Sputnik going overhead represented for Americans. Given her father’s profession and the passion of her brother for flying, space became almost a family affair: “Every single issue of Life or National Geographic [magazines] in the early sixties seemed to have a really entrancing story about who are these guys, what they are going to do, and what is spaceflight like. Issues were arriving every month with these breathtaking, amazing stories about the new space frontier, the seven astronauts, Sputnik, and what it all means. It was fabulous. I ate all of that stuff up. I just was fascinated by all of those things, although nothing in my thinking at that time was oriented towards job or career”.

After graduating from Taft High School, Woodland Hills, California, in 1969, Sullivan earned a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Earth Sciences (with Honors) from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1973, having spent a year as an exchange student at the University of Bergen, Norway, in 1971–72. While in Bergen, she discovered a gift for languages and became

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fluent in Norwegian. She also found time to climb some of the highest mountains in Norway. Back in America, she decided to specialize in marine geology: “I came back from the Norway experience really bent towards earning an advanced degree in oceanography as opposed to general geology, with a bit of a picture in my mind of research oceanography as the thing I wanted to do”.

Sullivan therefore enrolled in Geology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. During a vacation in California for the Christmas holidays in December 1976, she learned by chance from her brother that NASA was searching for women astronaut candidates: “My head at that time was just on the oceanography side of things, and so I [rejected the idea]. ‘I’m working in 14,000 feet of water depth. It’s already hard enough to understand the bottom of the ocean from a surface ship, and now you want me to go 200 miles above that! This is not what you do to further understand the bottom of the ocean’. I went back to Nova Scotia, dismissing it. Within a week or so I saw one of NASA’s own small ads about the recruitment in one of the US science publications that the library received. When I read that, a different gear clicked. I recognized a strong parallel between the mission specialist role, as they described it, and the oceanographic expeditions”.

Sullivan decided to accept the challenge and filled her application. In January 1978, she was selected as a NASA astronaut and, a few months later, she received her doctorate in Geology from Dalhousie University. Over the previous five years, she had participated in several oceanographic expeditions that studied the floors of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and was offered a position for a post-graduate qualification in marine geology of depth, which involved dives in the little Alvin submersible, one of the first attempts to use a submersible to study the volcanic processes that make the ocean crust: “I had an Alvin-diving postdoc in my hands, so I wasn’t going to lose. Two fabulous things were in front of me, either of which just seemed tremendous things to get to be involved in. It made my mother a little crazy that I was either going 10,000 feet down in the ocean or 200 miles up off of the planet, and there was nothing exciting on the surface, but she quickly got over that”!

Sullivan joined NASA in 1978 and was initially assigned to the WB-57F high-altitude research aircraft program, which allowed her to be certified by the US Air Force as qualified for pressure suit operations. She subsequently worked in the support group for EVA and in the spacesuit support crew for

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several Shuttle missions. She also took on the role of Capsule Communicator (Capcom) on several flights, the Mission Control radio operator in charge of maintaining contact with the astronauts during spaceflight  – a role that is traditionally performed by a NASA astronaut. A veteran of three spaceflights, Dr. Sullivan was a Mission Specialist (MS) on STS-41G (1984), STS-31 (1990), and STS-45 (1992). The STS-41G mission launched from Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida, on October 5, 1984, the first mission with a crew of seven and also the first to include two women. The other was Sally Ride, flying on her second mission, with Sullivan due to perform an EVA and thus become the first American woman to do a spacewalk. “The attention of the media”, Sullivan recalled, “was initially focused on the second flight of Sally Ride. The flight was announced all of about five or six months after her first landing, so there was still a flood of interest surrounding her”. To those who joked that women on board would be useful for keeping the place clean, Sullivan – playing the game – retorted that she would be “happy to do the windows, but only from the outside!” One of the goals of the mission was to verify the feasibility of the Orbital Refueling System (ORS), the first attempt in space to increase a satellite’s orbital lifetime. They used a mock-up of the Landsat’s cluster of fuel valves. As hydrazine rocket fuel is extremely unstable and can explode if heated or over-­ pressurized, it was essential to make proper refueling valve connections without leaks or spills. The success of the operation  – a key task for satellite servicing – increased confidence that future satellite problems could be solved by EVAs and that satellites would no longer have to be abandoned in space as litter. To complete this task, Kathy Sullivan and her colleague David Leestma performed an EVA of almost three and a half hours. Before returning, they moved to the front of the Space Shuttle to work on a communication antenna mounted on the outside and the camera system for radar images – a system that Kathy knew well, having worked on it on the ground. Upon returning inside, the team talked to President Ronald Reagan, connected via satellite, with Sullivan telling him: “The spacewalk was one of the most fantastic experiences in my life”! Sullivan was the first woman to wear the Shuttle-era spacesuit: the 225-­ pound Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU). This was a ready-to-wear suit, not custom-made, with interchangeable arms, legs, and torso units in different sizes. She said she found it pretty comfortable to wear and work in while in zero gravity, although the fit did not quite match where her knees and elbows actually were, making it somewhat harder to move her limbs. While

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her EVA was a great satisfaction, she was also left with a little bitter taste in the mouth when it was decided that the commander of the spacewalk would be Dave Leestma. As Sullivan pointed out during the her NASA’s Oral Histories program interview: “I’m a class senior to Dave. I’ve been in the program longer than Dave. I’ve worked in the suits more than Dave. I worked this payload longer than Dave did, and I’m number two to him on the spacewalk. That’s really bad optics. It is the norm in the office, and in the culture, that class rank matters, and the senior class guy leads; that’s rarely, rarely breached, and I wasn’t real comfortable that it was breached in this case”.

On the other hand, she found it amusing that so much attention was paid to the precise time she spent on her spacewalk in October 1984, and that some at NASA would have liked it to have lasted a few minutes more than three hours and 29 minutes, in order to beat Svetlana Savitskaya who had been outside for three hours and 33 minutes. As she recalled in her Oral Histories interview: “Melodrama around the spacewalk and spacewalking records”: “The EVA flight team was actually watching the duration clock very carefully and was very mindful of where we were relative to Svetlana’s time. They were trying to figure out how do you compose a flight note to go up on air-to-ground that isn’t quite as tacky as ‘stay out for seven more minutes so you beat her’”.

Sullivan’s second mission was no less historic. In April 1990, she participated as an MS in the STS-31 mission aboard Shuttle Discovery, with the main objective to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the most productive observatory ever built and one which has revolutionized our understanding of the universe, transformed our knowledge of black holes, revealed thousands of galaxies  – among many other achievements – and measured precisely how fast the universe is expanding, As she recounted in her book,1 Sullivan’s experience as part of the NASA team that launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained HST, left metaphorical and literal “handprints on Hubble” (Fig. 3.6). When one of HST’s solar arrays jammed, Sullivan and Bruce McCandless, who had been trained for every foreseeable contingency, suited up and prepared the airlock to go outside and deploy the array manually. However, Mission Control resolved the problem via software, a good but disappointing solution for the two would-be rescuers. The crew did operate a variety of  Kathryn D.  Sullivan, Handprints on Hubble  – An Astronaut’s Story of Invention, the MIT Press Ltd, Cambridge, MA, November 5, 2009, p. 304. 1

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Fig. 3.6.  Cover commemorating the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope carried by Shuttle Discovery on STS-31, with autograph by Kathy Sullivan. From the Author’s collection.

cameras, including both the IMAX in-cabin and cargo bay cameras, for Earth observations from their record-setting altitude of 380 miles. Sullivan eventually served as Payload Commander on STS-45, the first female astronaut assigned to that position. This was the first Spacelab mission dedicated to NASA’s Mission to Planet Earth, ATLAS-1 (Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science), focused on measuring atmospheric chemistry and dynamics. During the nine-day mission, the crew operated 12 experiments to obtain a vast array of detailed measurements of atmospheric chemical and physical properties, which significantly contributed to improving our understanding of Earth’s climate and atmosphere. By the end of her third mission, Sullivan had logged more than 532 hours (22 days) in space. In 2006, she retired from the US Navy with the rank of Captain, having joined the Service in 1998 as an Oceanography Officer Reserve. After leaving NASA in 1992, she accepted a presidential appointment as Chief Scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from President George W. Bush. In this position, she oversaw a wide array of research and technology programs, ranging from climate change and marine biodiversity to mapping services and satellite instrumentation. Dr. Sullivan has used her national visibility to promote the public’s awareness and understanding of science and education. She served for almost ten years (1996–2006) as President and CEO of COSI (Center of Science and Industry) in Columbus, Ohio, one of the most important scientific museums

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in the US. She then served for five years as the first director of the Battelle Center for Mathematics and Science Education Policy at Ohio State University. In January 2011, President Barak Obama appointed Sullivan as the Commerce Department’s Assistant Secretary for Environmental Observation and Prediction, a post that also serves as Deputy Administrator of NOAA. On February 28, 2013, the president named her Acting Under Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator, which the US Senate confirmed in 2014. She held the position until January 20, 2017. Following completion of her service at NOAA, Sullivan was designated as the 2017 Charles A.  Lindbergh Chair of Aerospace History at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. After making history in space as the first American woman to spacewalk, Sullivan made oceanic history on June 7, 2020, when she reached the most extreme place on Earth, earning her the title of “most vertical person in the world.” Traveling on an expedition aboard the DSV (Deep Submergence Vehicle) Limiting Factor, a specially designed deep-sea research submersible, Sullivan descended for almost seven miles (11 km) below the ocean’s surface and reached the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, located near Guam in the western Pacific Ocean. She became the first woman (and eighth person) to reach the deepest known point in the Earth’s oceans, where she stayed for about 90 minutes2. After returning to the mothership, Sullivan called fellow astronauts aboard the ISS, around 225 miles above Earth, to share her experience. Kathy Sullivan speaks five foreign languages and is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. She has been awarded honorary degrees by Dalhousie University (1985), the State University of New York, Utica (1991), Stevens Institute of Technology (1992), Ohio Dominican University (1998), Kent State University (2002), and Brown University (2015) for her “abundant contributions to science, education and the public good, and her ongoing commitment to improving the state of our planet for future generations.” She has featured on five different stamps issued by Malawi, Madagascar (Malagasy) and Guyana and, on November 23, 2020, was listed in the prestigious “BBC’s 100 Women”, which included the 100 most inspiring and influential women from around the world for 2020.

 In a fascinating coincidence, both a Shuttle orbiter and a seafloor depression were named after the HMS Challenger, the British Royal Navy survey ship that sailed the globe from 1872 to 1876. In 1875, it was the first to record the depth of what would later be known as Challenger Deep. 2

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Sources For This Section Diaz-Sprague, R. “From the Stars, Down to Earth: A Conversation with Kathy Sullivan”, myhero.com (March 10, 2005). Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 99–104. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Official biography of Kathryn D. Sullivan, jsc.nasa.gov (April 2014). Murphy, H, First American Woman to Walk in Space Reaches Deepest Spot in the Ocean in www.nytimes.com (June 8, 2020) Pearlman, R. Astronaut Kathy Sullivan is first woman to dive to Challenger Deep in www.collectspace.com (June 8, 2020) Personal contacts by e-mail in May 2016. Ross-Nazzal, J. “Kathryn Sullivan: Oral History Transcript”, jsc.nasa.gov (May 10, 2007). Ross-Nazzal, J. “Kathryn Sullivan: Oral History Transcript”, jsc.nasa.gov (September 11, 2007). Ross-Nazzal, J. “Kathryn Sullivan: Oral History Transcript”, jsc.nasa.gov (March 12, 2008). Ross-Nazzal, J. “Kathryn Sullivan: Oral History Transcript”, jsc.nasa.gov (May 28, 2009). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space – Following Valentina, pp. 219–221, 257, 260. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005).

3.3 KATHRYN THORNTON: THE “SPACEWALKER MOM” Mission

Launch

Return

STS-33 STS-49 STS-61 STS-73

November 22, 1989 May 7, 1992 December 2, 1993 October 20, 1995

November 27, 1989 May 16, 1992 December 13, 1993 November 5, 1995

Kathryn Cordell Ryan “K.T.” Thornton (Fig. 3.7) was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on August 17, 1952, the second of six siblings in a restaurant-owning family. As a child, she participated in the Girl Scouts and played softball. Thornton graduated from Sidney Lanier High School in 1970. She later earned a BSc in Physics at Auburn University in 1974 and went on to earn both a Master of Science (MSc) and a Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Virginia, in 1977 and 1979, respectively.

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Fig. 3.7.  Kathryn Thornton. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

While in graduate school, Thornton participated in the nuclear physics research programs at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility, and the Space Radiation Effects Laboratory. Her work included statistical analyses of heavy-­ ion nuclear reactions and light-ion production from bombardment of various nuclei with high-energy ion beams. As an expert in nuclear physics, she became a member of the main professional associations and oriented her career on a more academic track. After earning her doctorate in 1979, Thornton was awarded a NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship, allowing her to continue her research at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, West Germany. In 1980, Thornton returned to Charlottesville, Virginia, and began working as a physicist for the US Army Foreign Science and Technology Center. She married physicist Stephen Thornton, whom she had met at University of Virginia. They would go on to have three children. One day, Thornton happened to see an announcement that NASA was selecting the next group of astronauts (Fig. 3.8). That ad changed her life: “It was a notice from NASA. I hadn’t really thought about becoming an astronaut before, but I decided to send in the application. I figured all they could do was say, ‘no’”. She was one

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Fig. 3.8.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-33, signed by Kathryn Thornton. From the Author’s collection.

of just 120 to make the cut from a pool of 5,000 applicants and was invited to Houston for an interview. She said: “It was a week-long process of mostly medical tests, but there was also an interview with the selection board and visits with astronauts to find out what the jobs were like and that sort of thing. I met so many interesting people and I had a great time, but I just knew when I left there that I would never see Houston again”.

Two months later, Thornton instead received another call announcing that she had been selected as one of the 17 astronaut candidates of Group 10: “There were about 5,000 applications in that round and they interviewed about 120 of us, about 20 at a time for the next six weeks. Then they selected 17… to this day I believe they called the wrong number when they called me”.

Leaving Virginia and moving to Houston was a tough decision, as her husband was a professor of physics at the University of Virginia, and their daughter was only two years old. They decided, however, that it was an opportunity that could not be passed up and, in July of 1984, Thornton packed her bags and moved to Houston with her daughter. She confesses: “When I first went down there, I didn’t know which end of the Shuttle was up; I mean I knew absolutely nothing, I didn’t really know what I had gotten myself into, to tell the truth, but it sounded like a good deal”.

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And so she started what she calls “the greatest job in the world,” that took her into space four times. After the basic astronaut training, Thornton worked in NASA’s Mission Development Branch and the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL). However, the Challenger tragedy, on January 28, 1986, delayed all space activities for more than two and a half years. During that time, Thornton served as a team member of the Vehicle Integration Test Team (VITT) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), taking care of payload integration. When Shuttle flights resumed towards the end of 1988, she served in the Mission Control Center in Houston as a spacecraft Capcom. Her first flight assignment came in November 1989 – when she was already a mother of two daughters – as an MS aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery during STS-33, carrying a secret Department of Defense (DOD) payload. After waiting a long time, Thornton was anxious to fly: “By the time you board the Shuttle you have done a lot of training and you are just anxious to get on board. You know something could go wrong, but waiting another day or two, a week or even five years isn’t going to change that”.

The mission was launched at night from KSC in Florida on November 22, 1989. Thornton was the first woman to fly on a secret military mission, and she and her crewmate Story Musgrave were the first civilians assigned to a military Shuttle flight. Sources have said that the DOD protested the use of civilians on such a mission, but NASA refused to make a change. Despite the details being classified, because of the DOD’s reluctance to divulge flight and cargo information, speculation abounded on what was inside Discovery’s payload bay, pointing out that the Soviets would know exactly what was aboard the Shuttle within hours of launch, and the only people who would not know would be the Americans. The Washington Post was denounced for that front-page story. It turned out that, in addition to conducting a variety of routine engineering and scientific experiments, the mission launched a 6,000-pound “Magnum” ELINT (ELectronic INTtelligence) spy satellite to ferret out voice, telemetry and other broadcast signals from Soviet military installations, and overhear military and diplomatic communications from the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states. Apart from a bit of motion sickness on the first day, Thornton found the flight absolutely amazing: “I had a broad grin on my face for a month and I just couldn’t get it off, I was so happy. I was ready to go and would have climbed aboard another Shuttle the next day. The sad part about coming back is that you have to wait a long time before you get another Shuttle assignment”.

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For Thornton, it would be three years before that next assignment, during which time she worked on the ground in the simulators, with Mission Control, and trained continuously, while also raising two daughters and having a third baby: “Being an astronaut is a full-time job. If you are not training for your own mission, then you are supporting another mission. There are lots of ground jobs to do, such as working with mission control, participating in tests, and working in the simulator. So basically you stay in training all the time”.

In 1992, Thornton participated in the maiden flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, mission STS-49, whose main goal was to retrieve, repair, and re-­ launch Intelsat (the International Telecommunications Satellite). During this mission, the crew completed a record four EVAs and also set another EVA record: the first three-person EVA. NASA learned a great deal about spacewalking from this mission and Thornton was one of the EVA crew, taking her first spacewalk in a 350-pound suit for seven hours and 45 minutes, so becoming the second American woman to perform an EVA: “When you climb into the suit you immediately add an extra 350 pounds to your body weight and it restricts your ability to control it somewhat, but after you have been out there a while, your body begins to adjust”.

During the EVA, Thornton and Tom Akers also demonstrated construction techniques for the Freedom Space Station (the forerunner of ISS) and tested the ASEM approach to construction. For this purpose, they assembled a truss segment, with both astronauts floating freely. It was a very hard task, as Thornton recalled: “Every minute was a working minute”. In 1993, she was assigned as an MS EVA crewmember to her third mission, STS-61 aboard Endeavour, whose goal was to capture the Hubble telescope. The world’s first space-based optical telescope had been sent into orbit with a flawed mirror, and the STS-61 crew would and install corrective optics on it. The four-person EVA crew had to complete a record five space walks to restore the Hubble to full capacity. Thornton participated in two of the spacewalks, both performed with Thomas Akers. The first, lasting six hours and 36 minutes, was made on December 6 and the second, lasting seven hours and 21 minutes, on December 8. Across her three spacewalks, Thornton totaled 21 hours in open space. She became the third woman to perform EVA (and the second American after Kathryn D. Sullivan) and the first to make more than one. Her record was only surpassed in 2007 by Sunita Williams, during the ISS Expedition-14 flight.

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For her fourth and final flight, on Columbia STS-73 in 1995, Thornton served as Payload Commander of USML-2, the second mission of Spacelab configured as the United States Microgravity Laboratory. By the end of her fourth flight, Thornton had logged over 975 hours (40 days) in space to go with her 21 hours of EVA. Another sort of first occurred during the EVAs on STS-61, when Thornton used a power screwdriver from the Shuttle’s toolkit. The video clip of her impressively working in open space was later used by NBC in an episode of the series Home Improvements, in which astronaut Tim Taylor (actor Tim Allen) manages to create his first “intergalactic screw-up.” Thornton, by then a mother of three girls, was dubbed “Space Walker Mom,” but said her daughters were not all that impressed that she was an astronaut mom, because “It’s all they’d ever known”. In 1996, after delivering a graduation speech at the University of Virginia, Kathy Thornton was asked by the university to return to the academic community. She decided to seize the opportunity and left NASA on August 1, 1996: “I loved every minute of it”, she said, “but it was time to return to Charlottesville and have more time with my family”. That same year, Dr. Thornton joined the Engineering Faculty and, three years later, became Associate Dean for graduate programs. In addition to managing the engineering graduate programs and mentoring undergrads, she is also a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Since leaving NASA, Thornton has served on several review committees and task groups, including a team to evaluate potential plans for Mars exploration in 2000, the National Research Council Study, Science Opportunities Enabled by Constellation (2007) as co-chair, and the NASA Return to Flight Task Group (2006), which evaluated NASA’s progress in meeting the goals set by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board prior to resumption of Space Shuttle flights following the loss of Shuttle Columbia in 2003. In 2010, she was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame, only the third woman to hold this honor at that time. Also in 2010, Thornton joined the board of Space Foundation, a nonprofit global space advocate organization founded in 1983. She became chairwoman in 2019. She is also on the Board of Directors of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, In her spare time, Thornton enjoys skiing and scuba diving. In 2019 she completed a thru-hike of the 2,200-mile (3.500 km) Appalachian Trail. She also enjoys flying, and says: “I have my pilot’s license, so I like to go out sometimes and just defy gravity”.

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Sources For This Section Barker, M. “Kathryn Thornton ’74: A Leader Among Women in Space”, Journey & Spectrum (2006), 20–22. Bronstein, N. “Prestigious Awards Acknowledge Kathryn Thornton’s Stellar Accomplishments as a Leader of Women in Space”, seas.virginia.edu (May 24, 2010). Cavallaro, U. NASA-ESA Hubble Space Telescope: The Greatest Leap Forward in Astronomy since Galileo. Astrophile, 57(1, #317), 13–19 (2015). Harland, D.M. The Story of the Space Shuttle, pp. 181–182. Springer Praxis Books, New York (2004). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 187–188. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Official biography of Kathryn Thornton, jsc.nasa.gov/bios (January 1996). Panwar P., Former Astronaut & Space Foundation Chairwoman Kathryn C. Thornton: 5 Steps We Must Take To Truly Create an Inclusive, Representative and Equitable Society, in medium.com (Aug 5, 2020) Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 71–72. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

3.4 LINDA GODWIN: PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY Mission

Launch

Return

STS-37 STS-59 STS-76 STS-108

April 5, 1991 April 9, 1994 March 22, 1996 December 5, 2001

April 11, 1991 April 20, 1994 March 31, 1996 December 17, 2001

Newspaper headlines in 2010 read: “Astronauts Land MU Faculty Positions” when Linda Godwin, and her husband and fellow astronaut Steven Nagel, decided to leave NASA after 30 years and return to Columbia, Missouri, to teach at the university’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. Godwin explained: “It was a tough decision because we had been in Houston for a long time, but I knew it would be rewarding to come back and work with students. I hope to be able to add my efforts to those of others here at MU to interest students in math and science. I hope to use my experiences at NASA in that effort and educate students about opportunities for their futures”.

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Like her husband (who died in August 2014 aged 67), Godwin has flown four times on Space Shuttle missions, including one flight together before they married. Linda Maxine Godwin (Fig. 3.9) was born in hospital in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, on July 2, 1952, but considers Jackson, Missouri, to be her hometown. She graduated from Jackson High School in 1970: “I grew up with a really big interest in math and science; I liked it. I grew up watching a lot of the coverage of the early US space program, all the way back, starting with Mercury and then through Gemini and Apollo, and of course to the Moon as the main part of the Apollo program, and that fueled an interest in the science that I had already. So I was very interested in working for NASA, but I didn’t see a path available to me until I was in graduate school working on a Ph.D. in Physics, and NASA began hiring astronauts for the Shuttle program, and for the first time including women”.

Godwin attained her BSc degree in Mathematics and Physics from Southeast Missouri State University in 1974, her MSc degree from the University of Missouri in 1976, and her doctorate in Physics in 1980 from the same university, with research on “low temperature solid state physics, including studies

Fig. 3.9.  Linda Godwin. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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in electron tunneling and vibrational modes of absorbed molecular species on metallic substrates at liquid helium temperatures.” She published the results of her research in several scientific journals: “When I was already two-thirds of my way through a Ph.D., NASA announced they were hiring Shuttle astronauts… a new category of science astronauts called Mission Specialists, and for the first time they were hiring women. And I was fortunate enough to have chosen some educational routes that put me in a position where I could at least have a shot at it, so that’s when I really began to think about applying”.

Her first application to become an astronaut in 1978 was not successful. After trying again in 1980, she was invited to Houston for an interview and was offered a job as an engineer at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, where she worked in payload integration (Spacelab and attached payloads) and as a flight controller and payloads officer on several Shuttle missions. Five years later she tried again and, in June 1985, became one of the 13 astronaut candidates selected by NASA for Group 11 (Fig. 3.10). Her first technical assignment was in the SAIL, working with flight software verification. She then coordinated mission development activities for the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS), deployable payloads, and Spacelab missions.

Fig. 3.10.  Cover commemorating the launch of Shuttle mission STS-76, signed by Linda Godwin. From the Author’s collection.

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As Assistant to the Director of Flight Crew Operations, Godwin supported several Shuttle missions. She held different positions in the Astronaut Office before becoming its Deputy Chief in 1993 (the first woman to assume that role), a position she held for seven years. She then became Chief of the Astronaut Office’s Capcom Branch and Assistant to the Director for Exploration at JSC. Across her four spaceflights, Dr. Godwin logged over 38 days in space, including over ten hours of EVA on two spacewalks. During her first mission (STS-37 in 1991), Godwin was an MS. The mission deployed the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO) to study gamma ray sources in the universe. At 17.5 tons, it was the heaviest payload ever carried by the Shuttle and was deployed by Godwin using the Remote Manipulator System (RMS, the robot arm). She flew this mission with Commander Steven R. Nagel, whom she married a few years later in 1995. For her second mission (STS-59  in 1994), Godwin was the Payload Commander in charge of the Space Radar Laboratory (SRL), which consisted of three large imaging radars operating in three frequencies and four polarizations, providing information about Earth’s surface over a wide range of scales not discernible with previous single-frequency experiments. One of the goals was to map the changing global environment and to distinguish human-­ induced environmental changes against natural changes. This was the first of two SRL missions flown in 1994. She was named Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office in March 1993 while training for this mission. In 1996, Godwin flew aboard Atlantis STS-76, the third docking mission to the Russian space station Mir. One of the goals of the mission was to transfer her colleague Shannon Lucid to the station to begin a continuous US astronaut presence aboard Mir for the next two years. Using the Spacehab pressurized logistic module, the crew also delivered 2,200 kg of science and mission hardware, food, water, and air to Mir, and repacked over 500 kg of items no longer needed on the station for return to Earth, together with US and European Space Agency (ESA) science, Russian hardware, and the “Biorack,” a small multi-purpose laboratory used during this mission to research plant and animal cellular function. Godwin recalled: “The Spacehab module had a suite of experiments developed by the European Space Agency. I and Ron Sega were the operators for the experiments; we had spent time training at the facility in Florida and met many of the Principal Investigators. During the mission we operated the experiments, even while we were docked to the Mir. I enjoyed working with that program”.

Another important assignment for Godwin was the first flight of Kidsat, the program initiated by Sally Ride  – at that time professor at the UCSD

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(University of California, San Diego) – to allow middle-school students to use a digital camera aboard the Space Shuttle to capture photographs of specific places on Earth for science and education. On her third mission (STS-76), Godwin both flew on and stepped out of Space Shuttle Atlantis, becoming the fourth woman to walk in space. She performed a six-hour EVA, together with her colleague Richard Clifford, to mount experiment packages on the Mir docking module to detect and record contamination in the space environment around the station over the next 18 months. Describing her spacewalk, Godwin said: “When you have to make yourself pause and you actually look around, you can see some part of the space station with Earth in the background. You can see that from inside the station or the Shuttle, but to be out there in your own space suit and looking at it, it’s pretty awesome”.

This was a Shuttle-based EVA, since the docking module of the Russian segment for EVA purposes fell under the jurisdiction of the Russian cosmonauts. But it was also the first American EVA while docked to an orbiting space station since the end of the Skylab program in 1974. On Endeavour mission STS-108, officially nicknamed “International Space Station Utilization Flight-1,” (ISS-UF-1), Godwin visited the ISS five years after her previous flight. She was one of the few women astronauts to visit both Mir and the ISS. She recalled: “They were both quite interesting to visit – of course! Mir felt older. The ISS is larger, even when I visited, and more familiar as we spent more time in the ISS simulator. Both were fantastic experiences, to rendezvous with an outpost in Earth orbit and get to stay a few days”.

One of the goals of the STS-108 mission was to deliver the Expedition-4 crew and return the Expedition-3 crew to Earth. The mission carried the “Raffaello” Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM), built in Turin, Italy, by Alenia Spazio, for the second time and over 2,700 kg of supplies, logistics, and science experiments were unloaded. Godwin was primary RMS operator for the mission, responsible for transferring supplies and equipment to the station. Using the Shuttle’s robotic arm, she picked up the MPLM from the Shuttle’s payload bay and attached it to the ISS for unloading, supported by Mark Kelly. The two astronauts later relocated it into the Shuttle payload bay for return to Earth, once filled with the experiment results and unwanted material. Godwin was also loadmaster in charge of keeping track of the unloading

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and reloading for return. During this mission, she also performed her second EVA (four hours 12 minutes), the main objective of which was to install thermal blankets on mechanisms that rotate the main solar arrays of the ISS. She explained in an interview just before the flight: “UF-1 is still kind of the focal point for saying this is now the transition time between enough major construction that we have a self-sustaining, self-­sufficient station up there, and so we’re kind of ready to bridge on to the next stage of using it for the purpose of why we built it. So we are taking up science, we are taking up a lot of supplies. And so not only are our astronaut crews up there on the ISS maintainers and builders of station, now they’ve become researchers as well”.

Before undocking from the station on December 16, the team deployed the satellite STARSHINE-2 (Student Tracked Atmospheric Research Satellite Heuristic International Networking Experiment). “It’s a small satellite”, Godwin explained, “but it’s made up of many mirrors that have been worked on literally by thousands of students who have polished these mirrors to a very perfect, smooth surface, and then they’ve been assembled on this satellite”. This was the second of three small, optically reflective spherical satellites, constructed largely from spare flight hardware and fitted with almost 900 small aluminum mirrors that had been machined by technology students in Utah, and eventually polished by 25,000 students at 660 schools in 26 countries around the world. Godwin explained: “It stays in orbit for a period of time and because it’s so reflective, and it also has a very slow spin on it so it kind of seems to shine as it rotates, the students on the ground can see it, and they’ll be able to track it. And they can do their measurements, make calculations on where it is and how high it is and how its orbit is changing, so it gives them a lot of experience in using mathematics to look at orbital data”.

In her last few years at NASA, Godwin was the representative of the Astronaut Office in the Constellation program. She said: “The program… had a suite of vehicles: a new rocket, a crew module, and potentially a lunar lander although that was never very developed”. Her tasks involved following the requirements, the budget, and the design. In 2010, with the imminent closure of the Shuttle program and the drastic decrease in the probability of flying, Linda Godwin was one of many astronauts who left NASA looking for new opportunities elsewhere, and she returned to the University of Missouri (MU) where she got the start that had

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allowed her to become an astronaut. For eight years she enjoyed teaching as a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Missouri, until she retired. Godwin is a member of the American Physical Society, the Ninety-Nines, Inc., the Association of Space Explorers, and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

Sources For This Section Anon. “Astronauts Deploy Satellite to Be Tracked by Students”, spaceflightnow.com (December 16, 2011). Lindsey, L. “Two Former Astronauts Make MU Their Home”, Missouri.edu (August 22, 2011). Official biography of Linda M. Godwin, jsc.nasa.gov/Bios (August 2010). Personal communication of the Author with Linda Godwin in April and May 2016. Pojmann, K. “To Mizzou and Beyond”, mizzouwire.missouri.edu (October 13, 2011). “Preflight Interview: Linda Godwin”, STS-108, spaceflight.nasa.gov (July 4, 2002). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space – Following Valentina, pp. 257, 269, 275–276, 295. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 75–76. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

3.5 TAMARA JERNIGAN: AN ASTROPHYSICIST AMONG THE STARS Mission

Launch

Return

STS-40 STS-52 STS-67 STS-80 STS-96

June 5, 1991 October 22, 1992 March 2, 1995 November 19, 1996 May 27, 1999

June 14, 1991 November 1, 1992 March 18, 1995 December 7, 1996 June 6, 1999

Tamara “Tammy” Elizabeth Jernigan (Fig. 3.11) was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on May 7, 1959. She is one of the six women spacefarers with five Shuttle flights to their credit. She graduated in 1977 from the Santa Fe High School, in Santa Fe, California, where she was also awarded a trophy as the best female athlete in Santa Fe Springs’ Lakeview School and was volleyball “Player of the Year” in 1977. She enjoys volleyball, racquetball, softball, and flying, and she had been a successful student and athlete as far back as she can remember. As with all children at the time, she was fascinated by the Moon landings:

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Fig. 3.11.  Tamara Jernigan. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

“I think my first memory of aspiring to the astronaut program was when I was a kid and we put the first man on the Moon. I remember going out the front door and wanting to look at the Moon knowing that there were humans on the Moon”.

But at that time, she was not thinking too seriously about taking part: “I think my more serious interest came when I was a sophomore at Stanford. I was a physics major. In 1978, they started taking astronauts from the scientific community in earnest and also taking women. I think it was in 1978 that I thought I might have a chance to be selected”.

College acceptance letters arrived from Princeton, the Air Force Academy, Stanford, and University of California-Berkeley. After a semester at Princeton, Jernigan transferred to Stanford: “Stanford had excellent physics and athletic programs, especially volleyball”. After earning a BSc degree in Physics (with honors) from Stanford University, in June 1981, she joined the Theoretical Studies Branch at NASA Ames Research Center in California as a research scientist, where she contributed to the study of bipolar outflows in regions of

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Fig. 3.12.  Commemorative cover postmarked on the day of the launch of mission STS-40 and autographed by Tamara Jernigan. From the Author’s collection.

star formation, gamma ray busters, and shock-wave phenomena in the interstellar medium. In 1983, Jernigan earned an MSc degree in Engineering Science at Stanford University, and followed that up in 1985 with an MSc degree in Astronomy from the University of California-Berkeley. That same year, she was selected as a Mission Specialist (MS), one of 13 new candidates (from among 792 women and 4,142 men) for Group 11 of NASA’s Astronaut Corps (Fig. 3.12). Aged just 26, Jernigan became the youngest NASA astronaut. Her first assignment was software verification in the SAIL and she was later in charge of operations coordination on secondary payloads. She was also a spacecraft communicator (Capcom) in Mission Control, Houston, for five Shuttle missions: STS-30, STS-28, STS-34, STS-33, and STS-32. In 1988, Jernigan earned her doctorate in Space Physics and Astronomy from Rice University. Over the years, she held different positions in the Astronaut Office, including Chief of the Mission Development Branch and Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office. A veteran of five Shuttle missions, Jernigan logged 1,512 hours (approximately 62 days) in space and 7 hours 55 minutes on her one EVA. She was the first female professional astronomer to fly in space. She was a Mission Specialist (MS) on Space Shuttle Columbia for STS-40 (June 5–14, 1991), where she flew with two female colleagues, Millie Hughes-Fulford and Margaret Rhea Seddon. This mission carried the first Spacelab into orbit since October 1985 and, for the first time, the research was entirely dedicated to life science as

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Spacelab Life Sciences-1 (SLS-1). During the nine-day flight, crewmembers performed experiments which explored how humans, animals and cells respond to microgravity and readapt to Earth’s gravity on return. SLS-1 performed the most detailed and interrelated physiological measurements since Skylab, two decades before. The mission investigated materials science, plant biology, and cosmic radiation. In her limited spare time, Jernigan enjoyed watching Earth: “The stars provide a beautiful view but the most beautiful of all is the Earth rim and going over the various continents and over the vast oceans and enjoying the beauty of our own planet”.

For her next mission, the ten-day flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia on STS-52, Jernigan flew as MS with primary responsibility for the deployment of the Italian satellite LAGEOS-II (Laser Geodynamic Satellite). Launched from the Shuttle using the innovative IRIS launcher (Italian Research Interim Stage), LAGEOS-II would be used to measure the movement of Earth’s crust. The mission also carried the US Microgravity Payload 1 (USMP-1) into orbit. During this mission, research for the future implementation of the Freedom space station, that later evolved into the International Space Station (ISS), was also conducted, while the Space Vision System (SVS) developed by the Canadian Space Agency was tested using a small target assembly released from the RMS. This flight demonstrated the Shuttle’s flexibility, by being a satellite launcher, a space laboratory, and a technology test bed, all in the same mission. As an astronomer, Jernigan was the Payload Commander during the record-­ setting 16-day Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-67 mission, primarily responsible for Astro-2, the second flight of the Astro observatory  – a unique complement of three telescopes that was aimed at exploring 23 different science programs. Working intensively in three shifts, the crew conducted observations around the clock to study the far ultraviolet spectra of faint astronomical objects and the polarization of ultraviolet light coming from hot stars and distant galaxies. “We want to bring home a wealth of information on the universe we all live in”, Jernigan said. On the recommendation of the astronomers who had discovered the spectacular explosion of a binary star system just before the mission launched, the crew were able to perform ultraviolet observations of the event still in progress, unhindered by Earth’s atmosphere. They also photographed the effects of a recent eruption that had taken place on the surface of Io, one of Jupiter’s moons. This Shuttle flight is also remembered for its contribution to a record 13 astronauts and cosmonauts being space at the same time. In addition to the crew of seven on the Shuttle, there were three resident cosmonauts aboard

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Mir as well as the three crew of Soyuz TM-21, which had arrived at the Russian station to bring the new crew of Expedition Mir-18. Jernigan flew again as MS for the Columbia STS-80 mission, which successfully deployed and retrieved the Wake Shield Facility (WSF) and the Orbiting Retrievable Far and Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrometer (ORFEUS) satellites. The free-flying WSF created a super vacuum in its wake and grew thin film wafers for use in semiconductors and other high-tech electrical components. The ORFEUS instruments, mounted on the reusable Shuttle Pallet Satellite, studied the origin and makeup of stars. Two spacewalks planned for Jernigan and Tom Jones were cancelled in-flight due to a jammed hatch on the airlock preventing access to open space: “It was frustrating to have done all the preparation for the two spacewalks and not be able to execute them in flight. The crew wasn’t the only group of folks who were disappointed because there had been many people, many engineers and technicians on the ground who had worked very hard to prepare that hardware for flight, so the whole community was pretty disappointed”.

STS-80 was a the longest Shuttle mission ever flown at 17 days 15 hours 53 minutes. Launched on November 19, 1996, it was scheduled to return on December 5, but weather conditions forced the return to be delayed by two days. Jernigan finally performed her first spacewalk during her final mission, STS-96 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery (May 27 to June 6, 1999), where she flew as an MS along with Ellen Ochoa and Julie Payette. This was a ten-day mission during which the crew performed the first docking to the ISS, which at the time consisted of only two modules: the Russian Zarya and the American module Unity. During the rendezvous, Jernigan and Ochoa were responsible for looking at the RPOP program that provided information about the trajectory and controlled approaching and docking to the station, as well as for opening the ISS and for carrying out pressure checks and air sampling before entering. Jernigan was then in charge of delivering and storing four tons of logistics and supplies to the Zarya module (or “Functional Cargo Block”), in preparation for the arrival of the first crew to live on the station at the beginning of the next year. The cargo was contained in the Spacehab pressurized module. The STS-96 mission finally brought to fruition a prediction she had made, in what was perhaps her first interview ever at the beginning of her career released 20 years before to the Los Angeles Times, when she said: “In 20 years, I think I’ll be part of a space station [crew]”. Jernigan’s EVA, with Daniel Barry, was required to install some devices outside the ISS. The two

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were supported by Ellen Ochoa, who was inside the Shuttle operating Discovery’s robot arm, and Canada’s Julie Payette, who coordinated the effort from the aft flight deck. Before the mission, Jernigan said: “We’re taking up two cranes. We have a US crane and we also have a Russian crane that we’re going to take up with us and install externally during the spacewalk on the International Space Station. We’re using the arm to transport large pieces of structure from the Space Shuttle to the International Space Station and, in some instances, operating at the upper limit of the reach of the arm”.

During her space flight, she experienced the energizing feeling of looking back at Earth: “From that vantage point, the planet looks very fragile, with this incredibly thin atmosphere that protects all human life. That view really instills in us the sense that we all have to protect our planet and that we’re all in this together”.

Before returning to Earth on June 5, Discovery deployed the small STARSHINE-1, the first of the three small, optically reflective spherical satellites, fitted with almost 900 small aluminum mirrors. The US co-operative program was an experiment sponsored by the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). The students could track the spacecraft they had helped to “build” and use it to measure upper atmospheric density and the response of that region of the atmosphere to solar storms. After marrying astronaut Peter J.K. “Jeff” Wisoff in 1999, Jernigan and her husband left NASA in 2001, She joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, as Deputy Director. The Laboratory applies science and engineering to achieve breakthroughs in counterterrorism and nonproliferation, defense and intelligence, energy and environmental security. Since 2017 Jernigan has been Senior Advisor to the Laboratory Director’s Office of Defense Coordination.

Sources For This Section Briggs, C.S. Women Space Pioneers, pp. 95–98. Lerner Publications, Minneapolis (2005). Dreyfuss, J. “Two Adventures in Outer Space Are Heading for the Launching Pad: All Systems Go for Tamara Jernigan, Nation’s Youngest Astronaut Candidate”, latimes.com (July 1, 1985). Official NASA biography of Tamara Jernigan, jsc.nasa.gov (November 2001). “Preflight Interview: Tamara Jernigan”, STS-96, spaceflight.nasa.gov (July 4, 2002).

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Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space – Following Valentina, pp. 257–258, 263, 272, 276, 290–291. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 79–80. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

3.6 TRACY CALDWELL DYSON: LEAD VOCALIST FOR MAX Q Mission

Launch

Return

STS-118 Expedition 23/24 (Soyuz TMA-18)

August 8, 2007 April 2, 2010

August 21, 2007 September 25, 2010

Tracy Ellen Caldwell Dyson (Fig. 3.13) was born in Arcadia, California, on August 14, 1969, the younger of two girls, and moved to different places in southern California. In an interview on the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing, she said she was “the first astronaut who was born after Apollo 11.”

Fig. 3.13.  Tracy Caldwell Dyson. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Fig. 3.14.  Commemorative cover postmarked on the day of landing for Shuttle mission STS-118 and autographed by Tracy Caldwell Dyson. From the Author’s collection.

She enjoys hiking, running, weight training, softball, and basketball. She also inherited a love for craftsmanship and working with tools from her father, who was an electrician. Caldwell Dyson said: “Christa McAuliffe inspired me to search and reach for a goal that I thought was unreachable” (Fig. 3.14). “I became serious about wanting to be an astronaut when I was a junior in high school. Astronauts were test pilots to me, they were the guys with ‘the right stuff,’ the Apollo mission astronauts, and I didn’t have any interest in being in the military. It was 1986 and there was a lot of talk in newspaper and TV: it was the year that Christa McAuliffe was launching into space, the first teacher to be in space. I thought ‘wow, teachers impact my life every day, and not just one teacher but I have six teachers; my coach on the track team was a teacher, my basketball coach is a teacher.’ You start to realize that I’ve got something in common with this person, and if a teacher has ‘the right stuff’ and a teacher’s teaching me all day long (I spend more time with my teachers than I do with my parents) then it became very interesting to me. So I started to look more into what these astronauts were and I found out that they weren’t just pilots, they were called mission specialists, and these mission specialists were engineers and they were scientists, and I didn’t consider myself much of a scientist at that age, but I was interested in science. I really enjoyed, of all things, chemistry and all the things that it answered like why does water boil, why is the sky blue, what makes a bush a bush, a tree a tree, all sorts of things.

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“I also learned that at that time it was transitioning from the notion of a Space Station Freedom to an International Space Station, and the fact that astronauts had to keep in shape, and they were going to be building this space station. There were all these aspects of this that fit my life-style. I was about to graduate from high school, I was entering my senior year, and I didn’t know that I wanted to do later on in life. My parents had suggested ‘why don’t you write a list of all the things you like to do?’ So on that list were things like: I want to be athletic, I want to keep working out; I want to do science; I want to work with tools (I was an electrician at a pretty young age working for my father and I loved working with tools); I was learning languages (I started Spanish, I knew sign language). I was pretty motivated to learn a different culture, how to communicate. When I looked at that list and then I looked at what astronauts were doing, this seemed like a pretty good match, and that was the diving board that I sprang from into college and graduate school and the path that I took to become an astronaut”.

Caldwell Dyson earned her BSc degree in Chemistry from California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), in 1993. During her time at the university, she competed as both a sprinter and a long jumper. As an undergraduate researcher at CSUF, she designed and implemented electronics and hardware associated with a laser-ionization, and a time-of-flight mass spectrometer for studying atmospherically relevant gas-phase chemistry. During that time, she also worked as an electrician/inside wireman for her father’s company, doing commercial and light industrial construction. At the University of California at Davis (UCD), Caldwell Dyson taught general chemistry in the laboratory and began her graduate research. Her dissertation work focused on investigating molecular-level surface reactivity and kinetics of metal surfaces using electron spectroscopy, laser desorption, and Fourier transform mass-spectrometry techniques. She also designed and built peripheral components for a variable-­ temperature, ultra-high-vacuum scanning tunneling microscopy system, and developed methods of chemical ionization for spectral interpretation of trace compounds. Her work was published in scientific journals and presented in many papers at technical conferences. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from UCD in 1997. She recalls: “Upon the completion of graduate school, I decided it was time to apply [to be an astronaut]. At the same time I submitted my astronaut application, I began a postdoctoral fellowship in chemistry at the University of California at Irvine. I waited about a year for a call back from NASA and the chance to interview. I didn’t know what to expect. The only jobs I had had before were for my father, student jobs, and a research assistant job. I was nervous to say the least, but I decided that the best course of action was to just be myself; it was my only chance at capturing my dream. Several months later, while at work in my lab at UC Irvine, I received a

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phone call. I was completely frozen. The Chief of the Astronaut Office was on the line and asked if I wanted to begin training as an astronaut for NASA. I was so shocked that I hyperventilated and was unable to speak, so he then asked me to consider the position and that he would call back later to get my final decision. This gave me plenty of time to come back to reality and run ecstatically around the science building, embracing my friends and sharing the great news with everyone. Later, when he called back, he asked if I would only share the news with my immediate family. Unfortunately, it was a little too late for that”!

Selected for NASA’s Group 17  in June 1998, Caldwell Dyson reported for training that August (Fig. 3.15). She was initially assigned to the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL) in charge of checking the Shuttle’s flight software. The following year, she was assigned to the Astronaut Office ISS Operations Branch as a “Russian Crusader,” participating in the testing and integration of Russian hardware and software products developed for the International Space Station (ISS). In 2000, she was assigned as prime Crew Support Astronaut for the ISS Expedition-5 crew, serving as their representative on technical and operational issues throughout the training and on-orbit phase of their mission. During ISS Expeditions-4 through -6, she served as an ISS Capcom in Mission Control, and also worked supporting launch and landing operations at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida. She was then the lead Capcom for Expedition-11. In August 2007, Caldwell Dyson flew as MS-2/FE (Flight Engineer) on Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-118. The 22nd Shuttle flight to the ISS, the mission delivered 2.7 tons of cargo, equipment, and scientific experiments contained in the Spacehab Logistics Single Module, and returned to Earth with some 1.8 tons of hardware and equipment that was no longer needed. She flew with her colleague Barbara Morgan, who had been the backup for Christa McAuliffe, one of the crew that was killed during the Challenger accident in January 1986. The STS-118 crew successfully added truss

Fig. 3.15.  Biberpost private stamp celebrating the Soyuz TMA-18 mission. Figure Credit: © Ralf Schulz/Biberpost. Reproduced with permissions. All rights reserved.

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segment S5 and a new gyroscope to the ISS. As FE, Caldwell Dyson assisted during flight deck operations on ascent and also aided in rendezvous/docking operations with the ISS.  As MS, she operated Endeavour’s robotic arm to maneuver the Orbiter Boom Sensor System (OBSS) and transfer the S5 truss segment to the space station. She also served as the “internal spacewalk choreographer,” directing the four spacewalks performed by three crewmembers. On April 4, 2010, Caldwell Dyson joined the Expedition-23 crew aboard the ISS. She lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard the Russian Soyuz TMA-18, on which she served as flight engineer. During her stay on ISS, she performed three successful contingency spacewalks to remove and replace the failed pump module on the station, logging 22 hours and 49 minutes on EVA. Caldwell Dyson also filmed a six-minute video for deaf children to give them a glimpse of what life as an astronaut is like and encourage deaf students to pursue science and possibly even aim to be a part of NASA3. While American Sign Language (ASL) is the fourth most commonly used language in the United States, it had never before been used on the space station. She said: “During my time in space, one of my favorite things I was able to do was make a video for the deaf community to tell them about the International Space Station and life onboard. On the space station, the whole crew was ecstatic about the video and fascinated to learn some sign language. Each crewmate had a speaking role in the video. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to invite everyone on board, no matter what language they spoke”.

In the video she also mentioned what inspired her, as a hearing person, to learn sign language: “A long time ago, when I was a young university student, I met a girl who’s deaf; she’s same as me, a sprinter on the track team. So she taught me how to sign”.

A personal experience opened her eyes to the challenges deaf students face every day, when Caldwell Dyson met a deaf student while teaching chemistry in graduate school. The experience had a deep and lasting impact on her: “One thing I have learned is that deaf people can do anything. The only thing they can't do is hear. Maybe someday they can fly into space and live on the ISS”.  Caldwell Dyson was the first astronaut to use sign language on the ISS, but not the first person ever to use sign language in space. Nearly two decades earlier, in January 1992, NASA pilot astronaut Bill Readdy used American Sign Language (ASL) aboard Space Shuttle Discovery during the STS-42 mission to send a greeting to hearing-impaired students, encouraging them to consider a career in the space program. He was inspired by the work performed during his mission to analyze the effects of microgravity on the human vestibular system; how we hear and maintain balance. 3

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Fig. 3.16.  Tracy Caldwell Dyson enjoying an unmatched view of home through the ISS Cupola. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Caldwell Dyson also talked about the view from the ISS: “I also felt very blessed that the Cupola had just arrived when I went to the space station. As you can imagine, the view was just incredible. It helped create an enormous sense of peace while I was there. Seeing the Earth from space really is awe-­ inspiring. I’d often go in there and look at the Earth before I went to sleep” (Fig. 3.16). While she was on the station, at the beginning of April 2010, the ISS was visited by Shuttle Discovery STS-131. Three of the seven astronauts on Discovery were women: the two American astronauts Stephanie Wilson and Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger and the Japanese Naoko Yamazaki. It was not the first time that three female astronauts had flown at the same time, having already happened during the STS-41G mission in 1984, STS-40 in 1991, and STS-96  in 1999. But this time the three women who arrived on STS-131 joined Caldwell Dyson, who had arrived at the ISS a few days before, to form the largest gathering of women on orbit in history. After spending 176 days in space, Caldwell Dyson returned to Kazakhstan on September 25, 2010, together with Commander Aleksandr Skvortsov and Flight Engineer Mikhail Korniyenko. Caldwell Dyson has logged over 188 days in orbit across her two flights (Fig. 3.17).

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Fig. 3.17.  Four women meet in space for the first time in history. In the ISS Cupola are (clockwise from top left): Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Naoko Yamazaki, Dorothy MetcalfLindenberger, and Stephanie Wilson. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Today, Caldwell Dyson continues her work at NASA. This includes serving as a Capcom, the communications link between flight control and the astronauts in space, training new teams of astronauts, and maintaining her proficiency and training as an active astronaut. She says: “When you think about it, an astronaut spends only a fraction of their time in space. Most of the time, we’re on Earth, supporting missions, doing outreach, managing schedules. After 20 years with NASA, I love being a part of its history”. Tracy Caldwell Dyson is married to naval aviator George Dyson. She is also one of the lead vocalists for the all-astronaut band Max Q, which was originally set up in the aftermath of the Challenger disaster as a way to help in the recovery from that tragedy and has continued ever since.

Sources For This Section Antoun, C.; Antoun, M. “Tracy Caldwell Dyson” interview, women.nasa.gov (July 1, 2014). Bosker, B. “NASA Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson on the Challenges Women Face in Space”, huffingtonpost.com (July 19, 2011).

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Macintosh, Z., “Space station astronaut gives first sign language address” www.nbcnews. com (July 26, 2010) Official NASA biography of Tracy Dyson, jsc.nasa.gov (February 2011). “Preflight Interview: Tracy Caldwell Dyson—Expedition 23”, nasa.gov (March 23, 2010). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 121–122. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

3.7 NICOLE STOTT: A STEADY FLYING PASSION Mission

Launch

STS-128 STS-129 STS-133

August 28, 2009 February 24, 2011

Return November 29, 2009 March 9, 2011

Nicole Stott (Fig. 3.18) is a veteran of two spaceflights and 104 days living and working in space on both the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS), across three Space Shuttle missions (STS-128, STS-129, and STS-133), and ISS Expedition-20/21. She has also completed one spacewalk.

Fig. 3.18.  Nicole Stott. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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As her website mentions, Stott is also an accomplished artist: “Nicole brought a small watercolor kit with her on her mission to the ISS and is the first astronaut artist to paint while there. She is also a NASA Aquanaut and holds the Women’s World Record for saturation diving following her 18-day mission with the NEEMO-9 crew on the Aquarius undersea habitat”.

Stott has been enchanted with flying since she was a little girl, a fascination brought on by her father: “I flew in airplanes since before I could remember… My dad shared what he loved with me [and] I discovered my own love of flying, of separating from Earth and experiencing it from above, and my desire to know how things fly”. But becoming an astronaut was not her lifelong goal, as she recalled in her book Back to Earth: “I’d always thought that being an astronaut was something that only ‘special people’ got to do” (Fig. 3.19). Nicole Marie Passonno Stott was born in Albany, New York, on November 19, 1962, the oldest of three sisters, and grew up in Clearwater, where she moved to at a young age: “a beautiful, beach town on the west coast of Florida,” as she says in her blog. She enjoys flying, snow skiing, scuba-diving, woodworking, painting, and gardening. Stott spent much of her free time with her family at the local airport when growing up. Her father, paint-company owner Fred Passonno, who loved flying and built small airplanes in his garage, shared

Fig. 3.19.  Commemorative cover of Shuttle mission STS-128, signed by Nicole Stott. From the Author’s collection.

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that love with his family. Stott recalls helping him with the Plexiglass and fabric that went into the biplanes, and also at the Clearwater Executive Airport, flying on aerobatic airplanes with people who were there in the small local club: “I’d go out in the garage or out to the airport and help him whenever he’d let me”, she said. Her favorite class in high school was an elective called “Intro to Aviation.” But in 1978, just days before her 16th birthday, Stott’s father was killed when an experimental airplane he was piloting crashed into a canal near Lake Tarpon, close to where he had built their dream house. Her father’s death did not turn Stott away from flying, however: “My dad’s accident did not dampen my interest in flying. If anything, it deepened my desire to learn about airplanes – to know more about how they fly – and to understand what might have caused the crash. I was devastated when it happened of course, but I never thought about giving up flying. He was a guy whose whole life was spent flying and building planes and it was something he just loved to do”. Stott’s greatest female role model has always been her mother, as she recalled in her book: “She was thirty-nine with three daughters when my dad died. I am in awe to this day of her strength and commitment in encouraging me to fulfill my dreams. She never once asked me not to fly, or told me that I couldn’t fly, or even suggested that I shouldn’t. She supported me every step of the way as I decided I would earn my pilot’s license right out of high school and then study aeronautical engineering at university, and she stood strong, watching with my sisters, as I climbed aboard rocket ships and launched twice into space. I knew all along that it is a lot harder to watch someone you love strap into a rocket than it is to be the one strapping in, and now that I’m a mother too, I know that particular angst of watching your child do something potentially dangerous. But I didn’t fully appreciate what it might feel like for a child to watch a parent take a huge risk until, strapped in and ready to take off for outer space, I thought of my son, who was just seven years old and standing on the roof of the launch control center. What courage it took for him to watch the Space Shuttle take off with his mom inside”.

After graduating from Clearwater High School in 1980, Stott enrolled in the aviation administration program at the Clearwater and Tarpon Springs campuses of St. Petersburg Junior College. The program included earning her private pilot’s license at St. Petersburg-Clearwater Airport, which she achieved at age 18. She said that the program “was the greatest thing. The ground school was all handled by instructors at St. Pete College. I was able to take courses that fed right into the engineering degree that I ultimately worked

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on.” In 1987, Stott earned a BSc degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “Kennedy Space Center was the number one place I applied for, and really wanted to be there after growing up in Florida and seeing Shuttles launch while I was at university”, she said. At that time, however, KSC had stopped hiring, so Stott took a job for over a year as a structural design engineer with Advanced Engines Group at Pratt & Whitney in West Palm Beach, performing structural analyses of advanced jet-engine component designs. She said: “I really enjoyed the people I worked with at Pratt & Whitney, and the projects were all very interesting and cutting edge. But it became clear to me that my talents were more associated with operations and hands-on engineering work than analysis”.

Finally, Stott was contacted by NASA at KSC: “I got a call from my original application to NASA at Kennedy Space Center, where they were finally off their hiring freeze and needed to pick some people up for the Shuttle Ops group that they were forming”. In 1988, she joined NASA KSC as an operations engineer in the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF), working there for over ten years and holding a variety of positions within the Shuttle processing division. She eventually became Shuttle Flow Director for Endeavour and then Orbiter Project Engineer for Columbia, and finally NASA convoy commander for Space Shuttle landings, and vehicle operations engineer, preparing Space Shuttles for their next mission. She said: “I’ve worked in every part of Space Shuttle operations and I’ve had so much fun. I have so many friends who have moved or changed jobs every couple of years to find something they enjoy. I feel fortunate that I got the opportunity to try something new every few years within the Space Shuttle program and benefitted from seeing something a little different about the program each time”.

In 1992, Stott earned her MSc degree in Engineering Management from the University of Central Florida. During her last two years at KSC, she worked in the Space Station Hardware Integration Office. Around that time, Stott met her husband Chris, a British citizen from the Isle of Man who was assigned to KSC for three months while he was working on his master’s degree. They married and, when Chris got a job with McDonnell Douglas in California, she moved with him and was relocated to Huntington Beach, where she served as the NASA project lead for the ISS truss elements under construction at the Boeing Space Station facility. People at NASA encouraged her to apply for the astronaut program and, in 1997, she decided to try. She

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said: “Until the point of starting work at Kennedy Space Center with NASA, it never crossed my mind that being an astronaut was a possibility”. Stott was not selected the first time, but she was offered the chance to join the Aircraft Operations Division at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), where she served as a flight simulation engineer on the Shuttle Training Aircraft (STA), a Gulfstream II modified to mimic the Shuttle’s flight characteristics and instrumentation to help train astronaut pilots to land the Space Shuttle. She reapplied for the astronaut candidate training program in 1999, and this time she made the cut, joining NASA Astronaut Group 18, nicknamed “The Bugz” (the name vaguely recalling “the year 2000 and the millennium bug”). “We all received the phone call on July 20, 2000 – the anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing”, Stott recalled in her blog. “It was a great honor (and honestly a huge surprise), as only seventeen of us were chosen from over five thousand applicants”. In August 2000, Stott began her astronaut training as MS, after which she was assigned to ISS Operations, responsible for evaluating payloads. She also worked as a support astronaut and Capcom for the ISS Expedition-10 crew. In April 2006, Stott was a crewmember for the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 9 mission, living and working as part of a six-­ person crew in the Aquarius undersea research laboratory for 18 days. This mission, the longest expedition in the program, aimed at testing advanced spacesuit design concepts, robotic devices for surface-based exploration, construction and communication techniques, and advanced telemedicine hardware and techniques for future lunar operations. Stott explained: “It was the best preparation for going to space, as, once you are down there, you have to be very thoughtful of what you are doing, and you can’t just open the hatch and walk out and go to the surface without a long decompression. You learn the dynamics of living and interacting with a crew in a confined living space”. They tested and trained on undersea “moonwalks”, as well as robotic surgeries controlled by a doctor back on dry land in Canada. Just before returning to the surface, Stott told her fellow aquanaut and astronaut classmate Ron Garan: “You know, if we never get to fly in space, this experience would be enough”. She still holds the female world record for saturation diving from the 18 days spent on this mission. Assigned to long-duration Expedition-20/21 to the ISS, Stott moved to Moscow, Russia, for a full-immersion Russian-language class, and successfully completed ISS systems training at each of the international partner training sites, in Star City (Russia), Tsukuba (Japan), Cologne (Germany), and Montreal (Canada): “Flying in space is most certainly the goal of any astronaut, but what you have to accept is that the life of an astronaut is 99 percent not about flying in space.

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No matter how quickly you get assigned to your first spaceflight, you are ultimately going to spend the majority of your time as an astronaut working here on the planet. Fortunately, it’s all very cool. Everything we do, whether it’s training for a spacewalk in the neutral buoyancy laboratory or training on the robotic arm or flying T-38 training aircraft, it is stuff I would never have the opportunity to be exposed to otherwise. I kind of look at it like spaceflight itself is this perk at the end that someday might happen, but all these things we’re getting to do on the ground are unique and interesting on their own”.

Stott was launched from KSC Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) on her first spaceflight as FE on board the Shuttle Discovery STS-128 (the ISS assembly flight 17A) in August 2009 and reached the ISS to begin her expedition. On the fourth day, she and colleague Danny Olivas participated in the first spacewalk of the mission, remaining in open space for 6 hours and 39 minutes to prepare for the replacement of an empty ammonia tank on the station’s port truss. They also retrieved a materials processing experiment and a European science experiment mounted on the EuTEF (European Technology Exposure Facility) outside the Italian-built European Columbus laboratory, which were stowed in Discovery’s cargo bay for their return to Earth. Stott said that it was “neat” to see the station both from the outside and from the inside: “I had very high expectations of what this experience would be like, and I can honestly say that every expectation I had was exceeded”. Particularly vivid are the memories of our planet seen from the ISS: “You can’t (or at least I have never been able to) look at a picture of the Earth from space and not feel a sense of awe. The Earth, our planet, is indescribably beautiful. It glows like a colorful light bulb. It is placed perfectly against the blackest black I have ever seen. On the ISS I have been blessed with the opportunity to see our planet from a totally different perspective. At the same time it appears blue and calm and peaceful, you can look in a different direction and it is very dynamic and dark and even sad and unpredictable. It is a vantage point that can most certainly lead you to believe that we all might just be insignificant little specs in the grand, universal scheme of things. I believe that what I’m seeing out the windows is this awesome Creation that has been put in the perfect place in the universe, in the perfect place in the solar system, at the perfect distance from the sun, giving us the perfect conditions to survive”.

Stott also recalls that hers was a fairly exciting mission, during which the station was visited by many “amazingly beautiful” spacecraft: “The Space Shuttle, the space station, the Soyuz, the Japan-built HTV, and the Russian Progress – these are all the spacecraft I’ve had the opportunity to see

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while I’ve been here in space. You can’t look at these vehicles without being impressed, sometimes overwhelmed by how impressive they are. And the impression is not just from the incredible engineering marvels that they all are or from their size, but it’s also very simply from how incredibly beautiful they each are. There is a shiny, spectacular independence to each of them when you see them hanging so naturally in space, like they were meant to be there with the forces of nature holding them in their place. And as they approach and come into view – starting out first as only a pinpoint of light against the very blackness of space or the backdrop of our glowing, colorful planet – they gradually/quickly transform into the magnificent, shining, beautiful spacecraft that they are. Awesome”!

Working with crewmate Frank De Winne, Stott executed the first track and capture of the Japanese cargo vehicle HTV with the robotic arm. She told a NASA interviewer: “The vehicle comes up, gets to about ten meters from the space station, and then the two vehicles are flying along together at 28,000 km/h. We have 99 seconds to achieve the capture with the big robotic arm. That’s going to be cool because it’s a totally new vehicle and on station we’ve never done a track and capture like this before”.

Stott also conducted a wide variety of science and research activities, including studies on nutrition in space and on our immune system. She said: “What’s interesting is that everything we’re doing on the ISS has a direct application to helping us explore further off our planet and to also improving life here on Earth”. During the mission, Stott and crewmate Jeff Williams participated in the “First Tweet Up in Space.” It was not the instant Twitter most of us use today; this was a much slower and more labor-intensive process that involved e-mailing down the tweets and using ground personnel to relay the information and tweet it out. Stott returned to Earth aboard STS-129 on November 29, 2009. She was the last ISS expedition crewmember to fly on a Space Shuttle. During her first day on the ISS, Stott received a call from fellow astronaut Brent Jett, who at the time was serving as NASA’s Director of Flight Crew Operations. He radioed to tell her that she had been assigned to a second space flight, on STS-133. It was the first time that an astronaut had been assigned to their next mission while they were still in space on their current one. Stott completed her second spaceflight at the beginning of 2011, as MS on STS-133, riding Discovery again. This was originally scheduled as the final flight of the Space Shuttle program, but after the addition of the Atlantis STS-135 flight and the delay to the Endeavour STS-134 flight, STS-133

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instead became the final flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery. Stott arrived on the station at a time when the ISS was commemorating the 10th anniversary of the ISS Expedition-1, the crew that started the continuous human presence in orbit. “The key objectives for STS-133”, Stott explained, “were primarily positioning the station for future years to come, both inside and outside”. The PMM (Permanent Multipurpose Module), a modification derived from the Italian-built Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) “Raffaello”, was permanently integrated into the ISS. The mission also delivered the fourth ELC (Express Logistics Carrier), a large unpressurized platform attached outside of the ISS to provide mechanical mounting surfaces, electrical power, command and data handling services, and science experiments that needed to be exposed in outer space. Together with her colleague Michael Barratt, Stott operated the robotic arm to support the installation of both the ELC-4 and the PMM. As internal choreographer, she also contributed to the EVAs performed by two of her colleagues. In her two spaceflights, Stott logged 104 days in space. After completion of the STS-133 mission, she returned to KSC for a one-year assignment as the Astronaut Office representative to the Commercial Crew Program and the NASA selection of the companies chosen to build the next generation of US human-rated spacecraft. In 2012, she returned to the JSC, where she served as Chief of the Astronaut Office Space Station Integration Branch and then Chief of the Vehicle Integration Test Office, responsible for a team of engineers that manages the astronaut interface to existing and future flight hardware. Stott was also the lead astronaut representative to the Orion Landing and Recovery team, responsible for determining how astronauts will be recovered from the Orion spacecraft after splashdown. After almost 28 years of service, Stott “grounded herself ” and retired from NASA in June 2015, to stay with her family and pursue her next adventure as a full-time artist. She paints her experiences with the spacecraft she flew and her interpretation of Earth observation images she was blessed to photograph from space, “using oils and acrylics and incorporation of physical mixed media like sea glass and sand.” Inspired by her spaceflights, Stott is using her artwork as “a powerful tool to communicate the importance of space exploration and share the awesome beauty” that she experienced through the windows of the Space Shuttle and space station, and during her spacewalks. Stott says she is on her “next mission” as “Artist, Astronaut, Earthling”. She is thankful for the kind support of her friend, mentor, artist, fellow astronaut and moonwalker, the late Alan Bean who died in 2018. As he wrote for Stott’s blog: “I’m delighted that Nicole is the first astronaut of the Space Shuttle/ Space Station era to choose art as her next step in life. All of us who have been

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Fig. 3.20.  Nicole Stott creatively combines the awe and wonder of her spaceflight experience with her artwork to inspire everyone’s appreciation of our role as crewmates here on Spaceship Earth. Figure Credit: © npsdiscovery.com (courtesy of Nicole Stott). Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

fortunate enough to fly in space find it difficult to describe the beauty of our universe in words alone. I am thankful that Nicole has chosen to help share these amazing sights we have all seen through her very beautiful artwork”. Stott is also a motivational speaker who actively supports science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) education (Fig. 3.20). Stott is the co-founder of the Space for Art Foundation, active in promoting large-scale community art projects to raise awareness of our role as crew members, not just passengers, on Spaceship Earth, and to focus on the awe and wonder of space exploration and the connection between personal and planetary health. Working with children in hospitals, refugee centers, schools around the world, and an interdisciplinary team of art and health professionals, the work of the foundation is “uniting a planetary community of children through the awe and wonder of space exploration and the healing power of art.” Stott says: “What started with one artist, with children undergoing pediatric cancer treatment in one hospital, in one country, with one art spacesuit, has blossomed into a global Space for Art community. Many artists, astronauts and cosmonauts, space and health professionals, and most importantly children in hospitals and schools around the world, have been working together and we now have seven art spacesuits, four of which have travelled to and from the International Space Station”. The Spacesuit Art Project grew to a global scale. Now, SPACE FOR ART FOUNDATION involves 3000+ ‘Artonauts’ and 55+ organizations in 180+ countries, working on 12 different projects, engaged with hospitals, refugee centers, schools and children all over the world. In her book, Stott said: “Every time I walk away from these events I’m left with the feeling that there’s no possible way that any of these kids could be as inspired by me as I am by them, and by the hope, courage, and strength that I see in each of them and their families”. Stott participated in a 30-second space-themed commercial advertisement for Olay™ which was broadcast during Super Bowl LIV on February 2, 2020, one of the most watched television broadcasts in the United States. Super Bowl

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commercials are shown during the annual finale of the National Football League, the biggest sporting event in the world which reaches millions of viewers. The reason Stott agreed to participate in the advert is that the spot included a call to action to use the hashtag #MakeSpaceForWomen on Twitter. Each time a user tweeted using that hashtag, Olay donated one dollar (up to $500,000) to the non-profit Girls Who Code organization that supports the vision of encouraging young women to choose computer science and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) activities. The Super Bowl ad came just weeks after the historic first ever all-female spacewalk conducted by NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch. Stott’s impressively broad array of interests are creatively blended in her book Back to Earth, published in October 2021 (Fig. 3.21). Spaceflight leads to new technologies, but it also offers new philosophies. Going to space can change the way we live on Earth and seeing Earth from space gave Stott a new perspective on who and where we all are, and directed her to translate into reality the ISS motto “Off the Earth, For the Earth.” Having lived on the ISS, Stott found perfect analogies between the thin metal hull of her spaceship and

Fig. 3.21.  Nicole Stott and her book Back to Earth. Figure Credit: © Nicole Stott. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

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the thin blue line of atmosphere that protects humanity from the deadly vacuum of space, and it opened her eyes to three truths: 1. We live on a planet spinning in outer space (re-discovering the idea of Spaceship Earth first introduced back in 1879 by Henry George, who described our Earth as a well-provisioned ship on which we sail through space). 2. We are indeed all Earthlings, traveling through space together. 3. The only border that matters is the thin blue line of atmosphere that protects us all. In each of the seven chapters of the book, Stott shares stories from her spaceflights and insights from inspirational scientists, activists, and changemakers she met during her career, who have all taken on their important roles as Crewmates on Spaceship Earth. During early 2020, at the beginning of the global Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns, scientists observed a sharp improvement in air quality, especially over quarantined regions. As an example, levels of one major air pollutant (nitrogen dioxide) over northern China, western Europe, and the United States decreased in that period by as much as 60 percent compared to the same period in 2019. This unintended experiment shows that nature quickly heals itself, hence the advice to radically reduce our human impact on the environment. The message of Stott’s book is: “We don’t need to save the Earth. The Earth is much more resilient than we are. We need to save ourselves by protecting the things that sustain life in our planet. In order to survive, we need to change our ways – the way we treat the Earth and all of the other life we share it with”.

Sources For This Section Cavallaro U, “Back to Earth – Book review”, AD*ASTRA #52 (March 2022) pp. 11-12. Church, J. “‘Unusual Interests’ Might Lead to the Stars”, sptimes.com (St. Peterburg Times, March 3, 2002). Houck, J. “Clearwater High Grad to Join Space Station”, tbo.com (August 18, 2009). Official biography of Nicole Stott, nasa.gov (March 2013). Pearlman R., “Astronaut Nicole Stott on ‘making space’ in Olay Super Bowl ad” in www.collectspace.com (January 30, 2020) Personal contacts by e-mail with the Author in March/April 2016. and NovemberDecember 2021

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Personal website: www.npsdiscovery.com/ . “Preflight Interview: Nicole Stott”, STS-128, nasa.gov (August 13, 2009). “Preflight Interview: Nicole Stott”, STS-133, nasa.gov (October 7, 2010). Rhian, J. “Insider Interview: Nicole Stott Talks Leaving NASA, Orbital Artistry”, spaceflightinsider.com (July 26, 2015). Stott, N. “Anniversaries & Memories of My 1st Space Adventure”, fragileoasis.org (August 30, 2010). Stott, N. “Creating the ‘Space for Art Foundation’”, in room.eu.com Stott, N. “Back to Earth. What life in space taught me about our home planet - And our mission to protect it” Seal Press (Hachette Book Group), New York 2021, 290 pages. Taylor, J.D. “Women in Space: Nicole Stott—more than 100 Days on Orbit”, spaceflightinsider.com (April 29, 2015). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 128–129. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

3.8 WANG YAPING: FIRST CHINESE WOMAN TO WALK IN SPACE Mission

Launch

Return

Shenzhou-10 Shenzhou-13

June 11, 2013 October 15, 2021

June 26, 2013 April 16, 2022

When Yang Liwei, the first Chinese astronaut, was sent into orbit on the nation’s maiden manned space mission Shenzhou-5, in 2003, Wang Yaping was watching it on TV. She says: “I was so proud and also very excited. But as I watched it, I thought: We have male pilots and female pilots. He is the first male taikonaut. Who will be the first female? And today, it’s me becoming one of the first few”.

Air Force Colonel Wang Yaping (Fig. 3.22) was probably born on January 27, 19804, in the prefecture of Yantai, in east China’s Shandong Province, the hometown of China’s most famous educationist, Confucius (551–479 BC). Her parents are farmers and she is reported to have two sisters. “The experience of doing farm work since an early age has made her strong”, reported the Xinhua official news agency broadcast, “and the habit of long-distance  According to many sources, including the official Shenzhou-10 report, her birth date is given as January 1980, but this does not match with the Shenzhou-9 report, in which her birth date is reported as April 1978. 4

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Fig. 3.22.  Commemorative cover of mission Shenzhou-10. From the Author’s collection.

running tempered her will”. Wang Yaping attended the Yāntái Yizhong High School, from which she graduated in 1997. Admitted to the Changchun Aviation Academy of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), in the northeastern province of Jilin. she joined the army in August 1997. Recruited as a transport pilot in the PLAAF, Wang Yaping is one of 37 members of the so-called “7th Generation” of female pilots, the same as Liu Yang. She is married to another PLAAF pilot, Zhao Peng, and has a daughter, as required by the Chinese space program, even if this requirement has been officially denied by the director of the China Astronaut Center. Fervent and enthusiastic, she has always been ready to take on new challenges as a pilot. She says: “I remember the first time I flew a plane on my own. I turned around, and found my trainer was not with me. I was really thrilled and had a good shout in the cockpit. It’s like, I could finally do this on my own”.

Wang Yaping became member of the Communist Party of China in May 2000 and graduated from the Air Force University and flight school in 2001 with the rank of First Lieutenant. As a pilot of the Wuhan Air Force transport aircraft crew, she was one of six female pilots who took part in relief flights that operated uninterruptedly day and night for a week following the Wenchuan Earthquake, one of the major earthquakes in Sichuan Province in 2008. Later that year, she was reported to have been involved in the Air Force flights to dispel clouds for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. After

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Fig. 3.23.  Biberpost private stamp celebrating the Shenzhou 13 mission. Figure Credit: © Ralf Schulz/Biberpost. Reproduced with permissions. All rights reserved.

accumulating over 1,600 flying hours in her log book, Wang Yaping was named Air Force Class II Pilot and promoted to the rank of Captain. In the second round of taikonaut recruitment for the space program, in 2009, women were allowed to apply (Fig. 3.23). She was elated, though her parents did not share her enthusiasm: “When my parents found out that I wanted to apply for selection, they were firmly opposed to it ... but this was my dream and regardless of their opposition, I went ahead and applied. I felt no fear. I just felt an overwhelming sense of achievement. I had fulfilled my dream”.

It has been a long and winding road to the launch pad. After undergoing a strict selection process in April 2009, Wang Yaping was chosen, from just 15 female candidates, to become a Chinese taikonaut. In the shroud of secrecy that for some time obscured the selection of the seven taikonauts of Group-2 in 2010, Wang Yaping was the first to be identified. She was the first female astronaut to be named by the China National Space Administration (CNSA), but was the second Chinese woman to fly in space. She said: “It takes a great deal to become an astronaut. You have to be outstanding overall, have great specialty knowledge, go through lots of rigorous training to adapt to the space environment, and take very strict tests that allow almost no errors or mistakes”.

After serving as a member of the backup team for the Shenzhou-9 mission in 2012, Wang Yaping flew into space on June 11, 2013, on board the Shenzhou-10, the fifth Chinese manned space mission, “carrying the space dream of the Chinese nation,” as emphatically stated by President Xi Jinping.

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Unusually, Wang Yaping was the first member of the team to be announced, in an official news release in April 2013, two months before the lift-off from Jiuquan (as usual, the other crewmembers were only confirmed two days before the launch). It may be argued that her assignment had already been decided long in advance, so much so that, almost a year beforehand, Liu Yang had left a surprise on the Tiangong-1 laboratory for Wang Yaping, as she told a reporter. While the rest of the crew of Shenzhou-10 remained mostly in the shadows and was announced in June, their choice was also not really surprising, since both Nie Haisheng and Zhang Xiaoguang had also been in the backup crew of the previous Shenzhou mission. This uncommon way of communicating the crew details left room for much speculation. Traditionally, China had announced their entire crews in one statement, and the crew was normally kept under wraps until shortly before the launch. Some observers saw the change as a compromise between the desire to publicize China’s second female astronaut, and the traditional pattern of secrecy. Releasing Wang Yaping’s name early certainly generated interest in the mission. Nie Haisheng was the veteran of the crew. He had been one of three candidates to train for the Shenzhou-5 flight, China’s first piloted space mission, but had been ranked third behind Yang Liwei (who flew the mission) and Zhai Zhigang. Nie Haisheng eventually flew into orbit, along with Commander Fei Junlong, as flight engineer of the Shenzhou-6 flight on October 12, 2005. He is only the second spacefarer in history, after Apollo-­ Soyuz crewman Tom Stafford, to have reached the rank of General before flying a space mission. Zhang Xiaoguang was a rookie from the original 1998 group of astronauts recruited for the Shenzhou program. He had waited 15 years for this assignment. After referring to “partial technical modifications” to the Shenzhou-10 spacecraft and the Long-March-2F rocket to improve their reliability, the Chinese authorities provided little detail on what those modifications actually were, as used to happen in the former USSR during the Cold War. Vague references were made to experiments to be performed on Tiangong-1, the 8.5ton Chinese space lab which had already been circling Earth since September 2011, including medical, scientific and technological experiments, “to gain experience for longer space missions.” The rather modest first Chinese space station was just under half the mass of the world’s first space station, the Soviet Union’s Salyut-1 launched in 1971. During the early stages of their mission, the crew replaced part of the laboratory’s interior cladding, removing the previous flexible, trampoline-like floor “to stabilize the astronaut’s body in the micro-gravity environment,” the

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official release stated, again without providing further details. Some seal rings inside the Tiangong-1 also were replaced. After 15 days in space and two docking and re-docking procedures with the prototype space station module, the spacecraft landed on target in northern China’s remote Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on June 26, 2013. It was the longest ever manned mission of the Chinese space program at the time. Wang Yaping was one of the two women in space on the 50th anniversary of Vostok-6, the first historic spaceshot by a woman, Valentina Tereshkova. The other was American astronaut Karen Nyberg, who was aboard the ISS for Expedition-36/37. During the pre-launch press conference, Wang Yaping told reporters that she was a post-1980s woman, with hobbies varying from photography, music and basketball, to traveling. Looking forward to her upcoming trip into space, she was happy to be sharing her experiences and thoughts with the public. She said: “As a first-time ‘spacewoman’, aside from scientific experiments and other work-­ related duties, I will fully enjoy life in the zero-gravity environment and am going in with much curiosity, eager to explore and feel the magic and splendor of space with young friends”.

Alongside a full slate of science and technology development experiments, during her mission in space Wang Yaping broadcast China’s first educational live video lesson on physics in zero-gravity down to children in 330 elementary and middle schools in Beijing, thus becoming China’s first Taikong Jiaosh (“Teacher in Space”). In the pre-flight press conference, she had said: “We are all students in facing the vast universe. We are looking forward to joining our young friends to learn and explore the mystical and beautiful universe”. The American astronaut Barbara Morgan, who first taught a class from the ISS in 2007, sent a letter to Wang Yaping through a Xinhua correspondent in Los Angeles on June 13, 2013, just before her lesson from orbit (Fig. 3.24): “On behalf of teachers and students around the world, I send you greetings of honor and love as you orbit our Earth and prepare to teach your lessons from space. We are proud of you. We wish you and your crewmates safety and success. You will be very busy up there, but please remember to take time to look out the window. China and all of this world are beautiful”.

The image of Wang Yaping being reflected in a drop of water floating in the Tiangong-1 space lab captured headlines all over the world. More than 60 million students and teachers watched the televised broadcast live on giant screens placed in schools all over the country, according to the official Xinhua

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Fig. 3.24.  American astronaut Barbara Morgan (see Chapter 4), who had been the backup to the first “Teacher in Space” Christa McAuliffe in 1986, and first taught a class from the ISS in 2007, sent this letter to Wang Yaping before she gave a lesson from space, wishing her safety and success. Figure Credit: © Barbara Morgan. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

news agency. As emphatically highlighted by the official press release, “the Heavenly Palace [the name of the Tiangong-1 space lab] became China’s highest teaching post.” Wang Yaping’s 41-minute lecture focused on motion in a microgravity environment, liquid surface tension and Newtonian laws. With the help of fellow crewmembers commander Nie Haisheng and Zhang Xiaoguang, she demonstrated magical physical phenomena in the microgravity environment and successfully conducted five small space physics experiments to show basic principles of physics and the concepts of weight and mass in space. To show the properties of surface tension while in microgravity and

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how water behaves in zero-gravity, Wang Yaping created a bubble of liquid: “Okay everybody, this is where magic happens”, she said as she held up the bubble of water trapped within a metal ring. “In a weightless environment, we are very skillful martial artists”, she said after Nie Haisheng floated around the lab in various positions. Then she engaged the students by asking questions. Students discussed how they weigh themselves on Earth before the taikonauts demonstrated how they weighed objects in microgravity. After showing how normal scales do not work in space, Wang Yaping used a special scale to measure the mass of crew commander Nie Haisheng, using Newton’s second law of motion and measuring the mass of an object through force and acceleration. Answering questions asked by the “young pioneers,” the youth organization run by China’s ruling Communist Party, while dressed in a white shirt and red scarf, Wang Yaping said: “From the window we can see the beautiful Earth and the Sun, the Moon and the stars, but we haven’t seen UFOs. As we are now in outer space without the atmosphere, we can see the stars shining brightly, but they do not twinkle. The sky we see isn’t blue, but black. And every day, we can see the sun rise 16 times because we circle the Earth every 90 minutes”.

At the end of the lecture came the recommendation of Commander Nie Haisheng: “I wish all of you will study hard, learn more and contribute to the Chinese dream”. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who had earlier been at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center to witness Shenzhou-10’s lift-off, connected by video link to congratulate the crew on the progress of their mission and upon the successful docking exercise. “The space dream is part of the dream to make China stronger”, he told them. “With the development of space programs, the Chinese people will take bigger strides to explore further into space”. In a press conference upon her return Wang Yaping explained: “This mission allowed me to make two of my childhood dreams come true: exploring space and teaching students. With this mission I have become a teacher lecturing in space”. On June 20, Wang Yaping replied to the letter by Barbara Morgan (Fig. 3.25): Dear Ms. Barbara Morgan, My colleagues and I were delighted to receive your letter so far away from Earth. Thank you for your regards and good wishes. We also want to extend to you our admiration and respect for your contribution to the world’s manned spaceflight and education. Today, we successfully delivered a lecture to millions of Chinese students, sharing with them the majesty and wonder of the universe, and the joy of learning new things. I hope you and all of the teachers and stu-

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Fig. 3.25.  On June 20, 2013, Wang Yaping replied from the Tiangong Space Lab with a letter to Barbara Morgan. Figure Credit: © Barbara Morgan. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

dents in the other parts of the world also enjoyed the lecture. During our ongoing flight, I often look at our beautiful home Earth through the window of our space module. Space is where mankind places its most fantastic dreams, while knowledge is the ladder to a better understanding of what exists beyond our Earth. We would like to work with you to open a door to the universe for children around the world. Wang Yaping Chinese astronaut From Tiangong-1 June 20, 2013.

After her return to Earth, Wang Yaping established teacher-student relations with many children and received many letters from them: “I was very touched that many children wrote at the end of their letter things like, ‘I will study hard and I want to be an astronaut in the future, to explore the beauty of space. I want to be of use to our country and to our world’”. She also visited dozens of schools: “I spoke face-to-face to many children and saw firsthand their yearning for a new world. Children have an unlimited imagination, which, in turn, makes for unlimited motivation. I never expected that a short space class could have such a great impact on them. I even felt that

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being a teacher while up in space brought me more honor than my career as a taikonaut”. The Shenzhou-10 mission was the second and last mission to dock with the space lab Tiangong-1. In 2017, Wang Yaping was elected for a five-year-term as a deputy to the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s legislative body. In 2020, she was re-elected as the vice chairperson of the 13th All-China Youth Federation, after being elected vice chairman of the 12th National Youth Federation in July 2015. She said: “My greatest wish is to go to space one more time, maybe even go to the Moon”. In 2021, she was assigned to her second mission as part of the Shenzhou 13 crew announced by the China Manned Space Agency at a press conference held on October 14, 2021, two days before the launch. The English edition of the daily tabloid newspaper Global Times emphatically proclaimed: “Wang Yaping will be the country’s first female taikonaut to stay in China’s space station and conduct spacewalks, inspiring millions of women as they gaze upon the sky with an indescribable pride for the growing power of women in today's society”. She began her six-month mission at Tianhe, the first woman to visit the new space station. Tianhe is the core module of the Tiangong Space Station which is currently under construction, and will be connected to two other modules: Mengtian and Wentian, On November 8, 2021 Wang Yaping became the first Chinese woman to conduct a spacewalk when she successfully completed an EVA of 6 hours 25 minutes – the longest stint in space by Chinese taikonauts – together with the veteran Zhai Zhigang who had performed China’s first spacewalk in 2008. She wore a new-generation Feitian spacesuit, delivered to the station in September by the Tianzhou 3 cargo resupply craft. According to Chinese state agency, this suit was optimized for her shorter height. It was decorated with two yellow ribbons, representing the yellow stars on China’s national flag. In preparation for the station’s expansion, the two installed a suspension device and transfer connectors to the station’s robotic arm, and also tested the safety and reliability of technology for future construction, all while verifying the home-produced Chinese spacesuits. One of the other goals of the mission was to test how a long-term stay in space would work within the new space station, in terms of resource management and life support. An online debate was launched in China over whether women and men are fit for the same physical tasks, including an arduous spacewalk. A CMSA (China Manned Space Agency) officer explained that, as manned space exploration is all aimed at preparing for future space emigration, these efforts would

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be incomplete without the participation of women, adding that the female body itself was an important subject of study in space medicine. Official channels and state media did not miss the opportunity to highlight Wang Yaping’s achievement in breaking glass ceilings in space, but also revealed conflicting cultural values toward gender, using gendered language that perpetuated stereotypes regarding the differences between men and women. For example, the news media was fixated on the five-year-old daughter she had left behind (no one asked about the children of her two male colleagues), while the Global Times, an English-language Chinese newspaper controlled by the CCP, expressed how female astronauts have a “gentle personality (that) is good for teamwork.” Shortly before the launch, Pang Zhihao, an official with the China National Space Administration, let it be known that a cargo capsule had supplied the orbiting space station with “special deliveries,” including makeup products, sanitary products, desserts, and chocolates: “Female astronauts may be in better condition after putting on makeup”, he said in remarks shown on CCTV, the state television network. On December 9, 2021, together with her two taikonaut colleagues, Wang Yaping delivered her second live popular science lecture from space. The lecture from Tianhe focused on physics, aiming to illustrate how the weightless environment affects buoyancy, the movement of objects and optics, with the aim of inspiring young minds to pursue science. Students from five cities, including Beijing, Hong Kong and Macao, could interact with the taikonauts and ask questions about living conditions in space, as well as being treated to a virtual tour of the station. The event was also open to the public through a livestream. It seems even women taikonauts still have to play a traditional female role, in a country where discrimination remains rampant in the workplace, and the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, the country’s ruling political body, includes only one woman, Sun Chunlan. Wang Yaping is studying for a doctoral degree in psychology at Peking University.

Sources For This Section Deng, Xiaoci et al., “Shenzhou-13 crew member Wang Yaping to conduct spacewalks, inspiring women on Earth” in www.globaltimes.cn (Oct 14, 2021) Deng Xiaoci & Fan Anqi, “Live from space, Shenzhou-13 taikonauts deliver 2nd Tiangong class” in www.globaltimes.cn (Mar 23, 2022

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Deng, Xiaoci et al., “Update: Shenzhou-13 crew delivers first spacewalk; Wang Yaping becomes first Chinese woman to walk in space”, in www.globaltimes.cn (Nov 07, 2021) Evans, B. “China Prepares for Future Exploration as Shenzhou-10 Mission Ends”, www.americaspace.com (June 26, 2013). Harwood, W. “Chinese Astronauts Complete Space Mission, Return to Earth”, cbsnews.com (June 25, 2013). Jackson. “Wang Yaping 10:00 Space Teaching Students the Opportunity to Conduct World Dialogue”, 51jiwo.com (June 20, 2013). Jones, A., “Space exploration requires the ‘efforts of generations’ says Chinese astronaut Wang Yaping” in findchina.info (Mar 05, 2018) Jones, M. “China’s Next Women Astronauts”, spacedaily.com (March 26 2013). Jones, M. “Final Countdown for Shenzhou-10”, spacedaily.com (June 11, 2013). Jones, M. “Shenzhou’s Shadow Crew”, spacedaily.com (April 3, 2013). Kramer, M. “Chinese Astronauts Beam 1st Science Lesson from Space” (video), Space.com (June 20, 2013). Myers, S,L., “She Is Breaking Glass Ceilings in Space, but Facing Sexism on Earth” in nytimes.com (Oct. 23, 2021) Pearlman, R. “Names of China’s Secret Astronauts Revealed by Autographed Envelope”, collectspace.com (December 7, 2011). Quine, T. “Identity of One of the Chinese Female Taikonaut Candidates Revealed”, www.nasaspaceflight.com (November 14, 2010). “Shenzhou-10: Chinese Astronaut Gives Lecture from Space”, www.bbc.com (June 20, 2013). “Wang Yaping: China’s First Teacher in Space”, chinadaily.com.cn (June 20, 2013). “Wang Yaping: China’s Second Female Astronaut to Enter Space”, english.cntv.cn (June 10, 2013). Yi, Y. “First Space Lecture Opens New Horizons for China”, xinhuanet.com (June 20, 2013).

3.9 CHRISTINA KOCH: A NEW SPACEFLIGHT DURATION RECORD Mission

Launch

Expedition-59/60 (Soyuz MS-12) Expedition-61 (Soyuz MS-13)

March 14, 2019

Return

February 6, 2020

Although she was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on February 2, 1979, Christina Hammock Koch (Fig. 3.26) considers her hometown to be Jacksonville, North Carolina, where she grew up. She graduated from North Carolina

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Fig. 3.26.  Christina Koch. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) in 1997, before earning BSc degrees in Electrical Engineering and Physics, and an MSc in Electrical Engineering at NC State University, Raleigh, by 2002: three degrees in five years. In an interview, Koch said: “I credit my parents for that because they are both from scientific backgrounds. My mom studied biology and my dad studied chemistry and some physics and he is a physician, but he had a very strong interest in astronomy and astrophysics and exploration in general. We always had National Geographic and Astronomy magazines and Popular Mechanics lying around the house. I got interested in exploration and different parts of the world and different parts of the universe just from seeing those things around the house and the different discussions we had as a family”.

Koch has always loved wide-open spaces; the ocean, the night sky, “anything that made me feel small,” she said. She learned to sail with her father, and would look out at the ocean to “think about the vastness of the universe.” She enjoys backpacking, rock climbing, paddling, surfing, running, yoga, community service, photography and travel.

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Her career prior to becoming an astronaut spanned two general areas: space science instrument development and remote scientific field engineering. She had dreamed about space since she was a little girl: “I have wanted to be an astronaut for as long as I can remember, even when I was a very young girl in eastern North Carolina. My bedroom wall in Jacksonville, North Carolina, was covered in posters of the Space Shuttle alongside ones of New Kids on the Block”.

While at NCSSM, Koch attended space camp at NASA, which included a session on how to become an astronaut, but her journey to becoming a NASA astronaut was instead based on passion and inspiration, and she worked entirely in her own way (Fig. 3.27). Her career began as an Electrical Engineer with the Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Maryland. After becoming a graduate of the NASA Goddard Academy program in 2001, she contributed from 2002 to 2004 to scientific instruments on several NASA space science missions studying cosmology and astrophysics. While working at Goddard, Koch served as an Adjunct Professor of Physics at Montgomery College. During her internship at NASA, Koch got to meet Sally Ride, something she says was an important moment for her. But she left NASA to take a post as a cryogenics technician at the South Pole, which, she has said, is “an awful lot like space: tough terrain, remote

Fig. 3.27.  Commemorative cover postmarked on the day of docking of Soyuz MS-12 with the ISS, signed by the crew. From the Author’s collection.

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Fig. 3.28.  Figure Credit: © antarcticreport.com. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

location, temperatures down to -111° F, and months of darkness at a time.” From 2004 to 2007, Koch served as Research Associate in the United States Antarctic Program, spending three-and-a-half years traveling the Arctic and Antarctic regions (Fig. 3.28). She completed a winter-over season at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and an additional season at Palmer Station. While in Antarctica, she was a member of the Firefighting Teams and Ocean/Glacier Search and Rescue Teams. It was a mentally and physically challenging experience, as Koch described in an interview: “[This] means going months without seeing the sun, with the same crew, and without shipments of mail or fresh food. The isolation, absence of family and friends, and lack of new sensory inputs are all conditions that you must find a strategy to thrive within”.

Koch said: “I had always set my sights on working with NASA, but I didn’t want to get there by checking the usual boxes, like learning to fly and scuba dive. I wanted to get there because I was passionate about science and the next frontier. When the opportunity to spend a year at the South Pole came up, I took it. There I was in charge of more than 10,000 gallons of liquid helium to keep the telescopes supercool. Our motto was ‘When the South Pole isn’t cold enough, call us’”. After achieving one dream, Koch continued to pursue a number of her other passions, one of which was rock climbing, and especially lead climbing, a climbing technique with no rope above the climber to catch them if they fall. This passion would also greatly boost her career. From 2007 to 2009, Koch returned to space science instrument development as an Electrical Engineer at the Space Department of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. She contributed to instruments

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studying radiation particles for NASA missions, including Juno and the Van Allen Probes. In 2010, she returned to remote scientific field work, with tours including Palmer Station in Antarctica and multiple winter seasons at Summit Station in Greenland, where she worked on “hard, awesome science” with a team of only five people. While there, Koch heard that applications were open for a new class of astronauts and decided it was time to apply. “So there I was, in my living room, 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle, and I hit submit on my application”. Then she put it out of her mind, knowing that 6,100 others had also applied. In 2012, Koch continued working at remote scientific bases with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), serving as a Field Engineer at NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division Baseline Observatory in Barrow, Alaska, and then in the tropics. By the time she got the call to begin the interview process for NASA, Koch was already on to her next position as Station Chief of the American Samoa Observatory. She said “I think I may have been the only person to travel from the middle of the South Pacific, where there were only two flights per week, to fly to Houston for a week of interviews”. When asked about her interview to become an astronaut, Koch said: “Interestingly, the one thing the [NASA] interview committee wanted the most to talk to me about wasn’t electrical engineering; it was about rock climbing, and working in Antarctica, and all these other experiences that I had that were part of my path to get there”.

Koch was selected as one of the eight candidates of the NASA Group 21 astronaut class on June 17, 2013. This was the first class in which half of the astronauts chosen were women (Fig. 3.29). By a curious coincidence, 2013 was the year that celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, and the 30th Anniversary of the first American woman in space, Sally Ride. Shortly after her selection, Koch reported to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. She completed her Astronaut Candidate Training in July 2015. The training included scientific and technical briefings, intensive instruction in ISS systems, plus Russian language, ISS robotics, and T-38 and T-6 aircraft flight. The most exciting part of training for Koch was the T-38. As she had never flown before, she received extensive flight training, including a three-month flight school alongside Navy pilots. Another challenging part of training was for spacewalks. A six-hour spacewalk, the standard length of time, is the metabolic equivalent of running a marathon, she says.

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Fig. 3.29.  The female half of the NASA Class 21 selection. (Left to right) Nicole Aunapu Mann, Anne C. McClain, Jessica Meir, and Christina Hammock Koch. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

This was a very fruitful training regime, since she was scheduled to perform her first EVA on March 29, 2019, just two weeks after her arrival on the ISS aboard the Soyuz MS-12 on March 14, 2019, alongside Aleksey Ovchinin and Nick Hague. Six months earlier, on October 11, 2018, her two colleagues had been involved in the Soyuz MS-10 in-flight abort5. Koch’s first EVA was intended to be the first-ever to feature only women, as she was scheduled to go outside alongside Anne McClain. The two women spacefarers would have worked together in spacesuits while support on Earth would have been provided by female mission controllers: Mary Lawrence as lead Flight Director, and Jackie Kagey as the lead EVA flight controller. This would have been an historic NASA first, one which the agency said had not been orchestrated but was simply a result of shift scheduling. The goal of the  Aleksey Ovchinin was on his second spaceflight; Nick Hague was on his first. Following the mission abort, after reaching a maximum altitude of 93 km, a debate started about whether or not they had reached space on MS-10. The US Air Force officially recognizes the boundary of space as beginning at 80 km (50 miles), but according to the generally accepted – but legitimately debated – international boundary, space begins at an altitude of 100 km, the Kármán line. NASA follows the US Air Force definition, while Roscosmos follows the Kármán line definition, so for NASA, Hague was a “flown astronaut”. In a media statement on December 10, 2018, NASA said that “Because Hague and Ovchinin launched and landed in a spacecraft on an intended mission to the International Space Station, NASA considers them to have achieved the status of flown astronauts, making this Hague’s second spaceflight and Ovchinin’s third.” Conversely, Roscosmos and Russia do not consider Soyuz MS-10 to have achieved space, and do not list that flight as a space credit to Ovchinin and Hague. 5

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EVA was to upgrade the space station’s power system with new batteries, and it was originally scheduled to take place in the fall. Unfortunately, spacesuit sizing issues resulted in the EVA being reassigned from McClain to Hague6. The news of the astronaut swap was met with widespread disappointment and outrage in the media and ignited controversy on social media, with NASA accused of sexism. Former astronaut Marsha Ivins spoke out against what she called the “Obsession With ‘Gender Diverse’ Space Crews.” Koch and Hague spent roughly seven hours installing powerful lithium ion batteries outside the station, which are connected to the ISS solar arrays to store solar power for use when the station is in Earth’s shadow. On April 17, 2019, due to NASA reassignment schedules with the Commercial Crew Development program, Koch’s residency aboard ISS was extended to a record-setting flight of 328 days, the longest single continuous stay in space for a woman. On December 28, 2019 Koch eclipsed the previous single-flight mark of 288 days set by Peggy Whitson in 2016–17 (Fig. 3.30).

Fig. 3.30.  Cover commemorating December 28, 2019, the day Christina Koch broke the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, previously held by Peggy Whitson at 288 days. From the Author’s collection.

 In its official press release, NASA said “Anne McClain learned during her first spacewalk that a medium-­ size hard upper torso (essentially the shirt of the spacesuit) fits her best. Because only one medium-size torso can be made ready by Friday, March 29, Koch will wear it”. NASA spokesperson Stephanie Schierholz added on Twitter that “McClain had trained in both medium and large spacesuits. She thought she could use a large one, but changed her mind after her first real spacewalk”. 6

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During her first spaceflight, Koch was part of three Expeditions: 59, 60 and 61. This NASA mission change had never happened before for a first-time astronaut. Her extended mission helped scientists to gather additional data about the effects of long-duration human spaceflight beyond those of the normal six-month station expedition; research which is essential to support future deep space exploration missions to the Moon and Mars. During her mission, Koch contributed to hundreds of scientific experiments in biology, Earth science, human research, physical sciences and technology development. Some of the scientific highlights from her missions include improvements to the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer which studies dark matter, growing protein crystals to aid pharmaceutical research, and testing 3D biological printers to print tissue in microgravity. On October 18, 2019, Koch and Jessica Meir made “HERstory,” as NASA called it, by becoming the first all-female spacewalking team, going outside on an EVA of 7 hours 17 minutes to replace a failed power control unit on the ISS (Fig. 3.31). Koch conducted six spacewalks totaling 42 hours and 15 minutes during her extended mission, including the first three by all-female EVA crews. She returned to Earth on February 6, 2020, on a Soyuz spacecraft, with ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov. Christina Koch received an Honorary Ph.D. from North Carolina State University in 2020 and was included in Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020. As part of the NASA Artemis generation of astronauts, she is one of the nine women who have a chance at being the first to walk on the Moon.

Fig. 3.31.  Cover commemorating the historic first all-female spacewalk on October 18, 2019. From the Author’s collection.

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Sources For This Section Blog “Artemis astronaut feature: Christina Koch”, in spacecenter.org (March 26, 2021) Cavallaro, U. “ Christina Hammock Koch” AD*ASTRA #41 (June 2019), p. 19-21 Gebhardt, C., “Soyuz MS-12 docks with the Space Station” in www.nasaspaceflight. com (March 14, 2019) Harwood, W., “Koch marks record stay in space for female astronaut” in spaceflightnow.com (December 30, 2019) Ivins, M., “I’m a Retired Female Astronaut and I Can’t Understand the Obsession With ‘Gender Diverse’ Space Crews”, in time.com (August 28, 2019) Jemison, M., “The 100 most influential people of 2020: Astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir” in time.com (September 22, 2020) Schierholz, S., “NASA Announces First Flight, Record-Setting Mission” in nasa.gov (Apr 17, 2019) Whiting, M. & Tonnessen H.,, “Christina Hammock Koch NASA Astronaut” in nasa.gov (December 9, 2020)

3.10 JESSICA MEIR: FROM THE SEA TO THE STARS Mission

Launch

Return

Expedition-61/62 (Soyuz MS-15)

September 25, 2019

April 17, 2020

A marine biologist who researched the physiology of animals in extreme low oxygen environments, Jessica Meir (Fig. 3.32) ended up conducting hundreds of experiments with colleagues in the ISS to study another animal  – humans – in an extreme environment, to better understand the effects of a long-duration spaceflight, including how her own body responded to the extremes of space. Meir was assigned to ISS Expedition-61/62 and launched to the station aboard Soyuz MS-15 as a flight engineer on September 25, 2019 (Fig. 3.33). The daughter of a Swedish mother and an Iraqi-Israeli father, Meir holds dual American and Swedish citizenship. She became the first female with Swedish citizenship7, the fourth Jewish woman8 and the 15th Jew9 overall to take part in a space mission.  She is the second Swedish astronaut in space after ESA astronaut Christer Fuglesang  After Judith Resnik, Ellen Baker and Marsha Ivins 9  For the complete list, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_astronauts 7 8

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Fig. 3.32.  Jessica Meir. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fig. 3.33.  Cover commemorating the launch of Soyuz TM-15, signed by the crew. From the Author’s collection.

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“My dad was born in 1925 in Baghdad to a family with nine kids. In 1931, the whole family left when there was more anti-Semitism there and settled in Palestine. My dad was in medical school at the American University of Beirut when the War of Independence happened in 1948. He came back to Israel and was one of the first to volunteer for the army, driving an ambulance in the war”.

After that, her father went to Geneva to finish medical school and took a job in Sweden, where he met and married Ulla-Britt, Jessica’s mother, a nurse who was raised in a Christian Swedish family. The couple moved to Maine when her father was offered a job there. Meir – who later learned Swedish10 and spent a semester studying in Sweden at Stockholm University during her undergraduate years – says being Jewish is an important part of her identity: “My mom didn’t officially convert, but we considered ourselves a Jewish family. Personally I’m not really a religious person, but I think that my Jewish cultural background is obviously a big part of my culture and especially traditions. We celebrated high holidays. There was no synagogue in Caribou, so we went to the one 11 km away in Presque Isle, where I had my bat mitzvah. Most of my relatives from my dad’s side are all still in Israel”. Astronauts are allowed to take a number of personal items to the ISS, and two of Meir’s choices were an Israeli flag (together with a Swedish flag) and a pair of socks bearing a menorah (the traditional candelabrum with nine branches). On the ISS, she celebrated the first day of Hanukkah (the Jewish eight-day, wintertime “festival of lights” that celebrates the rededication of the Holy Temple). The youngest of five children, in the only Jewish family in the town, Jessica Ulrika Meir was born on July 1, 1977 in Caribou, Maine – the most northeastern city in the United States – where she spent her childhood. She played on basketball, softball, tennis, and soccer teams (her favorite sport), played the flute and piccolo in a concert band and the saxophone in a jazz band, and participated in a variety of school clubs and organizations. She is unsure exactly what triggered her interest in space: “I dreamed about becoming an astronaut my whole life. My mother tells me I started saying I wanted to be an astronaut when I was five and then my first distinct memory was when I was in first grade [and] we were asked to draw a picture of what we wanted to be when we grew up. I remember drawing an astronaut on the surface of the Moon in a space suit, standing there next to the flag. I think it was probably a kind of innate inclination I had toward exploration”.  Meir said: “My mother never taught me to speak Swedish. At the dinner table, my parents used to speak Swedish when they didn’t want us to understand. Finally, I started learning Swedish myself ”. 10

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Fig. 3.34.  Biberpost private stamp celebrating the Soyuz TM-15 mission. Figure Credit: © Ralf Schulz/Biberpost. Reproduced with permissions. All rights reserved.

Meir never had any exposure to NASA or to space exploration while growing up in a small remote town, had no Internet, and only saw whatever was on the evening news  – although the Shuttle program was very prominent in the media at that time. She believes her interest might have had something to do with the fact that the stars shone so brightly in rural Maine. Meir attributes her dream of venturing into space exploration to the love of nature she learned from her Swedish mother, who had a big connection with the outdoors. Her father’s predilection for wandering and adventure also contributed to igniting in her a passion for exploration. All those things were the perfect combination (Fig. 3.34). At the age of 13, following her sister who was in graduate school at Purdue, Meir attended a youth space camp at Purdue University in Indiana before starting her freshman year at Caribou High School. She said: “I was certain that this would be my first concrete step toward a future career in the space industry”. By the time she started Caribou High School in Maine, her friends and teachers were well aware of her dream of becoming an astronaut. After high school, Meir attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where she studied biology and played saxophone in the jazz band and flute in the orchestra. Biology was always her favorite academic subject, as she recalled: “My professor for Introductory Biology was Dr. Kenneth Miller, a renowned scientist who really played a large role in my decision to stick with biology as a concentration”. Her passion for biology led her to take part in the NASA Space Life Sciences Training Program (SLSTP), a six-week summer camp at KSC in Florida that fully immersed Meir in the life sciences side of space research. She attended lectures on various space-related science topics, went on tours of the KSC facilities and conducted her own research project. In 1999, she earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Biology from Brown University. Together with a few other students, Meir submitted a proposal for

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NASA’s Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities program during her senior year at Brown. Their experiment was selected, and she had the opportunity to experience microgravity for the first time, without even being in space. In 2000, Meir earned an MSc in Space Studies from the International Space University (ISU) in Strasbourg, France. She said: “This year-long program offers a unique education, ranging across all disciplines, from law, to politics, life sciences, and engineering – all from the space perspective. I spent the year learning about space from this interdisciplinary and international approach, with students from over 20 different countries, a genuinely remarkable experience in itself! I also had the opportunity to experience microgravity again that year, this time on CNES’s [the French Space Agency] A-300 aircraft as an assistant researcher and subject in a study on echocardiography doppler. While I was in France, I got a call from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where I’d participated in the ‘vomit comet,’ an aircraft simulator that flies in parabolas to achieve weightlessness. The Life Sciences Program at Johnson still had my resume and I was offered a position in the Human Physiology Program. I worked at Johnson for three years as a support scientist, serving as a research liaison between principal investigators and the NASA team of astronauts”. Across three years of internships (from 2000 to 2003) in Lockheed Martin’s Human Research Facility at NASA’s JSC, Meir worked as a scientist in human research, coordinating, guiding and supporting the human space life science experiments performed by astronauts on Shuttle and ISS missions, studying physiology effects (bone loss, muscle control/atrophy, lung function, etc.), investigating how physiological processes are altered in space and developing procedures for astronauts on-orbit, training crew members, and providing ground support from Mission Control Center. “That’s when I got to know a lot more about what it takes to be an astronaut”, she said. During this time, Meir also participated in reduced gravity research flights on NASA aircraft, and in 2002 served as an aquanaut crew member of the NEEMO-4 mission (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) in the Aquarius Reef Base. The world’s only undersea research station, Aquarius is located 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) off Key Largo, Florida, in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, and is used by NASA for a series of space exploration simulation missions. At that time, they were conducting saturation diving experiments, with astronaut Scott Kelly as the commander. Meir said: “We used an underwater habitat off of Key Largo to run very real missions, following a timeline. It was an amazing opportunity to be able to work directly with the astronauts and revisit my passions for marine biology and scuba diving”. Hurricane Isadore forced the National Undersea Research Center managers to shorten their underwater duration to five days, and then three, with Tropical

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Storm Lili also headed their way. Fortunately, Lili dissipated to non-­ threatening conditions, allowing Meir and her crewmates their full five days. “Working in these research endeavors for three years and supporting studies designed by other scientists really inspired me to want to do my own science. I came across some of the work being done on diving physiology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography out of the University of California, San Diego. After getting in touch with the group, I started graduate school there in San Diego at Scripps”.

Her Ph.D. research explored the physiology of animals in extreme environments, studying how animals are capable of holding their breath for extended periods – 30 minutes in the case of diving emperor penguins Meir studied in Antarctica and up to two hours for northern elephant seals in California (Fig. 3.35). A trained scientific diver, she studied the Antarctic emperor penguins both above and below the ice. During four research expeditions to the remote, icy continent, she pushed herself deep below sea-level, scuba-diving in the

Fig. 3.35.  Jessica Meir in the field, studying penguins in Antarctica during her Scripps Ph.D. program. Figure Credit: © Cassondra Williams, UCSD. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

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Antarctic under sea ice to understand how these mammals swim without oxygen. Meir earned her Doctorate in Marine Biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 200911. After completing her Ph.D., she became interested in studying the capabilities of high-altitude animals that are similarly adept at coping with hypoxia. She started post-doctoral research at the University of British Columbia to investigate, in a controlled environment (by simulating altitudes in a wind tunnel), how bar-headed geese – which are famed for their long migrations between Mongolia, China and India and are able to migrate over the Himalaya Mountains  – can fly at high altitudes, over the world’s tallest mountains, despite low oxygen. Meir said: “Flapping wings in flight is very metabolically costly and requires an enormous amount of oxygen, and to do that where the air is so thin is remarkable”. This was the first study to comprehensively measure the physiology of these birds. In total, Meir spent ten years in animal extreme-environment research. During the 2012 academic year, she continued her research as an Assistant Professor of Anesthesia at the Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital, but had to take a leave of absence to enter the astronaut corps. It took her three tries to be chosen for NASA’s highly selective astronaut program. She had first applied in 2004, before she had gone to graduate school, but was rejected. She tried again in 2008 when she felt her application would be reasonably competitive, and made it to the final round of interviews. She was shortlisted for NASA’s Astronaut Group 20, but was ultimately not selected. She recalled: “That year, only nine astronauts were selected, and I was pretty heartbroken when I found out I wasn’t one of them. They encouraged me to reapply, although I thought I’d missed my only chance”. Meir’s next chance to apply came in 2012: “I was really happy in my career as a scientist, and I was doing my postdoc at the University of British Columbia… but I still had to apply, just to see, since it was always my dream”. This time, she was chosen as one of eight in the 21st NASA astronaut class,

 UC San Diego has a history of producing alumni who have pursued successful careers at NASA. Meir is among three alumni – all women – who have become NASA astronauts. Megan McArthur, who holds a Ph.D. in Oceanography from Scripps, traveled to space in 2009 and helped repair the Hubble telescope. Kate Rubins, who studied microbial biology as an undergraduate, became the first person to sequence DNA in space. Scripps Oceanography’s connections to NASA are further strengthened through the R/V Sally Ride, an oceanographic research vessel owned by the US Navy and operated by Scripps as part of the US Academic Research Fleet. The state-of-the-art ship is named in honor of the late Sally Ride, the first American woman in space and a long-time member of UC San Diego’s physics faculty after she retired from NASA. 11

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the first 50-50 female/male selection. Meir later told students at Caribou High School in 2016: “Luckily, I stuck to it and persevered. Just in the back of my head, knowing that it was the dream I’ve had for my entire life, I couldn’t not apply. I just wasn’t prepared to give up on it yet”.

There are big differences today in that NASA is selecting people only for long-duration missions. With the Shuttle flights, a mission in space lasted a maximum of just over two weeks, but now that NASA is only looking at missions of six months or more, there are some different factors that are important in terms of the selection, as Meir explains: “Aside from coming from a STEM background, it is important for someone not only to stand out or be a leader in whatever their expertise is, but also to be quite well rounded. We need to be operators up there, and we need to be able to deal with a diverse set of tasks”.

Meir launched on her first mission on September 25, 2019, when she flew to the ISS aboard Soyuz MS-15, together with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Ivanovič Skripočka, on his third long-duration mission, and fellow rookie Hazzaa al-­ Mansoori, the first United Arab Emirates’ astronaut and the first Arab on the ISS. Meir spent the last year preparing for the mission at Star City in Russia (learning in Russian). As she was assigned to the left seat of the Soyuz, that meant she was the co-pilot, a position that has a lot of responsibilities and is trained basically at the same level as commander. She said: “We spend most of our training thinking about the launch and the landing because it’s so intensive in terms of what we have to learn, but that in a six-­ month mission is only a tiny fraction of our time up there. The launch, [and] you're in space within about eight and a half minutes”.

Astronauts on the ISS do a wide variety of experiments, including some that will be pivotal for our longer-duration missions in the future when we return to the Moon and when we go to Mars. During a pre-flight interview, Meir said: “With my background as a scientist, I’m really excited about contributing to all the different kinds of experiments that are going on. The space station is a US national lab and the primary reason for the space station is to do science. I know how much effort it takes to get an experiment going and get all the work done

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and then wait to collect data. Those scientists on the ground have waited so long and put so much effort in to get the data and they’re not in control of it. I am in control of getting them the data. It’s nice to understand that hardship. The other thing that I’m really excited for, is to hopefully do a spacewalk”.

That dream came true on October 18, 2019, when she ventured into the vacuum of space for 7 hours and 17 minutes as part of the first all-female EVA. Her colleague Christina Koch, the lead spacewalker, was on her third EVA and had already logged 20 hours and 31 minutes in open space. The two made history as they became the first team of female astronauts to work in space outside the orbiting research station. Their job was to replace a failed battery charge controlling unit necessary for charging and discharging the batteries of the station’s solar power network. They paused to take a congratulatory phone call from President Donald Trump, who mistakenly congratulated them on it being “the first time for a woman outside of the space station.” When the astronauts got the chance to respond, Meir politely corrected the president: “We don’t want to take too much credit because there have been many other female spacewalkers before us. This is just the first time that there have been two women outside at the same time, and it’s really interesting for us. We’ve talked a lot about it up here, you know, for us this is really just us doing our jobs. It’s something we've been training for, for six years. We do, of course, want to give credit to all of those that came before us. There has been a long line of female scientists, explorers, engineers, and astronauts, and we have followed in their footsteps to get us where we are today. We hope that we can provide an inspiration to everybody, not only women, but to everybody that has a dream, that has a big dream and is willing to work hard to make that dream come true”.

Meir was the 228th person and 15th woman to walk in space. She participated in a second all-female spacewalk, again with Christina Koch, on January 15, 2020, this time to remove four old nickel-hydrogen batteries and replace them with two more powerful, longer-lasting lithium-ion batteries and a new adapter plate, to keep everything running when the outpost is on the night side of Earth. The job was completed five days later, on January 20, during the third all-­ female spacewalk by the pair. During their EVA of 6 hours and 58 minutes, they removed the two remaining nickel-hydrogen batteries and installed the final lithium-ion battery needed by the station’s left-side outboard set of solar arrays.

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The activities of Jessica Meir on the ISS could be followed on her Twitter account. She tweeted: “The other thing that’s really important to me is to be able to share it with people. We are so lucky to be some of the few people who get to experience that, so I look at it as our obligation to share it in as many ways as possible, with not just our family and friends, but the whole world”. Meir was also part of an experiment called Food Physiology and was required to eat new foods that the NASA Lab has developed, including Turkish fish stew and Indian fish curry, sweet-and-savory kale and braised red cabbage, Brussels sprouts and butternut squash. They also grew mizuna lettuce: “It is really important for developing our own sustainable food sources for future missions. If we are going to go all the way to Mars, we need to be able to grow some of our own food. In that experiment, we actually got to eat half of the harvest at the end, so we did have a space salad”! As with every other ISS crewmember, Meir spent two and a half hours per day on scheduled exercise. She said: “We know that if you don’t exercise, you have a really dramatic decrease in bone density and muscle mass. That is because, even if you’re sitting doing nothing on Earth, your bones and your muscles are always still counteracting the force of gravity. When you go to space, your bones will start leeching calcium because you don’t have that loading force. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so important for us to exercise”.

Meir returned to Earth on April 17, 2020, after nearly seven months in space, as co-pilot of Soyuz MS-15, and parachuted into the midst of the global pandemic. At the height of the first wave of COVID there were special landing protocols, and the rescue teams all wore masks. She came back to a surreal “completely different planet,” not exactly the one she had departed from well before the pandemic’s rules existed. She said: “If you think about it, all 7.5 billion people on the planet have been affected by this in some way. And we were the only three humans not affected by it”. It was, she said, something like “a bad science-fiction movie.” She and fellow astronaut Andrew Morgan had to spend a full week in on-­ site quarantine at JSC, Houston, where she could only briefly meet a few NASA friends and family members, who had previously self-isolated for two weeks. This isolation on Earth after seven months of isolation on ISS made for a strange welcome and made her feel “much more isolated and confined” than on the station. One of her best friends from the astronaut world, Anne McClain, self-isolated for two weeks so that she could be Meir’s support person during her quarantine.

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Meir logged 205 days in space and 21 hours and 44 minutes on EVA. In 2020, she was named as one of 18 members of NASA’s Artemis program, the program to return to the Moon. As such, she could be the first woman ever to walk on the lunar surface. This mission, set to launch in 2025, will be NASA’s first venture to the Moon since 1972.

Sources For This Section Associated Press, “NASA astronauts Jessica Meir, Christina Koch perform another all-female spacewalk” eu.usatoday.com (January 15, 2021) Cavallaro, U., “Jessica Meir – from the sea to the stars” in Judaica Thematic Society Newsletter #180 (november 2020), p. 1-6 Greene, D., “After 7 Months In Space, Meir Will Return To A Very Different World” in www.npr.org (April 16, 2020) Harwood, W., “Third all-female spacewalk completes job of swapping out batteries “ www.cbsnews.com (January 20, 2021) Harwood, W., “Astronauts brace for return to Earth – and coronavirus: «It is quite surreal for us»” in www.cbsnews.com (April 10, 2020) Kaplan, S., “Journey to Mars: Meet NASA astronaut candidate Jessica Meir” in www. washingtonpost.com (April 28, 2015) Powell, A., “Parachuting into a pandemic after historic spacewalk” in news.harvard. edu (October 21, 2020) Wickramasinghe, S., “Slowed metabolism helps geese fly high” in news.ubc.ca (Sep 3, 2019)

4 Madam Robotics Expert

“Madam Robotics Expert” was the name that Shuttle Commander Pamela Melroy gave to Stephanie Wilson, when she was key in saving the STS-120 mission from what could have been a new mini-Apollo 13 tragedy. For STS-7, Sally Ride had been chosen for her first mission by Challenger commander Robert L. Crippen because she was extremely well qualified in manipulating the Shuttle’s Remote Manipulator System (RMS) robotic arm, which would be used intensively on that flight. Ride not only became the first woman to use the robot arm in space, but also the first to use the arm to retrieve a satellite. She said: “Operating with the robotic arm is a little like playing with a complicated videogame”. Mary Cleave later added: “It seemed like they assigned women to fly the arm more often than guys, and the rumor on the street was because they thought women did that better”. Actually it turned out that “women, particularly, own the different balance of skills required for that task.” The NASA software for the RMS and onboard operating procedures was developed by Judith Resnik. Many women astronauts rotated as chief of the Robotics Branch in the NASA Astronaut Office, including Nancy Currie, Cady Coleman and Karen Nyberg. Many more served in the Branch, contributing to the design and construction of the robotics hardware or to analysis and development of the man-machine interface of the robotic arms, including Anna Fisher, Lisa Nowak, Janice Voss, Kalpana Chawla, Barbara Morgan, Sunita Williams, and Shannon Walker, to name just a few. Many of them were responsible for

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Cavallaro, To The Stars, Springer Praxis Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19860-1_4

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special projects, like Marsha Ivins who was project manager of the Dexterous End Effector (DEE), a new and improved capture tool for the RMS. A large contribution to the Canadarm Mobile Servicing System came from Julie Payette, who was technical advisor on the project. One of the major tasks for a Mission Specialist (MS) on Shuttle flights was as primary RMS operator. Their duties included maneuvering the robotic arms, serving as loadmaster for the transfer of supplies and equipment, supporting spacewalkers, grabbing automated resupply cargo spacecraft, and deploying and retrieving satellites and free-flying facilities. Sometimes this involved developing new techniques, as did Mary Weber during her first spaceflight (STS-70). Because the station was docked within inches of the crew compartment windows and her view was obstructed, Weber could only use camera views and animation to maneuver her spacewalking colleagues around the Shuttle and station to retrieve and install equipment. Karen Nyberg was the first astronaut ever to operate all three robotic arms that were on station at the time: the Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS), also known as Canadarm-1; the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS), known as Canadarm-2; and the Japanese Experiment Module Remote Manipulator System (JEMRMS). Perhaps one of the most important RMS operators was Megan McArthur, who used it to grasp the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and place it in the payload bay of the Shuttle, then operated the robotic arm to stabilize and assist the astronauts servicing the telescope. Without robotics, the major accomplishments of building the International Space Station (ISS) and repairing satellites in space would not have been possible.

4.1 JUDITH RESNIK: THE SECOND “SHUTTLENAUT” Mission

Launch

Return

STS-41D STS-51L

August 30, 1984 January 28, 1986

September 5, 1984 –

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Judy Resnik (Fig. 4.1) was one of the victims of the tragic explosion of STS-51L – the 25th flight of the American Space Shuttle program and the 10th mission of the Space Shuttle Challenger – which disintegrated 73 seconds after lift-off over Cape Canaveral on January 28, 1986, after the failure of O-ring seals, causing an exhaust gas leak in the right-hand Solid Rocket Booster (SRB). STS-51L was Resnik’s second spaceflight, having flown as a Mission Specialist (MS) on the STS-41D mission in August 1984, thus becoming the second American woman to fly in space after Sally Ride, and the fourth woman worldwide (Fig. 4.2). The previous year, Resnik had said: “I think something is only dangerous if you are not prepared for it, or if you don’t have control over it, or if you can’t think through how to get yourself out of a problem”. Carl Glassman, who interviewed Dr. Resnik for a book, Dangerous Lives, referred to her telling him in a 1979 interview that “It does not enter any of our minds that we’re doing something dangerous”. Judith Arlene Resnik, born in Akron, Ohio, on April 5, 1949, was the progeny of an upper-middle-class Jewish-Ukrainian family devoted to their religion. She attended Hebrew school for many years at Beth El Synagogue in

Fig. 4.1.  Judith Resnik. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Fig. 4.2.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-41D, signed by Judy Resnik. From the Author’s collection.

Akron, although she did not actively practice Judaism and disliked any reference to her as “the first Jewish astronaut1.” Her father, Marvin Resnik – to whom she was so close that she chose to remain with him after her parents divorced when she was 17 years old – practiced optometry and was a part-time cantor. He affectionately called his daughter K’tanah (which is Hebrew for “little one”) and, in the reception area of his optometry office, proudly hung a picture of his daughter on the Shuttle, greeting him with a floating sheet of paper saying, in large letters, “HI DAD2.” (Fig. 4.3) Resnik stood out early on for her brilliant intelligence. Soon after entering kindergarten she was able to read and solve simple mathematical problems, so she was admitted to the Fairlawn Elementary School in Akron a year in advance. Her talents became more evident over the years – as did her diligence and methodical approach – when she began to excel in mathematics, chemistry, and French. Teachers and friends described her as extremely bright, disciplined and curious. She also was a gifted musician and played piano with more than technical mastery, appreciated by all for her vividness, but also for her perfectionism. Those were qualities that she carried throughout her life, in almost anything she tried. In one interview, Resnik later said: “I never play  Judy Resnik was the first Jewish American in space. The first Jew in space was Russian cosmonaut Boris Volynov, in 1969. 2  Resnik’s relationship with her mother, who enforced a strict code of conduct, was fraught with tension, and “left some marks she never got over,” according to some of her close friends. 1

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Fig. 4.3.  Judy Resnik on the middeck of the Space Shuttle Discovery during her first mission, STS-41D (1984), with the sign “HI DAD” floating nearby. Around her on the lockers are various stickers reading “Beat Army”, “Beat Navy” and “Air Force: a great way of life”, as well as one advertising her crush on actor Tom Selleck, which became the stuff of banter among her fellow astronauts. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

anything softly”. Many described her as an outstanding over-achiever. She graduated as valedictorian of her class from Firestone High School in 1966. After high school, she wanted to become a professional classical pianist and was offered a spot at the prestigious Julliard Academy to study piano performance, but after achieving a perfect 800 (the highest possible score) on the mathematics component of her SAT test (the only girl to reach that goal that year, and one of only 16 female students ever to do so at the time), she decided instead to pursue a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Mathematics at Carnegie-Tech (now Carnegie-Mellon University) in Pittsburgh. Resnik changed her plans again in her freshman year after she began to date Michael Oldak, an engineering student. Having visited some of his classes, she realized that “she liked more of the practical aspects of science,” as Oldak recalled. She therefore switched to engineering and graduated in 1970. Shortly after graduation, she married Oldak. Both were hired by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and went to work in Moorestown, New Jersey. Resnik was employed in the missile and surface radar division, working on custom integrated circuitry for phased-array radar control systems, and engineering

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support for NASA sounding rocket and telemetry systems programs. Her paper concerning design procedures for special-purpose integrated circuitry caught the attention of NASA.  The following year, the couple moved to Washington, D.C., where Resnik earned her Master of Science (MSc) degree in Engineering from the University of Maryland. She began working as a biomedical engineer at the Laboratory of Neurophysiology of the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where she performed biological research experiments concerning the physiology of visual systems. In 1975, she and Oldak separated. According to Resnik’s close friend Connie Knapp, “They wanted different things in life: He wanted children desperately, and she didn’t”. The two remained friendly and Resnik continued to share milestones of her life with her former husband, who was also present at the launch of STS-41D. Not long after her divorce, in 1977 Resnik received her MSc in Engineering. Her dissertation was on the effects of electrical currents on the retina, which she researched at the Laboratory of Neurophysiology in Bethesda, where, combining her engineering skills with medicine, she performed biological research experiments concerning the physiology of visual systems. While she was completing her doctorate, Resnik spotted an advertisement that stated NASA was recruiting women and minorities to the astronaut program. Though this had not been a lifelong desire (up till then, it would have been unthinkable for a woman to fly in space) and although she did not think NASA would select her, she suddenly decided to apply3 – encouraged by her advisor and mentor, Professor Angel Jordan – because, her father said later, “she was looking for a purpose in her life.” After receiving magna cum laude academic honors for her doctoral work in electrical engineering, Resnik accepted a job with Xerox as a senior systems engineer and relocated to Redondo Beach near Los Angeles, California. To her amazement, in January 1978 she was called for a NASA interview. Her background in electrical engineering had made her a prime candidate for the Mission Specialist role to conduct scientific experiments in space. Resnik quickly became preoccupied with being an astronaut and immersed herself in a program of exercise and reading to prepare for her interview. She  In his book, astronaut Mike Mullane reported that Resnik’s first exposure to the space program and the idea of becoming an astronaut appeared that same year, when she first saw an announcement on the Xerox bulletin board. “I had already heard several times of other women say the same thing in various press interviews. Only Shannon Lucid had a different answer. She had a copy of a letter she wrote to Time magazine in 1960, challenging NASA’s men-only astronaut corps. She had dreamed of spaceflight as a child, as I had. Only recently had I matured enough to give Judy, Sally and the others some slack for their lack of lifelong zeal for the astronaut title. If I had been raised in a society that told me I could never be an astronaut because of my gender (or color) would that dream have ever taken root in my soul? Probably not. How, I asked myself, could I hold against this woman if she had not carried the dream from her childhood? I could not. Judy and the other women were teaching me the meaning and consequences of discrimination”. (Mike Mullane, Riding Rockets, pp. 123–24). 3

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even contacted Senator and former astronaut John Glenn and asked him what qualities NASA looked for in its recruits. At age 29, Resnik was one of six women accepted into the program. She left the Xerox Corporation and moved to Houston, Texas, to begin training at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC). After completing a one-year training and evaluation period in August 1979, she worked on a number of projects in support of orbiter development, including experiment software and training techniques, and spent almost six years focused on the operation of the Remote Manipulator System (RMS) she helped to design to move objects outside spacecraft. Resnik’s fellow astronauts enjoyed her company. The commander of her first mission, Henry Hartsfield, recalled: “She had a great sense of humor. We used to joke around all the time and Judy was right in the middle of it”. Fellow female selectee Rhea Seddon recalled that Resnik was “flirtatious, funny… just a live wire.” When she was publicly announced as the first Jewish American to go into space, Resnik explained to her father that such titles did not matter to her: “I don’t want to be a Jewish astronaut, I just want to be just another astronaut, period”, she said. Dealing with journalists and the media was her least favorite part of astronaut life, and she was reluctant to give personal interviews, saying that they were too intrusive. Resnik’s close friend Connie Knapp said of her that “She loved being on the leading edge where everything was state-of-the-art”. Henry Hartsfield went on to describe Resnik as “an astronaut’s astronaut... not satisfied with second best.” Both of Resnik’s missions were marked by technical problems and delays. The launch of her first – the maiden flight of Discovery STS-41D – was postponed four times. During the launch attempt on June 26, 1984, there was a launch abort at T–4 seconds due to an anomaly in one of the main engines followed by a pad fire. The crew had to evacuate the Shuttle. This marked the first time since Gemini 6A back in 1965 that a manned spacecraft had experienced a shutdown of its engines just prior to launch. Discovery rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building and the faulty engine was replaced, but more problems were detected and the launch was delayed by over two months. The mission was rescheduled and merged with mission STS-41F, which was actually canceled. Mission STS-41D was finally launched on August 30, 1984, after a delay of 6 minutes and 50 seconds when a private aircraft intruded into the warning area off the coast of Cape Canaveral. The primary payloads of STS-41F were included on the STS-41D flight. The combined cargo weighed over 18,681 kg – a record for a Space Shuttle payload up to that time – and included three commercial communications satellites, for NASA, the US Navy, and Canada, originally scheduled to fly on mission STS-41F. Resnik’s first task as MS was to operate the robotic arm to

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open the OAST-1 (Office of Application and Space Technology) solar array. OAST-1 was a device 13 ft (4.0 m) wide and 102 ft (31 m) high that carried five different types of solar cells. It was the largest structure ever extended from a manned spacecraft and demonstrated the feasibility of large, lightweight solar arrays for future application to large facilities in space, such as the International Space Station (ISS). Located in the middeck was an IMAX high-fidelity motion picture camera, making the second of three scheduled trips into space aboard the Shuttle. Footage from the Shuttle flights was then assembled into a documentary called The Dream Is Alive. The crew earned the name “Icebusters” after successfully removing hazardous ice particles from the orbiter using the RMS. With this flight, Resnik completed 96 orbits and logged 144 hours and 57 minutes in space. She was again an MS on her second mission, responsible for assisting fellow MS Ellison Onizuka in tracking and photographing Halley’s Comet, which was approaching Earth, using a camera known as the Comet Halley Active Monitoring Program (CHAMP)4. The lift-off of the ill-fated Challenger STS-51L had been delayed five times for inclement weather and mechanical problems. STS-51L was notable for the diversity of its seven-person crew: in addition to Resnik, a Jewish woman, it included an African-American astronaut (Ronald McNair), a native Japanese (Ellison Onizuka), and the first teacher in space and private citizen (Christa McAuliffe). Resnik’s task once again was to operate the Shuttle’s robotic arm, this time to release SPARTAN, a platform with scientific instruments that would float in space to study Halley’s Comet and then be recovered. After several delays, it was finally decided to launch Challenger on January 28, 1986, an atypically cold day for Florida and the coldest weather conditions under which a Shuttle launch had ever been attempted, with long icicles hanging from the launch tower, as shown in many photographs from the day. The temperature was 27°F (−2.7°C) and had prompted concerns from Thiokol engineers, who had recommended a launch postponement because it was below the minimum recommended temperature for take-off (which was 33°F) and beyond the approved tolerances for the rubber O-ring seals of the SRBs. Engineers had

 In the winter of 1985/86, Halley’s Comet was making its closest approach to Earth since 1910. Two weeks earlier, CHAMP had been carried aboard the Columbia mission STS-61C, but the crew had been unsuccessful in observing the comet. The device had failed due to a battery problem, and not a single image of the comet was acquired. CHAMP would have been the primary responsibility for 51L MS Ellison Onizuka, but with the destruction of Challenger and the suspension of the Shuttle program, NASA lost its chance to view and photograph the comet from space. 4

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warned that the O-rings in the rocket boosters could become less resilient in cold weather, which could risk leakage of explosive gases5 (Fig. 4.4). But NASA was under pressure to keep this mission on schedule, not only because it was expected that the weather would get worse in the following days, but also because there was some impatience to launch the first “Teacher in Space”, who would be delivering two lessons to be followed by schoolchildren across the nation, providing a publicity boost for the space agency. NASA’s administrators decided to continue with the flight. The risk was deemed acceptable.

Fig. 4.4.  Launch day for the ill-fated Challenger STS-51L was atypically cold for Florida, with long icicles hanging from the launch tower. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.  As reported by Mike Mullane in his book, anomalous heat damage had already been recorded in the right-side booster of STS-2 as early as in November 1981 (Mike Mullane, Riding Rockets, pp. 101–102). NASA and Morton Thiokol’s top management were therefore aware of problems with the O-ring seals, but agreed to launch STS-51L against the recommendation of Thiokol’s engineers, who had already alerted management a year before, in a report dated January 1985, referring to several Shuttle launches that had been approved without correcting the hazard (see Russels P., Boisjoly et al. “Roger Boisjoly and the Challenger Disaster: the Ethical Dimension”, in Journal of Business Ethics, Vol.8, no. 4, April 1989, p. 217–230). As the astronaut Walter Cunningham summarized in his book “Complacency and overconfidence, in spite of numerous instances of exhaust gas leakage through a solid rocket booster seal, were factors in the Challenger disaster during launch... There is no room for complacency or overconfidence in human spaceflight. The current attitude… is that good intentions, or lack of malice, or trying their best, are acceptable substitutes for good judgment and satisfactory results. They are not! In manned spaceflight, only results count, not efforts”. Walter Cunningham, “The All-American Boys”, p. 471. 5

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The copious amounts of ice on Pad 39B forced an additional two-hour delay to permit thawing, but finally the green light was given at 11:38. The decision to go ahead with the launch on such a cold morning proved fatal. Years later, McAuliffe’s mother, Grace Corrigan, insisted that the general opinion in the weeks leading up to Challenger’s fateful launch was that the Shuttle was far safer than an airliner, simply due to the higher number of precautions taken by NASA. Fourteen seconds after take-off, Judy Resnik was heard to scan “LVLH” (local-vertical/local-horizontal), reminding all crew of a cockpit switch configuration change. These were her last words heard from the Control Center, which seconds later gave the order “Go at throttle-up” (“Full speed ahead!”). Commander Dick Scobee confirmed: “Go at throttle-up”! Suddenly, a flame appeared and then there was an explosion (Fig. 4.5). Investigators would later conclude that cold had caused the failure of both the primary and secondary O-ring seals at the base of the right-hand booster.

Fig. 4.5.  Seventy-three seconds after launch, with millions of people watching on live TV, the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up in a forking plume of smoke and fire. Within seconds, the spacecraft broke apart and plunged into the ocean, killing the entire crew of seven astronauts. The devastating tragedy shocked the world and threw NASA’s Shuttle program into turmoil. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Under the pressure of acceleration required to reach the escape velocity, they were no longer able to contain the exhaust gases, causing the catastrophic explosion 73 seconds after launch, when the most dangerous phase of the ascent was already over. As the investigation demonstrated, Judy Resnik and Ellison Onizuka were still alive when the crew cabin separated from the rest of the spacecraft, and they were fully conscious after the breakup and during the entire descent, until the impact with the ocean at a speed of roughly 207 miles per hour (333 kilometer per hour). Unfortunately, there was no crew escape system: this was one of the costs that NASA had cut. A few days after the incident, Senator John Glenn, who was the first American astronaut to fly into Earth orbit, concluded his eulogy held in Akron, the birthplace of Judy Resnik, by saying: “As we reflect on Judy’s life, and Challenger’s last voyage in the days and weeks ahead, let us never forget the last words that came from that spacecraft: ‘Go at throttle-up’. Those are far more than a courageous epitaph. They are America’s history. They are America’s destiny. And they will turn tragedy into triumph once again”.

In 2004, Resnik posthumously received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. Her kindness, brilliance and passion for STEM continue to be an inspiration to people today. The “Resnik Challenger Medal”, the Society of Women Engineers’ annual award, goes every year to a woman who has innovated the space industry, as voted on by her peers. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers sponsors an annual Judith A.  Resnik Award for exceptional contributions to space engineering. The American Flyers give Judith Resnik scholarships to female pilots. The Akron City Hospital opened the Judith A. Resnik Center for Women’s Health. The Akron Board of Education offers two generous scholarships in her honor to high school students pursuing a career in math, science, or space technology. Several schools and lecture halls in all the US States are named after her, including an engineering lecture hall at the University of Maryland. A lunar crater, along with a crater on Venus, a star, and an asteroid all bear the name of Judith Resnik for future generations. She has also featured on 36 stamps issued by 19 countries worldwide.

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Sources For This Section Anon. “STS 41D/Flight 12 Mission Report”, nasaspaceflight.com. Anon. “Judith Resnik: The ‘Little One’ Who Went to Space”, jspace.com. Berkes, H., “30 Years After Explosion, Challenger Engineer Still Blames Himself ”, in www.npr.org (January 28, 2016) Chang, R., “How Teacher Christa McAuliffe Was Selected for the Disastrous Challenger Mission” in www.biography.com (September 15, 2020) Cavallaro, U. “Remembering Judith Resnik, the second Woman ‘Shuttlenaut’” in Judaica Thematic Society Newsletter - No 183 (February 2021) pages 4-7. Cohen, L. “Judith Resnik”, Jewish Women’s Archive, jwa.org/encyclopedia. Cunningham, W. “The All-American Boys”, pp. 369–376. iBooks, Inc., New York (2004). Evans, B. “‘Major Malfunction’: The Final Launch of Challenger, 28 Years Ago Today”, americaspace.com (January 28, 2015). Gibson, K.B. “Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures”, pp. 91–97. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Glenn, J. “Memorial Service for Judith Resnik”, nasa.gov (Akron, February 3, 1986). Kolbert, E. “Two Paths to the Stars”, nytimes.com (February 9, 1986). Mullane, M. “Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut”. Scribner, New York (2006). Official NASA biography of Judy Resnik, nasa.gov (December 2003). Resnik, J., “My Aunt, Judy Resnik”, in www.challenger.org (Jan. 27, 2016,)

4.2 MARSHA IVINS: ASPIRING ASTRONAUT AT 19 Mission

Launch

Return

STS-32 STS-46 STS-62 STS-81 STS-98

January 9, 1990 July 31, 1992 March 4, 1994 January 12, 1997 February 7, 2001

January 20, 1990 August 8, 1992 March 18, 1994 January 22, 1997 February 20, 2001

When Marsha Ivins (Fig. 4.6) was 19 years old – during the days of Apollo – she wrote a letter to Deke Slayton, then boss of the Astronaut Office, to inquire whether she could become an astronaut and what career path would be best for her to do so (Fig. 4.7): “I was in my second year of engineering school, engineering selected because that’s what astronauts seemed to be after military pilots. I wrote the letter because I was looking for guidance perhaps for specific kinds of engineering to study”.

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Fig. 4.6.  Marsha Ivins. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fig. 4.7.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-46, signed by Marsha Ivins. From the Author’s collection.

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Fig. 4.8.  This letter by Marsha Ivins was found in the Johnson Space Center (JSC) History Collection University of Houston-Clear Lake (UHCL) Archives, and was first published in neumannlib.blogspot.it in October 2011. The letter is not dated, but Deke Slayton’s response encouraging her to continue her education because female astronaut selection was “inevitable”, is dated May 4, 1970. Figure Credit: © UCHL Archives. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

Deke Slayton answered by return, saying that he did not expect there would be any selection of new astronauts in the near future, and in this he was right: the next selection would come eight years later, in 1978 (Fig. 4.8). Ivins applied to the astronaut program three times before she was finally selected in 1984. Ivins is one of the six women astronauts who have flown in space five times: “I wanted to be an astronaut since I was ten. In 1961, Alan Shepard made history by becoming the first American to go into space. Over the next decade US astronauts ventured on their Moon missions. I remember my entire family would gather in front of our little black and white television set and watch the broadcasts absolutely transfixed. I was captivated by the whole idea of going to space. And from then on, one thing I wanted to do with my life was to work for the space program”.

Marsha Sue Ivins was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 15, 1951. She started learning to fly very early, when she was 15 years old: “In fact, I learned

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to fly before I learned to drive a car”. After graduating at the Nether Providence High School in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, in 1969, she continued her studies and, in 1973, earned a BSc degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Colorado in Boulder. In July 1974, she went to work for NASA’s JSC as an engineer for orbiter displays and controls, and man-machine engineering. This was the period when the Space Shuttle was being designed. The group she worked for designed all of the cockpit, and the displays and controls. Her major assignment in 1978 was to participate in the development of the orbiter Heads-Up Display (HUD): “Our job was to make sure that the 1,800 switches and circuit breakers that were in the Shuttle could be reached, could be seen by astronauts while they were launching, while they were in orbit, and when they were coming back to land”.

In 1980, Ivins was hired as a flight engineer for the specially modified Gulfstream II aircraft, the NASA jet trainer used by Aircraft Operations to train astronauts in the approach and landing techniques required to land the Shuttle orbiter. She also served as a co-pilot on Gulfstream I, the NASA administrative aircraft. She holds a multi-engine Airline Transport Pilot License with Gulfstream I type rating, as well as commercial single-engine airplane, land, sea, and glider licenses, and flight instructor ratings. She has logged over 7,000 hours in civilian and NASA aircraft. Ivins applied to be an astronaut in 1978 but was rejected. She applied again in 1980 and was interviewed but again not accepted. She tried once more in 1984 and was finally selected for Astronaut Group 10, “The Maggots.” During her 26-year career in the Astronaut Office, Ivins reviewed orbiter safety and reliability issues and participated in the improvement of avionics and orbiter cockpit layout. She also worked in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL) for software verification and was a capsule communicator (Capcom) in Mission Control, as well as a “Cape Crusader,” leading the Astronaut Support Personnel team at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) that supported Space Shuttle launches and landings. She was the lead for crew equipment, stowage and habitability, and imagery review. Prior to her retirement in 2010 she led the Constellation Branch, supporting crew issues during the development of the Constellation Program and early commercial crew and cargo development. A veteran of five spaceflights, Ivins has logged over 1,318 hours (55 days) in space, working as flight engineer, load master, robot arm operator, and photography manager, among other things, on missions devoted to such diverse tasks as deploying satellites, conducting scientific research, and docking with Mir and the ISS.

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Her first experience in space was in 1990 with mission STS-32, on which she served as Mission Specialist-2, the ascent and entry Flight Engineer (MS-2/FE): “We accept flying in planes as part of daily life. But flying in space is still a ‘wow’ moment, even if you’ve worked in the space program, supported other space flights, and spoken to everyone who has flown before you”.

During the mission, she was primarily responsible for supporting the retrieval of the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), photographing its condition to acquire information vital to the development of the future space station and other spacecraft, prior to berthing it back into the payload bay. LDEF had been placed in low orbit during STS-41C in April 1984 and had been exposed in outer space for over five years, as its recovery had been delayed by the Challenger accident in 1986. The crew on this mission also successfully deployed a Syncom satellite. In 1992, Ivins was MS-2/FE on the STS-46 mission on which Franco Malerba, the first Italian astronaut, also flew. Malerba describes her as follows in his book, The Summit: “Marsha, the Flight Engineer, is like a little bird; small and speedy, perfectly at ease, she floats from one corner to another as a bird would fly from a branch to another, she can fit in the most incredibly small holes, she seems born in this environment. When she happens to untie her braid, her tiny face is soon encompassed by a halo of long, thick flowing hair due to the lack of gravity”.

This sense of lightness and freedom also surfaced in a recent interview, in which Ivins said: “Space takes me away from the individual problems and stresses. You are disconnected from what’s going on, on the planet. I don’t have to look at the phone and worry about things like have I left the tap running. When you look at the Earth from space, you don’t see any natural borders or barriers between countries and continents... Some of the best days of my vacations were in space”.

The first experiment with the Italian Tethered Satellite System (TSS, designed by Alenia Spazio in Turin, Italy) was performed during this mission, an unusual experiment that Ivins described as “weird science.” The experiment unfortunately failed, as it refused to unroll more than about 256 m, instead of its planned 12 miles. NASA later identified a fault in the release mechanism provided by its partner Martin Marietta. (However, since NASA was strongly interested in the results of the experiment, a re-flight was scheduled and flew

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under TSS-1R on STS-75 in January 1996.) STS-46 also deployed the ESA-­ EURECA (EUropean REtrievable CArrier), the first European reusable satellite and dedicated microgravity free-flyer (also built by Alenia Spazio), which would be retrieved by a later mission after 11 months. During the STS-62 mission in 1994, Ivins was responsible for the Dexterous End Effector (DEE), a new and improved “hand” for the Shuttle’s robotic arm. This was her longest flight, which lasted for 14 days. She also contributed to several experiments in the USMP-2 “Microgravity Experiments Package” and, as on her previous flights, was responsible for all photographic and TV set equipment procedures and objectives in the mission. In 1997, Ivins participated in the fifth of nine planned Shuttle-Mir missions (STS-81), which was mainly devoted to logistics transfer using the Spacehab “double module,” and delivered 2,710  kg of supplies, including food, water, scientific materials, and space parts to Mir. Ivins had primary responsibilities for the hand-held laser used for distance measurement during rendezvous and docking operations with Mir, and was tasked with photographing the separated external tank. She was also the loadmaster, with primary responsibility for logistic and scientific transfer and supervising cargo movements (Fig. 4.9).

Fig. 4.9.  The effect of weightlessness on Marsha Ivins’ long hair during Shuttle mission STS-98. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Her last mission (STS-98, February 2001) was an assembly flight for the ISS. During that mission, as the primary RMS operator, Ivins was in charge of taking the US Laboratory Destiny out of the cargo bay and integrating it on the ISS: “This was probably the hardest thing I have ever done. And the scariest because it was a one-of-a-kind, 1.4 billion dollar laboratory module without which there would be no Space Station science, so the pressure was on me to actually do this job”.

She was also responsible for the mission’s TV and photographic documentation tasks once again. Marsha Ivins left NASA on December 31, 2010. As with so many others, the imminent closure of the Shuttle program, the drastic decrease in the probability of flying, and no prospect of an American spacecraft for many years, meant she needed to look for new opportunities elsewhere, as had happened in the early 1970s with the end of the Apollo program. Ivins said: “I was very fortunate to be selected and assigned to flights in an era where you could actually fly every two or three years. That’s never going to happen again. The guys that are in the office now realize that they’ll be lucky to get one flight in the 10 or 15 years they spend in the office, maybe two. And so there’s a huge level of frustration, and it’s not just with astronauts, but with the NASA Administrator, with the program managers. You look at the Moon every night like a big giant tease out there because it’s not any closer”.

Ivins now works as an independent engineering consultant.

Sources For This Section AA.VV. “Astronaut Marsha Ivins Leaves NASA”, collectspace.com (January 4, 2011). Briggs, C.S. Women Space Pioneers, pp. 92–95. Lerner Publications, Minneapolis (2005). Glass, I. “Nice Work If You Can Get It”, thisamericanlife.org (April 6, 2007). Interview with Marsha Ivins. I Learned to Fly before I Learned to Drive. Zoom in America, IX(98) (2012), usinfo.pl. Ivins M., “I’m a Retired Female Astronaut and I Can’t Understand the Obsession With ‘Gender Diverse’ Space Crews”, in times.com (August 28, 2019) Malerba, F. The Summit, p. 28. Tormena, Genova (1993). Mooney, C. “What It’s Like to Spend 55 days in Space”, motherjones.com (September 20, 2013).

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Official biography of Marsha Ivins, jsc.nasa.gov (January 2011). Personal communication with the Author through e-mail in May 2016. Paul, R. “Some of My Best Vacations Were in Space, Says Marsha Ivins”, dnaindia. com (April 24, 2012). Roper, C. “An Astronaut Reveals What Life in Space Is Really Like”, wired.com (November 19, 2014). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space – Following Valentina, pp. 256, 261, 269, 277, 294. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 73–74. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

4.3 NANCY JAN DAVIS: GROWING UP WITH THE SATURN ROCKETS Mission

Launch

Return

STS-47 STS-60 STS-85

September 12, 1992 February 3, 1994 August 7, 1997

September 20, 1992 February 11, 1994 August 19, 1997

When Nancy Jan Davis was growing up in Huntsville in the 1960s, there simply were no women astronauts, so that was not something she ever considered becoming. But in 1978, when the first female candidates were selected to be part of NASA’s Astronaut Corps, she began to rethink her career path. In 1984, while working as an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and attending the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), she applied to be an astronaut. She was not chosen from among the 5,000 people who applied that year, but she was selected three years later. Nancy Jan Davis (Fig. 4.10) was born in Cocoa Beach, Florida, on November 1, 1953. She received much of her schooling in Huntsville, Alabama, where she moved with her family when she was a young girl and considers to be her hometown: “I grew up in Huntsville, which is where Von Braun and the rocket team was. I went to school with a lot of their kids. I moved here in the early ’60s, when we were going to the Moon, and I was here during all of the testing they were doing in Huntsville. They tested all of the engines, and the whole town would vibrate. It was really a big deal in Huntsville. When I say the whole town, I mean the windows would shake and you just knew we were doing something to help us to go to the Moon. It was really exciting. With every mission, and every launch, they would make a big deal about it at school. I guess I became

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Fig. 4.10.  Nancy Jan Davis. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

interested in space when everybody else in the country did, but it was just a very real thing for me here”.

Davis enjoyed math and science: “I had a science teacher who really influenced me and made it very interesting and fun for me. I think that made the difference. With math I just enjoyed the challenge of it. I ended up taking all the courses I could, and they didn’t have any courses left for me when I was a senior in high school. I started taking calculus at the university when I was in high school. Just because I really enjoyed it”.

In 1975, Davis earned a BSc degree in Applied Biology from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a second BSc degree in Mechanical Engineering from Auburn University in 1977: “I liked the idea of using engineering to do things that help people and I was going to go into bioengineering, but there were no jobs there, So I went where the jobs were”. For Davis, that was Bellaire, Texas, where she took a job with Texaco as a petroleum engineer in enhanced oil recovery methods in 1977 and contributed to the use of steam flooding, a procedure used to increase the oil’s mobility, making it easier to extract from underground deposits for several years.

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Fig. 4.11.  Commemorative cover of the landing of mission STS-47, signed by Nancy Jan Davis. From the Author’s collection.

While she had a lot of interest in space, Davis had never dreamed of becoming an astronaut herself, but that began to change in 1978, as she explained in an interview: “When I was growing up there weren’t any women astronauts so I didn’t even think it was possible until they started selecting women in 1978. So that’s when I first got the idea” (Fig. 4.11). In 1979, Davis left Texaco and joined NASA’s MSFC in Huntsville as an aerospace engineer, working in the team responsible for the structural analysis and verification of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and then of the other great space observatory, the Chandra Telescope (or Advanced X-Ray Astrophysics Facility); in 1986, she was then named team leader of the HST maintenance mission. While working at NASA, she completed her postgraduate work with an MSc degree in Mechanical Engineering at the UAH in 1983, and earned a doctorate at the same university in 1985, studying the long-term strength of pressure vessels due to the viscoelastic characteristics of filament-wound composites: “It was convenient that they had night classes and I could work full time”, she said. Between working and studying, Davis was able to receive a practical mechanical engineering education that went beyond the textbook. After the Challenger accident in 1986, Davis served as chief engineer and led the team who redesigned the O-rings that sealed the joints between the sections of the two Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs). She holds her own patent and has authored several technical papers.

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Between finishing her MSc and beginning her doctorate, Davis felt her prospects would be more competitive and applied to be an astronaut again. She said: “I think having a graduate degree and my pilot’s license, it just seemed like I might have the qualifications, so I might as well give it a shot. I knew it was a long shot but I realized it could happen. It was a possibility”.

Her application was declined twice, but she eventually qualified as an astronaut in June 1987 when she became a member of Group 12. Her experience at NASA was key to her selection. Davis’s initial technical assignment was in the Astronaut Office “Mission Development Branch,” at JSC, where she provided technical support for Space Shuttle payloads, including the Italian Tethered Satellite System deployed by her colleague Tamara Jernigan during the STS-46 mission. Davis also served as a Capcom in Mission Control for seven Space Shuttle missions, including mission STS-48  in September 1991, when the first collision-­ avoidance maneuver ever was performed in the then ten-year-old Shuttle history. Minutes before midnight, the Shuttle’s thrusters were burned for seven seconds to avoid debris from the Russian Kosmos 955 satellite. “I think we scored a space first”, Davis told the crew before they went to sleep for the day. Davis flew three times in space. Her first flight was in 1992 on the STS-47 mission, the 50th mission of the Space Shuttle program and second mission of Space Shuttle Endeavour, which carried the Italian-built Spacelab Long Module-2 (LM-2) for the third time. During the eight-day mission – a co-­ operative venture between the US and Japan – Davis was a Mission Specialist (MS), responsible for operating Spacelab-J and its subsystems, together with Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to fly in space. They performed a variety of experiments in life sciences and materials processing, under the direction of Payload Commander Mark C. Lee. After her first spaceflight, Davis served as the Astronaut Office representative for the Remote Manipulator System (RMS), with responsibility for RMS operations, training, and payloads. In 1994, she flew on Discovery STS-60, the first Shuttle-Mir mission and the first to include a Russian cosmonaut – Sergei Krikalev – in the crew. During the eight-day mission, Davis’s prime responsibility was to maneuver the Wake Shield Facility (WSF) on the RMS. She also conducted experiments on thin-film crystal growth and was responsible for performing scientific experiments in the Spacehab. She said: “It was hard work, but we were up there for a reason and we didn’t have a lot of time to just look out the window”.

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Following this mission, Davis served as the Chairperson of the NASA Education Working Group and as Chief for the Payloads Branch, which provided Astronaut Office support for all Shuttle and ISS payloads. In 1997, she flew in space for the third time, as Payload Commander for mission STS-85, again on Discovery. During this 12-day mission, Davis deployed and retrieved the CRISTA-SPAS payload, and operated the Japanese Manipulator Flight Demonstration (MFD) robotic arm. After returning from this mission, Davis worked at NASA Headquarters as the Director of the Human Exploration and Development of Space (HEDS) Independent Assurance Office for the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance. In that position, she managed and directed independent assessments for the programs and projects assigned to the HEDS enterprise. In July 1999, she moved to the MSFC as Director of the Flight Projects Directorate and was responsible for the ISS Payload Operations Center, ISS hardware, and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Program. After the Columbia accident, she was named head of Safety and Mission Assurance at MSFC, leading NASA’s efforts to safely return the Space Shuttle to flight. After more than 26 years, Nancy Jan Davis retired from NASA in April 2005: “I was eligible to retire and it seemed like a good opportunity to learn how private industry worked and to expand my knowledge”, she said. She had logged a total of 673 hours (28 days) in space. In October 2005, she accepted a position as Vice President and Deputy General Manager at Jacobs Engineering Group, an international technical professional services firm based in Huntsville, Alabama, with over 53,500 employees globally in 200 offices around the world. She was not very far from her original home: “I oversee the almost 900 employees who support the MSFC programs and projects”, she said, “so it’s a good way to still stay with NASA”. In July 2017, Davis joined Bastion Technologies, Inc., a multi-disciplined engineering and technical services company headquartered in Houston, providing safety, quality and reliability services to NASA’s MSFC Huntsville. She also continued to work at Marshall, where she was initially Program Manager for the Safety and Mission Assurances Services (SMAS) contract provided at all Space Launch Systems OEM locations across the country, and is now Senior Technical Fellow in charge of anything related to NASA or Human Spaceflight. Davis is a Registered Professional Engineer and a Fellow of both the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

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Sources For This Section Evans, B. “Of Marriage, Medaka Fish and Multiculturalism: The Legacy of STS-47”, americaspace.com (October 28, 2012). Lachance, D. “College of Engineering Alumna Dr. Jan Davis on UAH”, www.uah. edu (November 14, 2013). Kane R. B., “Jan Davis” in encyclopediaofalabama.org (Last updated: February 8, 2017) Official biography of Nancy Jan Davis, jsc.nasa.gov (January 2006). Personal contacts with Author by e-mail in March 2016. Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space – Following Valentina, pp. 261–263. Springer/ Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 82–84. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

4.4 ELLEN OCHOA: “REACH FOR THE STARS AND LET NOTHING LIMIT YOUR POTENTIAL” Mission

Launch

Return

STS-56 STS-66 STS-96 STS-110

April 8, 1993 November 3, 1994 May 27, 1999 April 8, 2002

April 17, 1993 November 14, 1994 June 6, 1999 April 19, 2002

Inventor, physicist and astronaut, Dr. Ellen Ochoa (Fig. 4.12) flew on four Space Shuttle missions and, from January 2013 to May 2018, was the 11th Director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, responsible for overseeing more than 10,000 employees and contractors. The daughter of a Mexican-American father, Ellen Lauri Ochoa was born in Los Angeles, California, on May 10, 1958, the same year NASA was established, “which I like to think is not a coincidence,” she said. Ochoa has always considered her hometown to be La Mesa, near San Diego, where she grew up with her sister and three brothers. She said: “My father didn’t speak Spanish with us at home. When I was growing up, my father believed, as many people did at the time, that there was a prejudice against people speaking their native language. It’s really too bad, and I’m glad that things have changed in recent years”.

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Fig. 4.12.  Ellen Ochoa. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

One of the most influential people in her life was her mother, Rosanne, who was a firm believer in the value of education and held to the idea that a person can succeed at anything if he or she tries hard enough. Ochoa says: “When I was a year old my mother started college. She had to raise five children primarily on her own and so she couldn’t take more than one class each semester. She didn’t graduate until 22 years later, but she did finish. Her primary focus was the enjoyment of learning. That’s what I got from her example”.

Ochoa was an exceptionally good student, and in particular developed a love of math, graduating from high school at the top of her class. In addition, she was (and still is) very fond of music and earned recognition during her teen years as a flutist. At one point, she considered a professional career as a classical flutist, but decided it was more practical to pursue a different direction. Her passion for the flute never diminished, however, and photos taken of her while she played flute floating on the Space Shuttle are well known. Valedictorian of her 1975 graduating class at Grossmont High, Ochoa was offered a partial scholarship to Stanford University in Palo Alto, near San Francisco, but chose to study at San Diego State University, which was more

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affordable. In 1980, she obtained her BSc degree in Physics with top academic honors, once again the valedictorian of her class. She then went on to graduate school at Stanford University to study electrical engineering and earned her MSc degree in 1981 and her Ph.D. in 1985, all while performing as an award-winning soloist with the Stanford Symphony Orchestra. At Stanford, Ochoa met other graduate students who were interested in NASA’s astronaut training program, and realized that she might qualify for it as well (Fig. 4.13): “I was 11 when Apollo Eleven landed on the Moon and, of course, everyone in the world was watching. But I never considered being an astronaut as an option because when I was growing up there were no female astronauts. It wasn’t until the first six female astronauts were selected in 1978 that women could even think of it as a possible career path”.

Ochoa decided to apply when she completed her doctorate. In her doctoral dissertation, she developed an innovative optical inspection system to detect defects in objects with repetitive features. Together with her advisors at Stanford, she received a patent for the process. Her doctorate complete, Ochoa began her career as a research optical engineer at the Sandia National Laboratory in Livermore, California, developing optical systems. She earned two more patents: one for an optical object

Fig. 4.13.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-96, signed by Ellen Ochoa. From the Author’s collection.

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recognition method and another for a method for image noise removal. She also published several scientific articles on the subject. While there, she learned she had become one of 100 finalists under consideration for the NASA astronaut training program. Ochoa had the opportunity to interview in 1987 but was not selected. She decided she wanted to work for NASA in some capacity and, in 1988, she was hired at the NASA Ames Research Center in California and soon became chief of the Intelligent Systems Technology Branch, where she managed a staff of 35 engineers working on advanced development of space-­based computational systems. She said later: “I would advise everyone to set their aspirations high, and then shoot for them. I don’t think it matters if you don’t reach that one lofty goal. In reaching high you will encounter other opportunities that can lead to interesting career paths and an exciting life”.

In 1989, Ochoa was again interviewed for the astronaut program, and in January 1990 she learned that she had finally been selected, joining NASA’s 13th Astronaut Candidate Class along with 22 other candidates, including five women. In April 1993, Ochoa became the first Hispanic American woman to go into space when she flew on the STS-56 mission on Space Shuttle Discovery, as an MS for Spacelab ATLAS-2 (Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science-2) (Fig. 4.14). This was the second flight in the NASA program called “Mission to Planet Earth” to study our planet to understand the atmosphere, lands and oceans. Ochoa said: “I was in training for three years before my first mission, which isn’t that long of a wait. Some astronauts have waited ten or more years before they could finally go into space”. The United States had signed the Montreal protocol, pledging to stop using CFCs in products. Scientists predicted it would be 30 to 40 years before seeing the atmosphere begin to heal and data was needed to monitor the byproducts over a period of time to determine what was naturally occurring and what was a result of human activity. The sun has an 11-year solar cycle, during which the amount of radiation received on Earth cycles from a maximum to a minimum. Originally, the plan was to fly the same monitoring instruments once a year during that 11-year cycle to collect data, but funding was reduced and NASA was only able fly three of them. Ochoa flew on the Space Shuttle for the second and third of those flights. She used the RMS to deploy and retrieve the SPARTAN satellite that carried instruments to investigate the relation between the solar wind and solar flares and determine the amounts of solar radiation in low Earth orbit. She said: “I have worked the robot arm on all four of my space missions, and I really love it. It’s challenging to do, but lots of fun”.

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Fig. 4.14.  Ellen Ochoa playing Vivaldi on the flute while serving as a Mission Specialist on her first mission, STS-56, in 1993. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

In November 1994, Ochoa served as Payload Commander for the Atlantis STS-66 mission and continued the research with Spacelab ATLAS-3, another data-collecting mission on solar energy, studying the problem of the ozone hole and ozone depletion. Among her many responsibilities was using the Shuttle’s robotic arm to retrieve the Cryogenic Infrared spectrometer and telescope instruments mounted on the CRISTA-SPAS satellite, which had been deployed eight days earlier by fellow crewmember Jean-François Clervoy of the European Space Agency (ESA). Following this flight, Ochoa received an award for her technical achievements from the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Corporation. For the next few years, she worked on the development of the ISS.  She recalled: “When I came back from my second flight, NASA had joined forces with Russia to redesign the space station that we had been planning with other countries for a few years. So it became my job to lead astronaut office support for that program. We were negotiating with the Russians on how we were going to operate, so I took my first trips to Russia, to Star City, where the Russian Mission Control and Cosmonaut Training Center are. I met a lot of folks there, and we talked

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about what language we were going to speak in training and on the orbit and how we were going to work together as an international team. That was a fascinating part of being an astronaut that I never imagined when I first thought about it as a career”.

In 1999, after spending many years contributing to the development of the ISS, Ochoa was named as MS-2/FE for the Discovery STS-96 mission, the first Shuttle flight to dock to the ISS to prepare the station for a permanent resident crew in early 2000. At that time, she was the mother of a one-year-­ old son: “My son turned a year old the day we flew down to Cape Kennedy for launch. Luckily, he was only a baby, so he didn’t realize I wasn’t there for his birthday”. The ten-day mission, using the Spacehab in a Dual-Module configuration, delivered four tons of equipment and supplies to the space station. Ochoa was loadmaster, tasked with coordinating the operations. She again handled the robotic arm, alternating with the Canadian Space Agency’s astronaut Julie Payette: “I worked with the help of cameras and monitors because we were docked in a way that prevented me from seeing the robot arm. This made things more difficult, but then again, everything I’ve done on actual missions in space has always been easier than when I first tried it during training”.

Following STS-96, Ochoa served as a Capcom in NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston, communicating with astronauts who were working in space. In 2002, she made her fourth and final flight to space on STS-110, again on Atlantis. By that time, the space station had grown and crews had been living on board for a couple of years. The primary goal of the mission was to add the first piece of the station’s nearly 300-foot-long backbone, “Segment S-0,” or the center-integrated truss assembly of the Integrated Truss Structure. The Structure consists of a linearly arranged sequence of 11 connected trusses on which various unpressurized components are mounted, including logistics carriers, radiators, solar arrays, and other equipment such as GPS antennas. Together with Dan Bursch and Carl Walz, members of the space station’s Expedition-4 crew, Ochoa operated the Canadarm-2, the station’s first robotic arm, to install the S-0 Truss and supported her colleagues who worked outside the ISS during three of the four spacewalks necessary to complete the task. “During that flight my second son turned two”, she recalled, “so I got to say happy birthday to him from orbit”. By the end of her fourth flight, she had logged almost 1,000 hours in space. After this last mission, Ochoa was appointed Deputy Director of Flight Crew Operations at the JSC, the organization that manages the Astronaut

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Office and aircraft operations. She was in Mission Control on February 1, 2003, when the Space Shuttle Columbia STS-107 mission was lost during re-­ entry, killing the seven crew. In 2006, Ochoa was named Director of Flight Operations. The following year, she was appointed Deputy Director of JSC and, in November 2012 – during a time of uncertainty for the space agency – she became Director, in charge of overseeing over 10,000 employees. Frequently asked to speak to students and teachers about her career and the success she has enjoyed as NASA’s first Hispanic woman astronaut and First Hispanic Director of Johnson Space Center, Ochoa regarded this part of her job as an unexpected bonus: “I do as much speaking as I am allowed to do”, she said. For years, she undertook two speaking engagements per month, the maximum number NASA allowed its astronauts. She has delivered hundreds of such talks, relishing the many chances she has had to inspire young people to study mathematics and science. “I never thought about this aspect of the job when I was applying, but it’s extremely rewarding”, she noted in the Stanford University School of Engineering Annual Report, 1997–1998. “I’m not trying to make every kid an astronaut, but I want kids to think about a career and the preparation they’ll need”. Ochoa especially enjoys speaking to children with similar backgrounds to hers: “I think that it’s important for children to have a role model to see what they can grow up to be. It’s important they know that if they work hard, they can be and accomplish whatever they want. I am proud to be an example of that”.

In 2017, Ellen Ochoa was inducted into the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame, together with astronaut Michael Foale, and into the International Air and Space Hall of Fame class in 2018. She retired from NASA on May 25, 2018, after 30 years of service and a five-year tenure as JSC Director that included improvements in how the JSC works in more adaptive ways, an increase of diversity in the workforce and involvement in missions to the ISS. Married with two children, Ochoa and her husband, Coe Miles, moved the family to Boise, Idaho, a place they visited often and fell in love with. She continues to serve on several boards, including the National Science Board, continues her many speaking engagements about women and minorities in STEM and leadership, and continues to play the flute, which she once considered for her career. Ochoa holds three patents in the area of optical information processing and has authored several technical papers. Six schools across California, Oklahoma, Washington and Texas bear her name and she is viewed by many young Latinos as a role model.

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Sources For This Section “Ellen Ochoa”, encyclopedia.com. Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 119–124. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Gueldenpfenning, S. Women in Space Who Changed the World, pp. 58–66. The Rosen Publishing Group, New York (2012). Hasday, J.L. Ellen Ochoa, Chelsea House Pub., New York (2007), 106 pp. Interview released to scholastic.com during the Hispanic Heritage Month in 1999. Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, p. 188. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Latrash B., Danner R., & Wegmueller S., “Dr. Ellen Ochoa, Reaching for the Stars The First Hispanic Woman in Space” in “30 Inspirational Women in Naval Engineering, STEM and beyond” NEJ (Naval Engineers Journal) Special Edition Vol. 132 , No. 3 (September 2020) p. 86-91 Nevarez, G. “Ellen Ochoa, First Latina in Space, Makes History Once More”, huffingtonpost.com (January 28, 2013). “Ochoa Honored as Hispanic 2008 Engineer of the Year”, nasa.gov (October 10, 2008). “Ochoa Named Johnson Space Center Director: Coats to Retire”, Press Release NASA J12-020, nasa.gov (November 16, 2012). Official NASA biography of Ellen Ochoa, jsc.nasa.gov (March 2014). Personal contacts with the Author by e-mail in April 2016. “Preflight Interview: Ellen Ochoa”, STS-96, nasa.gov (April 7, 2002). Stanford University School of Engineering Annual Report, 1997–98 (February 23, 2002). Stanford Women in Space. Sandstone & Tile, 38(1), 3–12 (2014). The Albert V.  Baez Award for Outstanding Technical Achievements in Service to Humanity. Hispanic Engineer & IT 1995, 11(3), 26–27 (1995). Traynor, S. “Intervista a Ellen Ochoa”, amazing-kids.org. Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 89–91. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

4.5 JANICE VOSS: VISITED THE ISS AS A CYGNUS CRAFT Mission

Launch

Return

STS-57 STS-63 STS-83 STS-94 STS-99

June 21, 1993 February 3, 1995 April 4, 1997 July 1, 1997 February 11, 2000

July 1, 1993 February 11, 1995 April 8, 1997 July 17, 1997 February 22, 2000

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“Janice devoted her life to space and accomplished many wonderful things at NASA and Orbital Sciences, including five Shuttle missions. And today, Janice’s legacy in space continues. Welcome aboard the ISS, Janice”. With these words, ‘Janice Voss’ was welcomed to the International Space Station (ISS) after the docking of Cygnus CRS-2 on July 16, 2014, the 45th anniversary of the historic launch of Apollo 11. The Cygnus pressurized automated cargo spacecraft was christened “SS Janice Voss” in honor of the astronaut, who flew five Shuttle missions during her prolific career, and had worked for Orbital Sciences before joining NASA. As an astronaut, Voss had flown to Mir but never flew to the ISS. Frank Culbertson, Orbital’s vice president and a former NASA astronaut, said: “Janice was a friend of many of us, both in the Orbital and NASA communities. We wanted to honor her and her family by naming this spacecraft for her. We think it is a fitting tribute to a really fine engineer and outstanding astronaut”.

Janice Elaine Voss (Fig. 4.15) was born in South Bend, Indiana, on October 8, 1956, but considered Rockford, Illinois, to be her hometown. She began to be interested in space an early age, as her mother, Louise Voss, explained in an interview (Fig. 4.16):

Fig. 4.15.  Janice Voss. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Fig. 4.16.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-99, signed by the crew including Janice Voss. From the Author’s collection.

“It all started at the age of six, when Janice picked up a book at the local library: it was ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ by Madeleine L’Engle, a fantasy where one of the main characters is a scientist who happens to be a woman”.

Voss became interested in this kind of reading and was an avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction by Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke. Some of her passions for life also included volleyball, dancing, and flying. Voss began working for NASA in 1973 as a co-opted intern at JSC, part of an experimental “job-school” program, when she was just 16 and a freshman at Purdue University. She worked in the Directorate for Engineering and Development, and contributed to the development of simulations for the Shuttle. In 1975, after obtaining her BSc degree in Engineering Science from Purdue University, she returned to JSC for a year as a technical instructor of navigation systems for the crews. In 1977, Voss earned her MSc degree in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and joined Orbital Sciences Corporation, the same company that now launches Cygnus spacecraft to the ISS (its pressurized module is produced in Italy by the Turin-based Thales Alenia Space) (Fig. 4.17). At Orbital, she contributed to the mission integration and flight operations support for an upper stage called the Transfer Orbit Stage (TOS). In the autumn of 1992, the TOS launched the unlucky Mars Observer from a Titan III, which later malfunctioned despite the successful launch. In September 1993, the TOS launched the Advanced Communications

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Fig. 4.17.  Cover commemorating the launch of Cygnus Orb-2, named after Janice Voss. From the Author’s collection.

Technology Satellite (ACTS) from the Space Shuttle STS-51. However, the primary and backup pyrotechnic devices inside the Super*Zip were erroneously fired simultaneously, resulting in minor damage to both the TOS and the Shuttle’s payload bay, although the ACTS satellite deployed successfully and functioned normally on orbit and the Shuttle landed safely despite the anomaly. In 1987, Voss earned her doctorate in Aeronautics/Astronautics at the MIT. She was selected as a NASA astronaut for Group 13 in 1990, together with two other female astronauts, Nancy Currie and Ellen Ochoa. Initially assigned to the Astronaut Office Mission Development Department, Voss worked on the Spacelab and Spacehab modules, and then specialized in developing the robotic arms. Voss was one of six women to have logged five spaceflights. She flew five missions in seven years, spending a total of 49 days in space, and traveled 18.8 million miles in 779 Earth orbits. On each of her missions, there were two women on the crew. In 1993, with colleague Nancy Currie, Voss was an MS for the Shuttle Endeavour STS-57 mission which retrieved EURECA – the European science lab, also built in Italy by Alenia Space – that had been freely floating in space for almost a year. This mission was the maiden voyage of another Italian-built module called Spacehab, a 9,600-pound pressurized laboratory mounted in the orbiter’s payload bay. Spacehab was the first commercial laboratory launched into orbit, its primary purpose being to offer industrial and academic

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researchers access to space. During the mission, Voss supervised 22 experiments that focused on the growth of animal organisms in space. According to the original plans the mission was supposed to last eight days, but due to adverse weather conditions its landing was delayed by nearly two days. In 1995, Voss participated in the STS-63 mission, an historic NASA mission that marked the first Shuttle rendezvous with Mir, flying around the Russian space station without actually docking, to test communications and perform the dress rehearsal for the docking that would be completed by a later mission (STS-71). For the first time, the Shuttle was piloted by a woman, Eileen Collins. During that mission, Voss operated Discovery’s robot arm to grasp an astronomy satellite for deployment. In 1997, Voss flew in space twice within a few months, this time with Susan Still who was piloting the Shuttle for the first time. In April they launched on the STS-83 mission, which began with a delay of 24 hours because of the need to improve the thermal insulation of a cooling pipe in the Shuttle’s cargo bay. On the third day of the mission, a malfunction was discovered in one of the three fuel cell electric generators and it was decided to turn it off immediately to avoid an explosion. Consequently, the Spacelab equipment was switched off and the mission aborted. In 30 years of Space Shuttle history, this was the only mission that had to be interrupted for technical reasons and the only time an entire crew was launched twice to achieve the same goals. The mission was repeated in July as mission STS-94, with the same crew and the same “payload.” In both missions, Voss was Payload Commander in charge of 33 experiments. The crew set more than 140 small fires in insulated chambers to test the behavior of fire in weightlessness, gain a better understanding of how fire and heat work in space, and also to address safety concerns after fire had flared aboard the Mir station five months earlier. Voss also coordinated experiments on how plants adapt to extraterrestrial flight, using a greenhouse containing about 50 spinach, clover, sage, and periwinkle plants. In February 2000, with her colleague Janet L. Kavandi on her second flight, Voss participated in the STS-99 mission – once more aboard Endeavour. She again served as Payload Commander and worked on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), which mapped Earth’s land surface at unprecedented resolution levels and produced what to this day remains the most accurate digital topographic map of our planet. After this mission, Voss set her spacesuit aside, although the ISS was in her heart. She predicted: “I think the world will see 2001 as a major turning point in history, the time when our space odyssey took off; that is, when we began having people in space continuously for an entire year, with our Shuttle flights and the International Space Station”.

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Between October 2004 and November 2007, Voss moved from Houston to the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in California, where she was the Scientific Director of the interstellar satellite Kepler, the NASA Space Observatory launched in March 2009 to hunt for exoplanets. As of October 2018, Kepler had identified 2,398 exoplanets, plus another 3,601 candidate planets awaiting confirmation. In 2007, Voss returned to the JSC in Houston to lead the payload effort for NASA’s Space Station Division of the Astronaut Office, with a focus on the ISS. Her great attention to the scientific education of young people led her to become a champion of the space program and to spend time on campuses and around the country talking about what it takes to have the “right stuff,” whether as an astronaut or as one of the many more who support the program from Earth. In an interview, she said: “In an era when no one who knows who the astronauts are as individuals  – unless I’m wearing my flight suit, most people don’t recognize me – everyone still wants to hear our story. And I have been able to use that spark of interest to help children and high school students understand the importance of studying science and math”.

In 2009, Voss donated all of her personal documentation – including professional papers and videos of her spaceflights and interviews, as well as records of her childhood and school report cards – to the archives of the library of the Purdue University. She commented: “Purdue has always made its astronauts feel like they are a special part of its family”. Janice Voss died of breast cancer, aged only 55, on Monday February 6, 2012, in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she was receiving treatment.

Sources For This Section Cavallaro, U. “Janice Voss Visits the ISS as a Cygnus Craft.” AD*ASTRA, ASITAF Quarterly Journal, 22 (October 2014), pp. 7–9. Hevesi, D. “Janice Voss, Shuttle Astronaut and Scientist, Dies at 55”, nytimes.com (February 10, 2012). Kremer, K. “Cygnus Commercial Resupply Ship ‘Janice Voss’ Berths to Space Station on 45th Apollo 11 Anniversary”, universetoday.com (July 16, 2014). Norberg, J. “Purdue’s ‘Space Odyssey’ Loses Astronaut Janice Voss”, purdue.edu (February 7, 2012). Official biography of Janice Voss, jsc.nasa.gov (March 2012). Pearlman, R. “Janice Voss, Veteran of 5 Space Shuttle Flights, Dies at 55”, today.com (August 2, 2012).

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Pearlman, R. “SS Janice Voss Takes Flight: Station-Bound Spaceship a ‘Fitting Tribute’ to Astronaut”, collectspace.com (July 13, 2014). Ward, D. “An Early Interest in Science Fiction Put Purdue Grad on the Road to Space Travel”, roundaboutmadison.com (April 2001). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 92–93. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

4.6 MARY ELLEN WEBER: FROM SKYDIVING TO STELLAR STRATEGIES Mission

Launch

Return

STS-70 STS-101

July 13, 1995 May 19, 2000

July 22, 1995 May 29, 2000

A lover of math and science since she was in college in 1983, Mary Ellen Weber (Fig. 4.18) also became an avid skydiver and participated in the US national championships, logging thousands of skydives in a few years. She

Fig. 4.18.  Mary Ellen Weber. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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said: “It’s a sport that you can do for many years, and there’s always room for improvement and always another challenge around the corner. That’s what I liked about both fields, science and aviation”. Mary Ellen Weber was born on August 24, 1962, in Cleveland, Ohio. After graduating from Bedford High School in Bedford Heights, Ohio, in 1980, she joined the faculty of Chemical Engineering of the Purdue University, led there by the reputation of the university which, she discovered later, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Eugene Cernan, “Gus” Grissom, and Roger Chaffee had helped to create. She said: “I became interested in Purdue because I love math and science and figuring how things work, and Purdue is the top engineering school in the country and I wanted to learn from the best”. Weber took part in an internship program with Ohio Edison, Delco Electronics, and 3M. After majoring in Chemical Engineering with honors from Purdue in the spring of 1984, she went on to earn a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1988, exploring the physics of gas-­ phase chemical reactions involving silicon. While at the university, she discovered the space program and decided to send a request to NASA for an application form to join the Astronaut Corps (Fig. 4.19): “When I was growing up, I never even considered being an astronaut. That was not something women did. It didn’t even enter my mind as a possibility. It wasn’t until I was in graduate school in chemistry and I was very much into sci-

Fig. 4.19.  Cover commemorating the launch of Shuttle mission STS-70, signed by Mary Ellen Weber. From the Author’s collection.

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ence and research. I’d also gotten involved in a lot of aspects of aviation, and space just seemed like the perfect adventure and the perfect mix of all the things that I loved: science and aviation”.

However, Weber waited until she had completed her Ph.D. and accomplished other things, including her pilot’s license, before sending in her application in 1991: “I’m the kind of person that just likes to try new things and likes to experiment and likes to be bold. I like to try different things, and that’s true in science, that’s true in my hobbies. And I think all of those experiences led me to try the biggest, the grandest adventure that I could imagine”.

Weber then joined Texas Instruments (TI) to research new processes for making computer chips. TI assigned her to a consortium of semiconductor companies, SEMATECH, and subsequently to Applied Materials, to create a revolutionary reactor for manufacturing next-generation chips. She received one patent and published nine papers in scientific journals. In 1992, she was selected for the 14th NASA astronaut group. During the 1990s, Weber participated in several US National Skydiving Championships and was awarded silver medals in 1991, 1995, and 1997. In 2002, she participated in the largest completed freefall formation world record, with approximately 300 people. She recalled: “It was actually in Russia. It’s tough to get 300 people to go out to dinner at the same place, so it’s quite an endeavor. You have to find a site with planes that are large enough, with facilities. It’s a logistical nightmare. Everybody has to be in the formation in their predetermined slot, and we had some stragglers who didn’t get into their slot before time ran out”.

She then had to suspend her skydiving activities (which she subsequently resumed) because of NASA’s rules forbidding astronauts from practicing hazardous pursuits. Weber participated in two Shuttle missions, STS-70 and STS-101, logging more than 450 hours (almost 19 days) in space. She was among the youngest to reach orbit. After only two years in the Astronaut Corps, she was selected for her first Space Shuttle mission, STS-70 Discovery, which was launched from KSC on July 13, 1995, only six days after the landing of Shuttle Atlantis, marking the fastest turnaround between flights in the history of the program. This mission was known as the “All-Ohio” flight, since four of the five

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crewmembers were from Ohio: Weber, the Commander “Tom” Henricks, and Weber’s fellow Mission Specialists (MS) Donald A. Thomas and Nancy J. Currie. Weber was responsible for controlling the complex docking module and overseeing final “capture” of the ISS, as she explained: “We go into an orbit that’s slightly different than the actual space station’s orbit. And we have to use Newton’s laws of gravity and orbital mechanics and speed up and slow down appropriately so that our two orbits eventually are going to be the same orbit, in order to match the station’s. It’s a complex effort, as we have two vehicles that are going over 17,000 miles [over 27,000 km] per hour”.

She was also responsible for the checkout and launch of the 7th and last of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) satellites, the network of American communications satellites designed to replace the existing network of ground stations that had supported all of NASA’s manned flight missions since Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. She also performed pioneering biotechnology experiments never before possible, growing human colon cancer tissues in microgravity. On her very intensive mission, Weber also operated the Shuttle’s robotic arm to maneuver her spacewalking colleagues around the Shuttle and station to retrieve and install equipment. Her view was obstructed, since the station was docked within inches of the crew compartment windows  – a unique situation at the time. She therefore developed new techniques using only camera views and animations during these very delicate operations. She was also in charge of the Spacehab logistics module installed in the back of the Shuttle’s payload bay, which provided storage and living space, and she oversaw the internal transfer of thousands of kilograms of equipment to the station. In 2000, Weber flew on her second spaceflight – STS-101 – an early construction mission for the ISS. She was one of two women in the crew, alongside Susan Helms. One of the goals of the mission was to deliver over two tons of equipment contained in the Spacehab module to the space station, as well as installing the components for life-support systems and complete electrical wiring, by operating both inside and outside the station. During the mission, some critical hardware was repaired or replaced, including air filters, Zarya fire extinguishers, and smoke detectors, four suspect batteries on Zarya, a Radio Telemetry System memory unit, and other components of the communication systems. Weber also maneuvered the long robotic arm to give support to her colleague Jim Voss during EVA activities, and to move the cargo from Spacehab to the station.

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The scope and complexity involved in building the station, which ultimately would exceed the size of a football field, is unmatched throughout the history of space exploration. Before her mission, Weber said: “This is an unbelievable endeavor that we, NASA, are trying to do with the other international partners. Technologically, it is more complicated than anything we’ve ever done before, and culturally, bringing together the world, having the world act as a single unit to do something to advance our whole society, is something that’s never been done before. There are going to be things that you can’t anticipate, no matter how meticulously you plan. Pretty soon, we’ll realize the dream, and we are going to have an orbiting laboratory in space”.

The significance and uniqueness of this STS-101 mission led the American TV channel A&E to produce a behind-the-scenes documentary, Mission Possible, chronicling the crew’s 18 months of preparations. After returning from the mission, Weber attained a master’s degree in Business Administration from Southern Methodist University. During her ten-year career with NASA, Mary Ellen Weber held different positions. She served as a Kennedy Space Center Cape Crusader, participating in critical launch, landing, and test operations, and helped to develop standards and methods for crew science training. She was then Chairman of the procurement board for the Biotechnology Program contractor and she also served as a key liaison in government relations and on an oversight team that revamped the US$2 billion space station programs across the country. She was involved in commercializing technologies, looking for ways to move the NASA space experiments to the marketplace. As part of a team reporting to NASA’s chief executive, she worked directly with a venture capital firm to successfully identify and develop a business venture leveraging space technologies to assess prospective businesses for their market potential, feasibility, and various risks. In addition, Weber was the Legislative Affairs liaison at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., interfacing with Congress and traveling with NASA’s chief executive. After leaving NASA in December 2002, Weber served for nine years as Vice President of the Southwestern Medical Center of the University of Texas, an internationally renowned research center, hospital complex and medical school in Dallas, Texas. In 2012, she founded Stellar Strategies, LLC, a company focused on providing consulting in strategic communications. The company offers leadership development for leaders and teams in high-risk, high-stakes operations to minimize risk and handle emergencies in such critical environments as oil industries, chemicals, or transportation, as well as preparation for

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making the right decisions in time-critical situations by adopting strategies and proven techniques from spaceflight, skydiving, and aviation. Weber also serves on a number of boards, including, among others, the NASA Advisory Council Committee on Technology, Innovation and Engineering  – which advises NASA on it’s portfolio of future technologies – and the Board of Trustees of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, which treated the first Ebola patient in the US.  She is also Vice President for the Association of Space Explorers, the only professional society of flown astronauts. Aviation, in many aspects, is still a passion for Weber, who remains an active competitive skydiver with over 6,000 skydives, 19 medals to date at the US national championships, and a world record. After more than 25 years, she continues to be a member of the widely known Deguello skydiving team, which has been a formidable contender at the US National Skydiving Championships throughout this time, medaling every year and overshadowing all other amateur teams from around the US.  They are the only non-­ professional 16-person team to successfully beat professional teams including the Army Golden Knights. She is also an instrument-rated pilot, with 800 flight hours, including 600 on jets. Weber is married to Jerome Elkind, who, after applying twice to become an astronaut and being a finalist for both Group 15 and Group 16, founded Stellar Generation, LLC in 2009, a company focused on producing ultraclean affordable fuel and renewable energy.

Sources For This Section “About Mary Ellen Weber”, stellarkeynotes.com. Dismukes, K. “STS-101 Preflight Interview: Mary Ellen Weber”, spaceflight.nasa.gov (April 7, 2002). Norberg J. Wings of Their Dreams: Purdue in Flight, pp. 341–342. Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, Indiana (2003). Official NASA biography of Mary E. Weber, nasa.gov (October 2004). Weber M.E., “Science in Orbit”, in “Looking Backward, Looking Forward - Forty years of U,S. human spaceflight symposium”, NASA SP-2002-4107 Edited by Stephen J. Garber (8 May 2001) p. 117-121 Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 100–101. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002). www.maryellenweber.com

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4.7 JANET KAVANDI: THE REWARDS OF PERSEVERANCE AND TENACITY Mission

Launch

Return

STS-91 STS-99 STS-104

June 2, 1998 February 11, 2000 July 12, 2001

June 12, 1998 February 22, 2000 July 24, 2001

Janet Kavandi (Fig. 4.20) is a veteran of three Space Shuttle missions. After serving as NASA’s Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office, Director of Flight Crew Operations, and Deputy Director of Human Health and Performance at the Johnson Space Center (JSC), she was named Director at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. The Center is named after Senator John Glenn, the first US astronaut to orbit Earth in the Mercury Friendship 7 capsule in 1962.

Fig. 4.20.  Janet Kavandi. Figure Credit: © NASA (Courtesy of Janet Kavandi). Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Janet Lynn Kavandi was born in Springfield, Missouri, on July 17, 1959. Her favorite studies in school were math and science, and especially astronomy. In her early years, she did a lot of reading on her own about space. She said: “Space has been a subject that’s intrigued me since I was a child. I’ve always been interested in space and astronomy. My father and I used to sit outside at night and look at the stars and talk about the first people that were going into space. We wondered aloud what it would be like to be up there looking down at the Earth. In school, whenever I had a choice of subjects to write about, I would always pick something to do with space or astronomy, black holes, or quasars, or something like that. All the space launches I watched as a child, especially the Moon landing, fascinated me. So growing up it was something that I thought would be fascinating to be able to do. Of course at that time, there were no girls in space”.

Kavandi graduated as valedictorian from Carthage Senior High School in 1977. She received her Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Chemistry from Missouri Southern State College in Joplin in 1980 and a Master of Science (MSc) degree in Chemistry from the University of Missouri in Rolla in 1982. Following graduation, she accepted a position at Eagle-Picher Industries in Joplin, Missouri, as an engineer in new battery development. In 1984, she joined the Power Systems Technology Department of the Boeing Aerospace Company in Seattle, Washington, where she served for ten years. She was lead engineer of secondary power for the Short Range Attack Missile II, and principal technical staff representative involved in the design and development of thermal batteries for Sea Lance and the Lightweight Exo-Atmospheric Projectile. Other programs she supported include Space Station, Lunar and Mars Base studies, Inertial Upper Stage, Advanced Orbital Transfer Vehicle, Get-Away Specials, Air Launched Cruise Missile, Minuteman, and Peacekeeper. While working for Boeing, she saw the IMAX movie “The Dream Is Alive,” released in June 1985, about NASA’s Space Shuttle program (Fig. 4.21). The film was narrated by Walter Cronkite and directed by Graeme Ferguson. She recalled: “I became seriously interested in becoming an astronaut after the first females were selected to the Space Shuttle program in the late ’70s, and I was even more inspired to become an astronaut when I saw this film. So I decided to try my hand at it and send in my application”.

After sending in her astronaut application, Kavandi began working toward her doctorate in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle, studying the development of a pressure-indicating coating that uses

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Fig. 4.21.  Cover commemorating the docking of Shuttle mission STS-91 with the Russian Mir space station, signed by Janet Kavandi. From the Author’s collection.

oxygen quenching of porphyrin photoluminescence to provide continuous surface pressure maps of aerodynamic test models in wind tunnels. Her work on pressure-indicating paints resulted in two patents, and she presented several papers at technical conferences and in scientific journals. Kavandi earned her doctorate in Analytical Chemistry in 1990. She recalled: “I sent in my first astronaut application shortly after the Challenger accident. I was inspired by the bravery and dedication of those fallen astronauts and wanted to be part of an organization where people were willing to risk their lives in pursuit of a goal bigger than their individual aspirations. I returned to graduate school to obtain my Ph.D. and renewed my application every year until I was asked to interview in 1994. Fortunately, I was accepted on my first interview and became a member of the 15th class of astronauts in 1995”.

Kavandi started her Astronaut Candidate (ASCAN) training in March 1995. As an MS and veteran of three Space Shuttle missions, she visited both the Mir space station and the ISS, logging more than 33 days in space. In 1998, she and her colleague, Wendy Lawrence, worked together as MS on STS-91, the ninth and final Shuttle-Mir docking mission that concluded the joint US-Russian Phase-One program. Kavandi recalled: “One of my fondest memories is my first view of the Earth from space. I floated up from the middeck to the flight deck to take a photo of the large orange external fuel tank as it separated from the Space Shuttle. I was in awe of the beauty

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of the planet and how blue it appeared against the black background of space. Later, during a night pass, I remember watching how lightning appeared to “pop” below us as we flew over. I also remember how quickly we adjusted to microgravity and how comfortable it became to interact with one another in any orientation – like having a meal upside down, for instance”.

One of the main goals of the mission was to transfer more than 500 kg of water and almost 2,130 kg of cargo, experiments and supplies to Mir. STS-91 also carried a prototype of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) designed to measure antimatter in cosmic rays and search for evidence of dark matter in the universe. (A full research system named AMS–02 would eventually fly to the ISS during the STS-134 mission in May 2011.) Other experiments conducted by the Shuttle crew during the mission included a checkout of the orbiter’s robot arm to evaluate new electronics and software, and the orbiter Space Vision System for use during assembly missions for the ISS. Following the mission, Kavandi worked as a capsule communicator (Capcom) in NASA’s Mission Control Center. On her second mission, Kavandi served aboard STS-99, the SRTM mission which mapped more than 47 million miles of Earth’s land surface to provide data for a highly accurate three-dimensional topographical map. This was the last Endeavour mission entirely devoted to scientific experiments. Starting with the following Shuttle mission, STS–101, all the orbiters (apart from Columbia) would be devoted to building the ISS. STS-99 also carried the student experiment called “EarthKAM,” a digital camera formerly known as “KidSat”, into space for the sixth time. Kavandi explained: “EarthKAM is something that we’ve set up as an educational program with middle schools throughout the country. We had a 35-millimeter camera in the overhead window of the Shuttle, and we let students throughout the country select sites that they wanted to photograph and study. Those sites were programmed into a computer, and the camera automatically took pictures of these particular areas at the appropriate time. The students could access the data, in a very timely manner, while we were still up in space. They could get their images back and then talk about what they saw, and do comparisons of earlier images of the same area”.

This project, started by Sally Ride when she was professor at the University of California, San Diego, and managed by the engineers of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), was very successful and resulted in 2,715 digital photos for students from schools in the US and around the world. The main

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goal of the SRTM mission was to generate the most accurate and complete high-resolution digital topographic database of Earth, as Kavandi explained: “This mission was to accomplish a three-dimensional topographical map of about eighty percent of the landmass on the Earth. We had small sections of the planet that were mapped with aircraft and satellites, but we did not have a three-­dimensional map of the surface of the Earth. We had one type of radar in the payload bay, and a long, 200-foot boom that extended out from the payload bay from a canister. On the end of this boom we had a second set of radars. We did simultaneous radar measurements, thereby getting the three-dimensional aspect of the Earth surface. The mission mapped more than 47 million miles of Earth’s land surface”.

Following this second mission, Kavandi worked in the Astronaut Office Robotics Branch, where she trained on both the Shuttle and the space station robotic manipulator systems. The following year, she flew on the STS-104 mission. The primary objective of this seventh ISS assembly flight was to install the Joint Airlock, named Quest. This module was designed to allow spacewalks from the ISS with both American Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) spacesuits and Russian Orlan spacesuits. Before the installation of Quest, spacewalks could only be done from the Russian Zvezda service module using Orlan suits, and American spacewalks using EMUs were only possible while a Space Shuttle was docked. Kavandi had also trained in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory for a contingency extravehicular activity (EVA) should it have been required. As loadmaster, she was responsible for the relocation and logistics of the payload from the Shuttle to the ISS and for used items transferred to the Shuttle for return to Earth. Since her third and final mission, Kavandi’s career has been firmly rooted on the ground. She initially served as Payloads Branch Chief, then as Chief for the International Space Station Branch in the Astronaut Office. She later became the Director of Flight Crew Operations at NASA JSC, Houston, where she was responsible for the NASA Astronaut Corps and the Aircraft Operations Division at Ellington Field. She was in that role on February 1, 2003, when the Space Shuttle Columbia STS-107 disintegrated on returning from a 16-day science mission, killing all seven astronauts on board. This was an accident that hit Kavandi particularly hard because three of Columbia’s crew were part of her 1995 astronaut class: “It was all the more painful because you trained with them so closely for a couple of years. It is a family-type bond. You know their families well because you have family gatherings, and your kids play with their kids, and your spouses get to know their spouses; it’s a very close-knit community”.

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Kavandi was called to serve as the Lead Casualty and Assistance Calls Officer (CACO) for the families of the crew after the tragedy. She explains: “CACO is a military term. It’s a person who takes care of the families of the fallen soldiers, or in this case, astronauts. The loss of a crewmate is like the loss of a family member. Also, the loss was so publicly visible. Helping the families maintain some privacy was important. There were visits with the President of the United States, ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery, and their own private memorials. Just dealing with the publicity, the aftermath of the accident, and the investigation was huge. It was a very traumatic event, but we took care of everyone as best as we could. Still to this day, we keep in close contact with the families”.

From August 2014 to March 2015, Kavandi served as the Deputy Director of the Health and Human Performance Directorate at NASA’s JSC in Houston, where she was responsible for the NASA flight surgeons and human research investigations on the ISS. From March 2016, she was the Director at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Its staff consists of more than 3,200 civil service and support contractor employees and has an annual budget of approximately US$625 million. Kavandi said: “I am honored to lead the incredibly intelligent and inspired scientists and engineers who develop the technologies that make space flight possible and air travel safer and more energy efficient. My background in flight crew operations has helped to add an operational perspective to a facility that is primarily dedicated to the design, evaluation, and testing of aeronautical concepts and space flight hardware”.

Under her guidance, the Glenn Research Center saw one of the largest increases in workload and budget in the center’s history, reaching $850 million in funding for 2019, while the Center was focused on preparing for the Artemis program and the next generation of commercial aviation, active in the management of the power and propulsion element for Gateway and the mission-critical testing of the Orion spacecraft for Artemis I. Janet Kavandi retired from NASA at the end of September 2019, after 25 years of service. She was inducted into the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2019 and has been recognized with two Presidential Rank Awards, two NASA Outstanding Leadership Medals, two Exceptional Service Medals, three NASA Space Flight Medals, and NASA’s highest award, the Distinguished Service Medal. She serves now as Executive Vice President of Sierra Nevada Corporation’s subsidiary Sierra Space in Louisville, Colorado. There, she is

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responsible for the company’s space programs, including the Dream Chaser® spaceplane, which is under contract to deliver supplies to the ISS beginning in 2022. Dream Chaser is a winged vehicle and the only resupply vehicle capable of landing on commercial runways. Dr. Kavandi is married to John Kavandi and they have two adult children.

Sources For This Section Heidman, K. “Biography—Janet L. Kavandi”, nasa.gov (July 24, 2019). Official NASA biography of Janet Kavandi, jsc.nasa.gov (February 2011). Personal contacts by e-mail with the Author in April 2016. “Preflight Interview: Janet Kavandi”, STS-99, spaceflight.nasa.gov (April 7, 2002). “Preflight Interview: Janet Kavandi”, STS-104, spaceflight.nasa.gov (April 7, 2002). Russell, J., “NASA Glenn Director and Veteran Astronaut, Janet Kavandi, to Retire After 25 Years of Service”, nasa.gov (Sep 10, 2019) Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space—Following Valentina, pp. 284–285, 292, 295. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). SNC, “Janet Kavandi, Executive Vice President, Sierra Space” www.sncorp.com (consulted on December 10, 2021) Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 110–111. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

4.8 JULIE PAYETTE: “TO ASSEMBLE A SHIP IN THE OCEAN DURING A STORM” Mission

Launch

Return

STS-96 STS-127

May 27, 1999 July 15, 2009

June 6, 1999 July 31, 2009

A veteran of two spaceflights, Julie Payette was the first Canadian to visit the ISS. A professional engineer, she is fluent in English and French, and has conversational skills in Spanish, Italian, German, and Russian. She also plays the piano and has been a member of the prestigious Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Piacere Vocale ensemble in Basel, Switzerland, in Toronto’s early music ensemble Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, the Chamber Choir in Toronto, Ontario, and the Ottawa Bach Choir in which she sang as soprano. Julie Payette (Fig. 4.22) was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on October 20, 1963, the second of three children. She says that her ancestors settled in Montreal after arriving from France in 1655. After watching an Apollo Moon landing, she decided she wanted to be an astronaut (Fig. 4.23):

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Fig. 4.22.  Julie Payette. Figure Credit: © NASA (Courtesy of Julie Payette). Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fig. 4.23.  Cover commemorating the landing of Shuttle mission STS-96, signed by Julie Payette. From the Author’s collection.

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“I wanted to be an astronaut since I’ve been a little girl. I was growing up in Montreal, Canada, and during the Apollo missions I was watching that on TV, on French TV because that’s the only language I spoke, and I was fascinated”.

Payette began making scrapbooks of space missions and taped posters of astronauts to her bedroom door. She recalled: “It didn’t matter to me that I was the wrong nationality, the wrong gender, and spoke the wrong language. I had never been in an airplane, and most of my family had never been in an airplane or anywhere near an airplane. Canada didn’t have a human space program and didn’t have a single astronaut at the time. So… there were a couple of things that were a little far away from my reach at the time”.

At the beginning, when Payette said that one day she wanted to be an astronaut, acquaintances and friends would pat her on the back and smile, hoping she would find a more down-to-earth job. But the family never discouraged her from having that dream and that aim, as she recalled: “I was never told that it was silly. I was just encouraged [with]: ‘Well, that’s what you want to do? Go after it then, but don’t think it’s going to be easy or won’t require any effort. You better work, you better go to school, you better be good’”.

After attending Collège Mont-Saint-Louis and Collège Regina Assumpta in Montreal, Quebec, in 1980 Payette received one of six Canadian scholarships to attend the Atlantic College in South Wales, United Kingdom, where she completed an International Baccalaureate diploma in 1982. When she was deciding on her specialization in high school and then what kind of subject she would study at college (since Canada at the time did not have astronauts), Payette picked electrical engineering, following in the footsteps of her father. She thought: “I like science. I like math. And the chances that I will do this astronaut career are really, really slim; so I might as well pick something that I really like to do because I will most likely do this for the rest of my life. In the back of my mind there was: ‘Hey, if there’s a recruitment program one day, if there’s an ­opportunity one day to apply, then I might as well put all the chances behind me’, and it was not a conscious decision”.

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Payette enrolled in McGill University, where she completed a B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering in 1986, after which she completed an M.A.Sc. with honors in Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto in 1990: “Engineering is extremely useful for being an astronaut because it’s extremely applied. What engineering teaches you in particular is to look at a problem, analyze that problem, look at what you’ve got available to solve that problem. That’s exactly what we do in space”.

After graduating, Payette was a visiting scientist at the IBM Research Laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1991. The following year she returned to Canada and joined the Speech Research Group of Montreal, supporting research in computer systems, natural language processing, and automatic speech recognition. She then saw an ad in the paper announcing that Canada was recruiting astronauts again for the second time in its history. She said: “I thought ‘I’m twenty-eight years old, it’s a little young. I only have two degrees, a Master’s Degree. I really have no operational experience. I’m not a military person. I’m not a pilot, but this is what I’ve wanted to do all my life,’ and I’m a strong believer in statistics. If I do apply, I have a chance. If I don’t, I have a hundred percent chance of not being picked; so I applied”.

In June 1992, Payette was selected by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) as one of four Canadian astronauts from a field of 5,330 applicants. She worked as a technical advisor on the Mobile Servicing System (MSS), the robotics system which is Canada’s major contribution to the ISS. In August 1996, Payette reported to NASA JSC in Houston, Texas, and started her training as a NASA astronaut. After completing her basic training, she worked on technical issues in robotics for the Astronaut Office and, in April 1998, was assigned as an MS to Shuttle mission STS-96, scheduled for launch in mid-1999: “I was the first one of my class to get an assignment after the graduation in April. And I was really surprised. I really didn’t expect to be assigned so quickly”. Over the years, Payette amassed an impressive resume. She was the second Canadian female astronaut to fly into space after Roberta Bondar and was the first Canadian citizen to visit the ISS, which at that time only consisted of two modules: the Russian Zarya and the American Unity. She told an interviewer before the launch: “This mission means a lot to Canada. We’ve been players in the aerospace business since the beginning – we were actually the third nation to have sent a satel-

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lite in space  – and we are providing a higher robotic technology to the International Space Station. But we are also providing human resources, and I am part of those human resources. We’re all very excited about this; and I have the immense privilege to be the first one to represent my country aboard the International Space Station; that is something I take with much humility”.

During the mission, the crew performed the first manual docking of the Shuttle to the ISS.  Payette supervised the spacewalks and was in charge of documenting the approach and rendezvous, including all of the photo survey before docking to capture the changes that occur to some parts of the station due to the hostile environment of space. She said: “For us who grew up in French it’s always very interesting to realize that NASA has used a French word to describe this absolutely incredible operation, which is the approach, the docking of two space vehicles in space. It’s called a rendezvous and a docking. And this rendezvous is extremely complex because objects in space don’t quite behave like they do on the ground and in two dimensions. We have orbital mechanics, we have definite orbits and speed, so it is almost just as tricky to fly a rendezvous with a Space Shuttle as it is to land an airplane on the carrier while the carrier is going up and down in the sea”.

One of the goals of this mission, on which Ellen Ochoa and Tamara Jernigan also flew, was to bring four tons of equipment and supplies to the station to be stored in the Functional Cargo Block (the Russian Zarya module), awaiting the arrival of the first team who would permanently inhabit the station. Payette was heavily involved in the operations as backup loadmaster and primary stowage master on the ISS. The main task of the mission was to install two cranes: the very massive Russian crane to be mounted outside the Russian segment, and the American ORU transfer device, a small crane mounted outside the Unity module to allow crewmembers to move big pieces of equipment: “Assembling the International Space Station in orbit is extraordinarily complicated. We’re building an enormous infrastructure in a very hostile environment. It would be just very similar as if we wanted to assemble a full ship in the middle of the ocean during a storm. We don’t have any infrastructure out there in the middle of the ocean. We have to bring everything with us, every single piece of material, every single bolt, every single cable. We have to make sure they fit somehow before you leave in the middle of the sea in the storm, because if things don’t fit, and if we don’t have the right bolt, we just can’t go and walk to the store and buy it. The other difficulty about the International Space Station is in the word ‘international’. We have several different nations putting together pieces, devel-

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oping and designing these pieces in their own country, sometimes under a different measurement system. And then having everything fit together in orbit for the first time because sometimes those pieces won’t see each other on the ground before they get to space. And that is an extraordinary challenge, to make sure that everything is going to be fitting together. That is a challenge that we’ve been tackling now for several years and we see, so far, that it’s working quite fine”.

There was little spare time during the mission, as she recalled: “You have very little time to think about what it represents in terms of inner self or emotion. On your first flight, usually you don’t have that much time even to enjoy weightlessness or this absolutely magnificent view of Earth. The reason is that if you want this to be your profession, then you know that you’re under evaluation. How you do on that first flight is going to determine whether or not you fly again”.

One of the STS-96 payloads was STARSHINE, a satellite designed to allow students to perform research on Earth’s atmosphere. From 1999 to 2002, Payette represented the Astronaut Corps at the European and Russian space agencies and supervised the development of procedures, verification of equipment, and processing of space hardware for the ISS Program. From 2000 to 2007, she also held the position of Chief Astronaut of the CSA. Starting in January 2003, she also worked as a Capcom at the Mission Control Center in Houston for several years, including the return to flight mission STS-114. She was lead Capcom during the Space Shuttle mission STS-121 in 2006. Payette flew her second space mission to the ISS in July 2009, as an MS on the Endeavor STS-127 mission, when the station had been inhabited for nine years. Before the launch, she said: “I was very privileged to go on the station when it was at the very beginning of construction. I find I am extremely privileged to go and work on it again when it’s nearing completion”. Payette was responsible for operating three robotic arms during this space mission: the Shuttle’s Canadarm, the ISS Canadarm-2, and the special-purpose Japanese robotic arm on the ISS Japanese Laboratory Kibō, which had been carried into space the year before by mission STS-124 and which Payette helped to install permanently on the ISS. Several other components were also installed to complete the station, such as the Japanese Exposed Facility (JEF) platform for scientific experiments in open space, the Vertical Cargo Carrier (VCC), as well as batteries and other spare parts. Five spacewalks were performed to complete the job in the 16 days of the mission, thus surpassing all previous records.

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On the ISS, Payette met up with fellow Canadian Astronaut Bob Thirsk, who was on a six-month stay on the station. It marked the first time that two Canadians were in space at the same time. During this flight of the Shuttle, the ISS reached a record 13 occupants for the second time (from five different countries: the US, Russia, Japan, Belgium, and Canada); six members of ISS Expedition-20/21, and the seven crewmembers of STS-127. (The previous occasion was in 1995, when the crews of both Shuttle STS-65 and Soyuz TM-21 had visited Mir at the same time). On her two flights, Payette logged more than 650 hours (over 27 days) in space altogether. In February 2010, she carried the Olympic flag in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, British Columbia. She was inducted into the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame in June of that same year. At the beginning of 2011, Payette began a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C. In October she was appointed scientific authority for Quebec in Washington, for the Quebec Department of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade. She retired from the CSA Astronaut Corps in July 2013, In mid-2014, after 20 years in the US, Julie Payette returned to live in her hometown of Montreal, where she was named to the position of Chief Operating Officer for the Montreal Science Center in the Old Port of Montreal – the most important museum in Quebec, with more than 750,000 annual visitors. This started a new, exciting chapter of her life, aimed at introducing the general public and youth to science, to stimulate them and give them the tools to better understand the many phenomena and technology. She said: “In my opinion, any big city must have flagship institutions, for example, a fine art museum, a philharmonic orchestra or a professional sports team. If a city is also a knowledge society, it becomes critical to have academic institutions, educational infrastructure and sufficient capacity in research and innovation. My wish is for the Science Center to continue growing and contribute to the overall development of Montreal. Over the next four years, we will embark upon the ambitious project of reviewing all of our permanent exhibitions and creating interactive and engaging attractions for people of all ages. The teams at the Science Center are constantly searching for creative ideas and activities to attract people to visit. The Science Center has everything it needs to become one of the pillars in the knowledge culture of Quebec. And as we say: Science is fun”!

Payette was also named Vice-President of the Canada Lands Company and had a number of board appointments, including the National Bank of Canada where she became the Director of the Bank in April 2014. More than three

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years later, she abruptly left the Montreal Science Center in October 2016, following a prolonged strike. In April 2016, Payette was appointed to the board of the Canadian Olympic Committee, and attended the 2016 Summer Olympics. She left the Canadian Olympic Committee in 2017 after two internal investigations into her treatment of staff. In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau named Payette as Governor General, succeeding David Johnston. She was one of the youngest to hold the position and called the appointment a “great adventure.” As Queen Elizabeth II’s representative in Canada, the Governor General is the official head of state in her absence. Although the position is largely ceremonial, the Governor General presides over important state duties and has the power to give a throne speech and suspend parliament, give royal assent to legislation, and swear in the prime minister. They are also commander-in-chief of the Canadian Armed Forces. Payette stepped down from her diplomatically sensitive viceregal role in January 2021, after an independent review into workplace abuse allegations at Rideau Hall found that she had created a “toxic, verbally abusive workplace.” The recipient of many distinctions and 28 honorary doctorates, Ms. Payette was first invested into the Order of Canada in 2010, and is a Knight of the Ordre national du Québec. In 2003 she was featured on a Canadian domestic-­ rate postage stamp, as part of a series on Canadian astronauts.

Sources For This Section Gibson, S. “Ms. Universe: Astronaut Julie Payette Prepares for Her Second Mission in Space”, magazine.utoronta.ca (Winter 2009), 38–43. Gilmore, R., “From a ‘great adventure’ to resignation: The rise and fall of Julie Payette” globalnews.ca (January 21, 2021) Gueldenpfenning, S. Women in Space Who Changed the World, pp. 74–82. The Rosen Publishing Group, New York (2012). Munroe, S. “Julie Payette”, canadaonline.about.com (December 2012). Official CSA biography of Julie Payette, csa.gc.ca (October 2018). Official GGC (Governor General of Canada) biography of Julie Payette www.gg.ca (consulted in November 2021) Official NASA biography of Julie Payette, jsc.nasa.gov (June 2012). “Preflight Interview: Julie Payette”, STS-96, spaceflight.nasa.gov (July 2002). “Preflight Interview: Julie Payette, Mission Specialist”, STS-127, nasa.gov (May 2009). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space—Following Valentina, pp. 290–292. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005).

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4.9 SANDRA MAGNUS: SOARING TO NEW HEIGHTS Mission

Launch

Return

STS-112 STS-126 STS-119 STS-135

October 7, 2002 November 14, 2008

October 18, 2002

July 8, 2011

March 28, 2009 July 21, 2011

Sandra Magnus (Fig. 4.24) decided that she wanted to become an astronaut when she was in middle school at Belleville West High School in Belleville, Illinois: “I’ve always been interested in why things work and how things work, and here’s this real complicated world that seems to work and… go explore it. Just the whole idea of exploring and learning new things just grabbed me and space was the place to do it. I first got the ‘astronaut bug’ in middle school and thought, ‘Oh, I want to be an astronaut, but I have no idea how I am going to do it’. At that time women were not in the astronaut program but, in 1978, a multi-page newspaper article in my hometown paper highlighted the newly-selected women

Fig. 4.24.  Sandra Magnus. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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astronauts at NASA. I looked at that newspaper and just started crying. It was like, ‘Wow, there’s a path for me. Women are doing this job and I can see myself there concretely’”.

After that, Magnus started to organize her life to reach that goal, though as she explained, it was without much guidance or direction: “I was putting this plan together in ignorance because, when I was that age, and really all the way through high school, I really didn’t know anything about engineering. I was never exposed to it. I thought engineers were people who drive trains”.

Her parents were the key: “Even as a 12-year-old girl telling them I wanted to be an astronaut, they took me seriously and were super supportive and encouraging. My mom was a nurse, my dad was in insurance, and their oldest daughter wanting to ‘go off and study physics’ just wasn’t in their world. I’m very thankful for my parents’ support”. Magnus urges students to pursue what she learned in person: “The path you end up on may not be what you planned, but you have nothing to lose if you do your best” (Fig. 4.25).

Fig. 4.25.  Cover commemorating the return of Shuttle mission STS-112, signed by Sandra Magnus. From the Author’s collection.

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Sandra Hall Magnus, “Sandy” among her friends, was born on October 30, 1964, in Belleville, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, across from St. Louis. She explains: “It’s a kind of extended suburb where a lot of the farming country starts: a perfect place to grow up. I had the best of both worlds. I had a city within 30 minutes with baseball teams and airports and things like that, that are very comfortable to have when you want to participate, and then also it was a small place on the edge of the country where you know a lot of people and don’t have a lot of the problems that you associate with the big city”.

After graduating from Belleville West High School in 1982, Magnus went to the University of Missouri-Rolla (now known as the Missouri University of Science and Technology) and earned degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering. She said: “Physics is my first love because it answers the questions why, and you learn; you learn how to derive the equations that engineers use, so you really do understand what’s going on. But while I was doing physics, I discovered engineering that looked interesting to me. So I took a few electrical engineering classes as an undergraduate, just for fun, to kind of see what it was all about”.

As she was “tired of school and a little burned out,” in 1986, Magnus started to work as a stealth engineer for McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company, working for five years on internal research and development and then on the Navy’s A-12 Attack Aircraft program, studying the effectiveness of radar signature reduction techniques, until the program was cancelled. She crossed over into engineering and did her MSc degree in Electrical Engineering at night. While working on stealth engineering, she became particularly interested in new materials because, as she explains, “Materials drive everything when you’re trying to put airplanes together – working with airplane design, and materials specifically, and how they function, interact with electromagnetic fields, and so I got interested in materials”. Magnus decided to go back to university and, in 1996, earned a Ph.D. from the School of Material Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “My PhD was on a new material system being investigated for thermionic cathodes, which are used as electron sources for satellite communication systems. My research was an effort to look at the system methodically and from a science viewpoint to understand physically what was going on in order to inform the design of more robust devices. If you can operate the cathode at a lower temperature, that means a longer life for it, which is a good thing for satellites”.

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Her dissertation was supported by NASA’s Lewis Research Center through a Graduate Student Fellowship and involved investigations on materials of interest for “Scandate” thermionic cathodes: “At that point I felt that I was ready to apply to the NASA Astronaut Office, and see what happens, and what happened was I was lucky enough to get chosen”. Magnus was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1996 with the 16th NASA Astronaut Group and qualified as a Mission Specialist (MS). From January 1997 to May 1998, she worked in the Astronaut Office Payloads/ Habitability branch. Her duties involved working with the European Space Agency (ESA), the National Space Development Agency of Japan (JAXA), and the Brazilian Space Agency (Agência Espacial Brasilieira, AEB) on science freezers, glove boxes, and other facility-type payloads. In May 1998, she was assigned as a “Russian Crusader,” which involved travelling to Russia in support of hardware testing and operational products development. In August 2000, she served as a Capcom for the ISS. She said: “It’s a fun job. I get to learn a lot of new things every day. No day is the same, and so I’m very lucky”. Magnus is a veteran of three space missions, the first of which, STS-112, was the third out of 11 Space Shuttle missions entirely dedicated to the assembly of the ISS. The Shuttle pilot was her colleague, Pamela Melroy. On this mission, with the cooperation of the members of Expedition-5, the “S-1” truss, the third piece of the ISS 11-piece Integrated Truss Structure, was installed. Magnus was MS loadmaster in charge of logistic transfers to and from the orbiter and also operated the station’s robotic arm during the three spacewalks required to outfit and activate the new component. STS-112 was the first Shuttle mission to use a camera on the external tank, providing a live view of the launch to flight controllers and NASA TV viewers. After the mission, Magnus was assigned to work with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to prepare the Special Dexterous Manipulator robot for installation on the space station. She was also involved in “Return to Flight” activities, leading the Astronaut Office team in that effort after the Columbia tragedy in February 2003. From September 16–22, 2006, Magnus served as the commander of the 11th NEEMO mission (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations), an undersea expedition at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Aquarius laboratory located off the coast of Florida, where NASA tests equipment and techniques for future space exploration. In July 2005, Magnus was assigned as flight engineer and science officer for the long-duration ISS Expedition-18 and started her training. She flew to the ISS on November 16, 2008, aboard the Shuttle Endeavour STS-126 and spent four-and-a-half months on the station, where she completed experiments and other work vital to the health of the orbiting laboratory complex; “feeling like

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a guinea pig as there were so many fun and interesting experiments happening and opportunities to participate in fascinating research.” She personally contributed to studies in biochemistry, nutrition and the effects of weightlessness on human bodies, while tracking blood and body fluid changes and all the food she ate for 30 days. STS-126 also carried the Italian-built “Leonardo” Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM), the fifth flight of an MPLM, which contained over 6.3 tons of supplies and equipment, including the components necessary to expand the station and to enable it to accommodate a crew of six persons: two new crew-quarters racks, a second kitchen for the Destiny laboratory, a second Waste and Hygiene Compartment (WHC), and two water-reclamation racks. After 133 days in space, Magnus returned to Earth in March 2009 aboard the Shuttle Discovery STS-119. Following this mission, she served for six months at NASA Headquarters, in the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. In July 2011, she was an MS during the final Shuttle mission, STS-135, which carried the MPLM module “Raffaello” into space for the last time. The prime job of the mission was to deliver tons of logistics to the space station while the huge cargo-carrying capacity of the Shuttle was still available. Another task was to bring down a pump module that had failed a little bit sooner than expected a few months beforehand; NASA wanted to learn what happened and how to improve its engineering designs. Magnus was loadmaster again, in charge of transferring almost four tons of supplies, water, and equipment to the station, and loading over 2.2 tons of return items into the MPLM, including foam and packing materials, while having to consider the many constraints and dependencies in moving items back and forth: “A giant three-dimensional puzzle”, she said. This was a challenging mission, with only four astronauts, as Magnus explained: “Really the driver for that was the fact that our rescue scenario was a little bit different than normal. Ever since Columbia, we’ve been mandated to have a Shuttle on the pad ready to launch in case the crew has an issue with the orbiter and they need to be rescued. Because we were the last orbiter, there was not an orbiter there waiting for us so our rescue scenario involved the Soyuz capsules which we’re flying to station via the Russians, and on the Soyuz capsules only one person could come down at a time. With a crew of four it would have taken a year to get everybody down; if we had six or seven people up there it would have taken close to two years to get everybody down”.

The emblem of the last Shuttle mission, STS-135, features the Shuttle during lift-off over elements of the NASA logo, framed on the patch by omega, the last letter in the Greek alphabet. Magnus explained:

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“The omega came to mind immediately as it is the last letter of the Greek alphabet and we are the last Shuttle mission. We wanted to highlight that this was the end of the Shuttle program. It’s not just something that affects the Shuttle program but it affects all of NASA. We felt like having part of the NASA symbol on our patch was appropriate as well”.

In September 2012, Magnus was appointed Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office. She left NASA a month later and accepted the position of Executive Director at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the world’s largest private technical society in the field of aerospace engineering, with 35,000 members in 79 countries worldwide. She was starting her new adventure: “I look forward to working with the Board of Directors, members, and staff to expand the relevance and reach of this distinguished organization. The aerospace industry is important to our country’s future. AIAA, with its broad base of talented members and their depth of experience, will continue to play a key role not only in creating new opportunities and pushing the boundaries of technology, but also in recruiting the next generation of scientists, engineers, and technologists. I am thrilled to be a part of such a dynamic, vibrant organization”.

Magnus was the Executive Director until January 2018, when she became the Principal at the consulting firm AstroPlanetView LLC, based in Reston, Virginia. She also served as the Deputy Director for Research & Engineering within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense from August 2019 to December 2020, under former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. In that role she served as the “Chief Engineer” for the Department of Defense (DOD), establishing engineering policy, propagating best practices and working to connect the engineering community across the department. She said: “In the Pentagon, the most important thing I can do is to serve as a role model and create environments where everybody’s voice is heard”. In the Chief Engineer Council Magnus formed in the Pentagon, with chief engineers from each of the services, the majority of the council is female: an important statement and visibility for the rest of the DOD engineering workforce. On February 9, 2021 Virgin Galactic announced that Dr. Sandra Magnus had joined their Space Advisory Board to help “provide advice to senior management as the company moves forward to open space for the benefit of all.” The Space Advisory Board is composed of leading experts from the aerospace sector, including former astronaut Chris Hadfield, and David Whelan, the Chief-Scientist of Cubic Corporation and former Chief Scientist for Boeing Defense, Space and Security, and director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Tactical Technology Office.

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Magnus is passionate about being a role model who creates a positive and supportive path for the next generation of young professionals. She is assisting a non-profit organization (Astra Femina) for a group of women, many of them female astronauts, to be role models and help in the mission of “encouraging and inspiring today’s girls to be tomorrow’s STEM Stars.” Magnus believes we all have a responsibility to talk to children and share our stories, because you never know what will inspire a child: “You never know when and if you will be the one to change a kid’s life so we should all try”.

Sources For This Section Official NASA biography of Sandra Magnus, jsc.nasa.gov (May 2004). Contacts by e-mail with the Author in May 2016. “Sandra Magnus: Preflight Interview”, nasa.gov (September 24, 2008). “Sandra Magnus: Preflight Interview”, nasa.gov (June 3, 2011). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space—Following Valentina, p. 297. Springer/ Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Wegmueller S. & Lumme D., “Find Your Passion and Go for It! - Engineers ‘Can Do’ Pretty Much Anything” in “30 Inspirational Women in Naval Engineering, STEM and beyond” NEJ (Naval Engineers Journal) Special Edition Vol. 132 , No. 3 (September 2020) p. 122-125 Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 117–118. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

4.10 STEPHANIE WILSON: “MADAM ROBOTICS EXPERT” Mission

Launch

Return

STS-121 STS-120 STS-131

July 4, 2006 October 23, 2007 April 5, 2010

July 17, 2006 November 7, 2007 April 20, 2010

Stephanie Wilson (Fig. 4.26) was the second African American woman to travel into space, after Mae Jemison. “I was very fortunate to have a good friend who witnessed to me. I accepted Christ through her witness, and I’ve been striving to have a closer walk with the Lord ever since. My faith has played an essential role in my career as well as other areas of my life. I hope that my faith governs the decisions that I make in all areas”.

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Fig. 4.26.  Stephanie Wilson. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Wilson enjoys snow skiing, music, traveling, and stamp collecting, which she began when she was just a child. She said: “I mostly collect stamps off letters that I receive. I usually don’t go out and purchase stamps but I like to be able to tell a story about a stamp: it came from this individual, on this card. It’s interesting to me to see the designs of the different stamps from the various countries”. While she would love to have flown one of her stamps in space, she explained it was not permitted due to federal regulations which prohibit certain items from being included in an astronaut’s Personal Preference Kit (PPK). Stephanie Diana Wilson was born on September 27, 1966, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. When she was about a year old, her family moved to Boston, where she grew up. She took the decision to explore the unknown when she was only 13 years old and, as part of a school assignment during a career week at the Crosby Junior High School, had to interview an adult whose career reflected specific student interests. Wilson, who had an avid interest in astronomy, spoke to a local area astronomer, Professor Jay M.  Pasachoff of the Williams College. She recalled:

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“I was hanging on his every word. Professor Pasachoff was passionate about his work. As he talked with personal enthusiasm about the incredible discoveries he worked on and the exploration of the unknown, I knew that I wanted to be a part of that, too”.

But when she went to high school, Wilson started looking at careers and opportunities and began to rethink her priorities: “I have a great curiosity for what’s unknown and I like to solve problems, so trying to understand and have a better sense of the universe, and what that means to humanity, who we are, and what our history is, and how we leverage that knowledge to bring benefits to humanity was something that struck me. I thought that engineers basically had more opportunities. As a mechanical engineer, I could work on automobiles if the bottom fell out of aerospace. I could work building designs. I could work on city planning. I always felt like engineering was a good career move”.

After graduating in 1984 from the Taconic High School, Pittsfield, Wilson earned a BSc degree in Engineering Science from Harvard University in 1988. She then found that engineering could also lead her to the stars: “It was always something in the back of my mind”, she said (Fig. 4.27). Wilson spent two years employed at the former Martin Marietta Astronautics Group in Denver, Colorado, as a loads and dynamics engineer, where she was responsible for performing loads analyses for the Titan IV rocket.

Fig. 4.27.  Commemorative cover of the launch of mission STS-120, signed by Stephanie Wilson and Paolo Nespoli. From the Author’s collection.

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In 1990, Wilson left Martin Marietta to attend graduate school. Her research, sponsored by the NASA Langley Research Center, focused on the control and modeling of large flexible space structures, and in 1992 she earned an MSc degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas. Following the completion of her graduate work, Wilson was hired by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, working on the Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem for the Galileo spacecraft, responsible for assessing attitude-controller performance, science platform pointing accuracy, antenna pointing accuracy, and spin rate accuracy during the Galileo mission to Jupiter. After Galileo, she also supported the Interferometry Technology Program. After six years of experience in the field, including the four spent at the JPL, Wilson decided to apply to be an astronaut. She later said: “That for me was all a natural progression from working on launch vehicles and robotic spacecraft to now flying on the Shuttle”. One important thing was still missing, however: astronauts spend a lot of time training underwater, so during their first month in the program they are required to pass a swimming test. Wilson said: “I couldn’t swim. So the hardest part was learning how to swim. I was very lucky that the California Institute of Technology coach agreed to teach me to swim. But it was barely enough time”. Wilson was selected as an MS in the 16th NASA Astronaut Group: “When I entered in 1996 there were more than 2,500 applicants, and only 35 new trainees were accepted, so I felt extremely fortunate”. She was initially assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Space Station Operations Branch, working with space station payload displays and procedures. She then served in the Astronaut Office Capcom Branch, working in Mission Control with on-orbit crews during several missions. She was prime communicator on the day of the Columbia accident: “I was the lead capsule communicator for that mission, so I was the voice of the mission control team talking to the crew. It was definitely a sad day for NASA and a sad day for the world. As a result of accidents, though, we learn a great deal. We’re able to make safety improvements. Personally I handled the Columbia tragedy by making sure that their memories are kept alive. I did what I could to help the families through their losses, and I tried to remember that God is in control. I might not understand His plan, but He does have one”.

Despite the risk involved, Wilson remained committed to space exploration. She said: “I do believe I have found my purpose in life. I believe that this is what I was destined to do. The Space Program is important. There are many things that transfer in technology, such as computers and medical equipment, that are

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results of the space station that apply to our everyday lives and make our lives better. I do put my trust in God for protection. That helps me to have confidence in all the things that I do”.

Wilson was eventually assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Shuttle Operations Branch, involving the Space Shuttle main engines, external tank, and solid rocket boosters. She participated in three Space Shuttle missions: STS-121 (2006), STS-120 (2007), and STS-131 (2010), logging more than 42 days in space. She flew all of her three missions on Shuttle Discovery and they all docked with the ISS. For her first mission, STS-121, Wilson was the loadmaster and cargo specialist, splitting robotic arm responsibilities with the other rookie astronaut, colleague Lisa Nowak. Wilson was in charge of transferring approximately 2.3 tons of new equipment, cargo, and food to the station from the “Leonardo” logistics module. “This has been a dream of mine for a long time”, Wilson said. After her mission, she served in the Astronaut Office Robotics branch performing robotics procedure reviews and serving as a robotics mentor and instructor astronaut. In October 2007, she flew as MS-2/FE for mission STS-120  – where Pamela Melroy was commander – with the task of assisting the commander and the pilot during the ascent phase and re-entry. Once in orbit, Wilson was assigned as the primary robotic arm operator for vehicle inspection and spacewalk support, helping to replace the S-band antenna and to relocate the P6 solar array from the Z1 truss to the end of the Integrated Truss Structure. During the deployment of the solar array, the array panels snagged and were damaged. She recalled: “We had some trouble deploying a solar array, and during the deploy the Port Six [P6] solar array tore. That was almost very similar to an Apollo 13-like moment. The teams on the ground, the extravehicular activity [EVA] teams, the robotic teams, our flight directors, our structural and mechanics personnel all came together to come up with a plan to repair this solar array only using the materials that we had on board. They sent up procedures for us to fabricate cuff links that a spacewalker would install to bridge over the tear to give the array some structural stiffness to complete the deploy. So, we put together with the help of our ground team a spacewalk and robotics procedures that we hadn’t seen before. It was very complex, but very memorable”.

Wilson’s great skill in operating the robotic arm was key for the successful solution: “Thank God we had Stephanie with us, ‘Madam Robotics Expert’. She and Dan Tani, they were real-time moving that arm to try to get that last little inch out of it”, said Pamela Melroy, recalling the case. Wilson explained:

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“We had to send a spacewalker out to the end of the robotic arm at the end of the space station to do this repair. It was definitely a moment when I was trusting in God. His life was in my hands and in the hands of another robotic arm operator”.

Mission STS-131 brought three women into space; Wilson and two rookies: Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger (USA) and Naoko Yamazaki (Japan). This was the fourth occasion that three female astronauts had flown together, but this time was memorable because, on arrival at the ISS, they found a fourth female astronaut, Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who had arrived on a Russian Soyuz a few days earlier to start her long-duration mission. It was the first time in history that four women astronauts had met in space (Fig. 4.28). Once again, Wilson’s Shuttle mission carried the “Leonardo” MPLM, filled with supplies and equipment for the ISS and one new crew quarters rack. Another goal for the mission was to remove and replace an ammonia tank assembly outside the station on the S1 truss. Wilson was again responsible for moving the MPLM from the Shuttle bay using the robotic arm, and then transferring nine tons of material to and from the space station.

Fig. 4.28.  Another view of the historic first meeting of four women on orbit together. Stephanie Wilson is bottom center, with Naoko Yamazaki and Dorothy MetcalfLindenberger behind her and Tracy Caldwell Dyson ‘upside down’ above them. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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In October 2019, Wilson was Capcom for the historic first all-female spacewalk. In this role, she voiced instructions from Mission Control in Houston to astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch. In 2020, she was named one of 18 members of Artemis, NASA’s program to return to the Moon. As such, Wilson could be the first woman to walk on the Moon on a mission, set to launch in 2025, that will be NASA’s first lunar venture since 1972.

Sources For This Section Bush, S. “NASA Astronaut Stephanie D. Wilson: Faith in Abilities”, in iberkshires. com (September 14, 2006). Dean, B. “Stephanie Wilson: Becoming an Astronaut Kicking and Swimming”, nasa. gov (November 20, 2006). Evans, M. “Stephanie Wilson: God’s Final Frontier”, cbn.com (July 2009). Kahn, J.P. “In Her Orbit”, The Boston Globe (July 6, 2010). Nevills, A. “Preflight Interview: Stephanie Wilson”, nasa.gov (October 1, 2007). Official NASA biography of Stephanie Wilson, jsc.nasa.gov (July 2013). Pearlman, R. “Stephanie Wilson Wants Your Stamps …”, collectspace (July 5, 2006). Petty, J.I. “Preflight Interview: Stephanie Wilson”, nasa.gov (August 11, 2005). “Preflight Interview: Stephanie Wilson”, nasa.gov (March 8, 2010). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space—Following Valentina, p. 300. Springer/ Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Space Center Houston “Artemis astronaut feature: Stephanie Wilson” in spacecenter. org (February 11, 2021) Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 131–132. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

4.11 JOAN HIGGINBOTHAM: AN UNPLANNED ADVENTURE Mission

Launch

Return

STS-116

December 9, 2006

December 22, 2006

Joan Higginbotham (Fig. 4.29) is the third Africa-American woman to fly into space, after Mae Jemison and Stephanie Wilson. She enjoys training and competing as a bodybuilder, weightlifting, cycling, motivational speaking, and music. She also speaks Spanish and Russian.

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Fig. 4.29.  Joan Higginbotham. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Joan Elizabeth Higginbotham was born in Chicago, Illinois, on August 3, 1964. After graduating from the Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, Chicago, in 1982, she entered the Southern Illinois University at Carbondale since she had a “natural love of math and science” and took her interest in STEM early as a youngster. “I was born an engineer”, she says. She earned her BSc degree in Electrical Engineering in 1987. During college, she interned for two years with IBM. Her original career plan was to continue with this company at the end of her studies, as she explained: “It seemed like a natural fit at the time, because I had interned with them for two years in college; they were a good company and they thought I was a good employee. However, at the time I was graduating from college, they had a hiring freeze on engineers. So they offered me a position as a sales associate and would move me over to engineering once that hiring freeze came off. In the interim someone from NASA called me and had gotten a hold of my résumé and thought I’d be a real good fit in two positions they had”.

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When this phone call arrived from NASA, Higginbotham’s first reaction was not entirely positive. She said: “It was a huge step for me because I lived in Chicago where I was born and raised. That’s where my friends and family are. This guy on the phone was asking me to move a thousand miles away for some company that had had a very bad accident. This was in ’87 and the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion of 1986 was still fresh on everyone’s mind at the time. So I didn’t know if that was the wisest thing to do, and I didn’t really know much about NASA to be honest. I was not a space junkie or anything like that. So it took a little convincing”.

Higginbotham made up her mind to accept the offer after seeing the launch pad: “It just looked like something out of Star Wars”, she said (Fig. 4.30). She flew to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida two weeks after graduating, and was hired as Payload Electrical Engineer and assigned to the Electrical and Telecommunications Systems Division. Within six months, she became the lead for the Orbiter Experiments (OEX) on OV-102, the Space Shuttle Columbia. She said: “I had the background to do this, but it wasn’t necessarily my goal. I think the message to kids is to just prepare yourself. Have goals. Have dreams. But they don’t necessarily have to be set in stone. As long as you’re prepared… I think you’ll have a lot of opportunities open to you”.

Fig. 4.30.  Cover signed by Joan Higginbotham. From the Author’s collection.

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In the nine years she spent at the KSC, Higginbotham took on increasingly challenging positions and participated in 53 successful Space Shuttle launches and landings. She reconfigured the electrical wiring and performed electrical compatibility tests for payloads and experiments flown aboard all Space Shuttles. She then undertook several special assignments in which she served as the Executive Staff Assistant to the Director of Shuttle Operations and Management, led a team of engineers in performing critical analysis for the Space Shuttle flow in support of a simulation model tool, and worked on an interactive display detailing the Space Shuttle processing procedures at the KSC’s Visitor Center. Eventually, she served as backup orbiter project engineer for OV-104, Space Shuttle Atlantis, in which she participated in the integration of the Orbiter Docking Station (ODS) into the Space Shuttle used during Shuttle-Mir docking missions. Two years later, she was promoted to lead orbiter project engineer for OV-102, Space Shuttle Columbia. Three years into her NASA career, while working full time, Higginbotham decided to return to education and get an advanced degree. In 1992, she earned a Masters of Management Science degree from Florida Institute of Technology. “I worked essentially night shift so that I could go to the school during the day and get my second degree. But obviously it paid off,” she said. At the behest of her then boss, she applied to the Astronaut Corps in 1994 for the 1995 class, together with 6,000 other candidates. She explained: “I was one of the lucky ones that got interviewed (there were only 122 of us), and ultimately I was not one of the 15 selected. After talking to some board members, they suggested I go back and get a more technical advanced [degree]”.

Higginbotham therefore went back to Florida Tech and got an MSc degree in Space Systems. She reapplied for the Astronaut Corps in 1995 and was selected for the 1996 class, the largest ever selected as 44 new Ascans (astronaut candidates) joined the Corps. The class was nicknamed “The Sardines,” humorously implying that it was such a large class that their training sessions would be as tightly packed as sardines in a can. Initially assigned technical duties in the Payloads & Habitability Branch of the Astronaut Office, Higginbotham then supported the Shuttle Avionics & Integration Laboratory (SAIL) and finally joined the Operations Support Branch at the KSC, where she tested various modules of the ISS for operability, compatibility, and functionality prior to launch. Her first spaceflight assignment was originally the STS-117 mission due to be launched in 2003: “I do remember the phone call, because it came the day before my birthday in the year 2002, and we were slated to fly in September of 2003. Due to the

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[Columbia] accident, of course, our mission was pushed back. But I continued to train with that crew for about two years. Then one day, just out of the blue, I got a phone call from the chief of the astronaut office, asking me to report to his office. As I was walking up the stairs, I was trying to figure out why I was being called into the principal’s office and what I had done wrong. When I got there, he told me that they had been looking at some of the crews, and they were realigning the crews, and that I had been moved up to the crew of STS-116. It was basically a shock because I had been with my other crewmates for two years and I thought that’s pretty much how we’re going to launch in that crew configuration”.

Higginbotham took part in mission STS-116 with Sunita Williams, who eventually stayed on the space station for her long-duration mission, while Higginbotham returned to Earth after 12 days. She recalled: “My prime task was to be the Space Station robotic arm operator. There’s also a robotic arm on the Space Shuttle, but I was one of the operators of the robotic arms on the Space Station. The piece that we carried up was called the P5 truss. We used the arm to robotically place P5 next to the rest of the structure. Then two of my crewmates went outside, did a spacewalk, and they physically bolted that piece that we brought up to the Space Station and did some electrical connections”.

Higginbotham also served as “onboard hair stylist” when Sunita Williams decided to cut her ponytail and donate it to Locks of Love charity organization. Then she took care of bringing it back to Earth and delivering it to the non-profit organization to help a child suffering long-term medical hair loss. Higginbotham’s own mission task was a feat of derring-do. While on the Shuttle side, operating the Shuttle robotic arm, Nick Patrick grappled P5 and pulled it out of the payload bay. Higginbotham, together with Sunita Williams, grappled the P5 truss with the robotic arm of the space station (the Canadarm2) and moved it to within inches of its new position, so there were two arms grappling the truss, as she explained: “The arm operations are really complex. We have very tight tolerances between the arm and different structures. For example, on our mission, as we put the P5 truss into position, we had to come within inches of a box. That’s unheard of ”.

One of the major tasks of the mission was to electrically reconfigure the space station, to prepare it to support the addition of European and Japanese laboratory modules by future Shuttle crews. Another goal of the mission was to pick up European crewmember Thomas Reiter, who had been on the ISS for six months.

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Widely recognized for her accomplishments, on August 26, 2007  in Atlanta, Higginbotham received the 2007 Black Rose Award, which is considered the highest honor of the League of Black Women. The award is presented to individuals committed to advocating leadership opportunities for women of color in science, technology and public service. After her mission, Higginbotham was assigned to the STS-126 mission targeted for launch in September 2008. However, she retired from a distinguished 20-year career with NASA in November 2007 in order to pursue a career in the private sector. Joan Higginbotham logged over 308 hours in space and over 2,000 hours piloting the T-38 high-performance jet. She then worked for four years with Marathon Oil Corporation, an oil and natural gas exploration and production international company based in Houston, Texas, spending two years as Senior Technical Consultant in charge of company strategies and eventually becoming Corporate Social Responsibility Manager. She managed, among others, a project to successfully reduce the rate of transmission and deaths due to malaria in Equatorial Guinea, Africa. In October 2011, Higginbotham accepted the position of Director of Community Relations at Lowe’s Home Improvement, the second-largest chain of retail home improvement and appliance stores, with over 1,840 branches in the US, Canada, and Mexico, and with philanthropic corporate contributions totaling more than US$30 million annually. She was responsible for conceptualizing and implementing the multicultural marketing strategy to increase affinity for the company’s brand, developing and executing ongoing philanthropic strategy, directing the company’s natural disaster response program, and managing key cause-related marketing partnerships (Habitat for Humanity, American Red Cross). She said: “I’ve been incredibly blessed as an individual, and I had wonderful parents and family and friends who just encouraged me to be the best that I could. I think that’s why I am the person I am today and where I am today. I just feel a sense of responsibility to do the same for people who are coming up. I think nowadays there are a lot of children who weren’t as blessed as I am. They don’t come from homes where families encourage them to do things. I think if I can maybe help them and encourage them to do whatever it is  – not necessarily become an astronaut – just encourage them to do their best and expect nothing but the best from themselves”.

In October 2017, Higginbotham joined UTC Aerospace Systems for 12 months, where she worked closely with strategic stakeholders and executive

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leadership across the company’s business units and functions to ensure alignment and coordination of all internal and external community programs, focusing on creating a stronger corporate social responsibility (CSR) identity that delivered social impact in key markets around the world. In October 2018 she accepted a position with Collins Aerospace, where she manages relationships with governmental agencies and companies involved in human space exploration. Higginbotham is also an active speaker who inspires audiences with her personal journey of breaking barriers into space and beyond. She highlights the keys to succeeding in her missions, including seizing opportunities, being prepared, perseverance, and never giving up. Her story about how her childhood curiosity eventually led her to a career in science and engineering and eventually to space is truly inspiring. When asked by a journalist: “What’s next for Joan Higginbotham?” she answered: “My career path has taken me from electrical engineer to rocket scientist to astronaut to running a malaria program in Equatorial Guinea, Africa, to sourcing products from all over the world. Every career change has been totally different from the previous career, so the answer to this question is… stay tuned”.

Sources For This Section Jacqmans, “Astronaut to accept league of black women award” in forum.nasaspaceflight.com (September 19, 2007) Mandyck J., “Journey to Space: Former NASA Astronaut Joan Higginbotham on STEM, Sustainability and More” in www.linkedin.com (March 29, 2018) Mansfield, C.L. “Her Time for Discovery”, nasa.gov (November 15, 2006). Official NASA biography of Joan Higginbotham, jsc.nasa.gov (November 2007). “Preflight Interview: Joan Higginbotham”, nasa.gov (November 3, 2006). Williams, J.A. “Joan Higginbotham: Soaring to New Heights in Space Exploration”, thefreelibrary.com (July 2008). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 122–123. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

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4.12 BARBARA MORGAN: “I’LL FLY WITH THE EYES, EARS, THE HEART AND MIND OF A TEACHER” Mission

Launch

Return

STS-118

August 8, 2007

August 21, 2007

None of the astronauts has perhaps felt the tragedy of the Challenger STS-51L as personally as Barbara Morgan did (Fig. 4.31). As the backup to Christa McAuliffe, who became, for the media, the champion of that flight as the “Teacher in Space,” Morgan trained intensely alongside her for six months. Although she witnessed two Shuttle accidents, with the deaths of colleagues and friends, Morgan continued to believe with tenacity that, despite the risks involved, space exploration is important (Fig. 4.32). She said: “If we put our head in the sand and don’t accept any risk at all, we’re not going anywhere. We can never predict the future, but we can help shape the future. And if we want that future to be bright and open-ended and be one of lifelong

Fig. 4.31.  Barbara Morgan. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Fig. 4.32.  Cover commemorating the launch of Shuttle mission STS-118, signed by Barbara Morgan. From the Author’s collection.

learning, we’ve got to keep reaching for the stars. There is so much that we don’t know, and space exploration just provides so much. It truly motivates our young people and it’s exploration, it’s discovery, it’s experimentation  – it’s all those things that make humans, humans. And it’s all the things that help us gain more knowledge and help make the world a better place. And it’s also important that we show our young people that there are risks that should be taken”.

Barbara Radding Morgan was born in Fresno, California, on November 28, 1951. She is a classical flutist and enjoys jazz, reading, hiking, swimming, cross-country skiing, and spending time with her family. She graduated from Hoover High School, Fresno, in 1969, the year of the first Moon landing. Following graduation, she was accepted at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where she earned a BA degree with distinction in Human Biology in 1973. She considered a pre-med track at Stanford University, but circumstances drew her to her true love, as she recalls: “At the age I was through high school and college years, basically the only thing that it seemed like girls did was either became teachers or nurses. I really didn’t like those limitations. But in my studies in college in human biology, one of my classes that really fascinated me a lot was on the brain. At the same time I was also taking a psychology class on learning theories and memory. At some point, I was walking around a bookstore and, I don’t know why, I just got drawn to the education section and happened to pick up a book about somebody that I knew

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nothing about. It was Maria Montessori, who it turned out was a very famous and influential educator. Putting all those things together, I thought, ‘If these are the things I’m interested in …,’ and it reawakened that desire when I was a little kid of wanting to be a teacher”.

Morgan obtained her teaching credential from Notre Dame de Namur University in nearby Belmont in 1974 and began her teaching career on the Flathead Indian Reservation at Arlee Elementary School in Arlee, Montana, where she taught remedial reading and math. After marrying, she taught remedial reading/math and second grade from 1975 to 1978 at McCall-­ Donnelly Elementary School in McCall, a small mountain town in Idaho, which was the home town of her husband, the writer Clay Morgan. From 1978, Morgan taught English and science to third-graders at Colegio Americano de Quito in Ecuador. The following year, she returned to McCall-­ Donnelly Elementary School, where she started to teach second, third, and fourth grades. She said: “When the Teacher in Space program was started, I was sitting at home. It was after school, it was the five o’clock news, and the President came on the news and announced that they were going to send a teacher in space. I shot straight up and said, ‘Wow!’ What a great opportunity! Because as teachers, we’re always looking for opportunities to bring the world to our classroom, to gain more experiences, gain more knowledge about our world so that we can make our classroom a better place for our kids. And, it was a tremendous opportunity. And, as all teachers, we don’t pass up those opportunities”.

Morgan applied, together with some other 11,000 American teachers: “As teachers we are always looking for new ways… to bring the world in to our students and to take our students out into the world”. Space was the ultimate classroom without walls (Fig. 4.33). Each applicant was asked to describe a project they would conduct on the Space Shuttle. Morgan said: “Learning is based on curiosity. My project was to answer as many questions as possible from students around the country”, and she started with students who helped her identify the kinds of questions kids would ask. When she was interviewed, one of the questions Morgan was asked was: “What is your philosophy for living”? She said: “It’s very much like my philosophy of education. We’re here for such a short time and one of the greatest things about being alive is that we get to learn, and learn alongside others”. Her answer was a winner and Morgan was selected as the backup candidate for NASA’s “Teacher in Space” project on July 19, 1985. For almost six months, she trained with Christa McAuliffe and the Space Shuttle Challenger crew at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC), in Houston, Texas. At the time,

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Fig. 4.33.  Barbara Morgan (left) and Christa McAuliffe were selected for NASA’s Teacher In Space project in 1985. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

she said of McAuliffe: “We’re good friends and we get along well. We’re buddies, we’re going through the training together. I don’t feel like a shadow, I feel every bit as involved as Christa.” Later, Morgan said: “One of the best parts of that program was being able to meet teachers from all over the country who were doing a dynamite job. Every single one of us knew we were just representing hundreds and thousands of great teachers across the country”.

Following McAuliffe’s death in the Challenger disaster, NASA asked Morgan to stay on as the “Teacher in Space Designee,” which included public speaking, educational consulting, and curriculum design. She said: “One of my favorite things that I got to do during that period was serve on the National Science Foundation’s Federal Task Force for Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering”. Looking back on the positives of the Challenger accident when interviewed during the 25th anniversary, Morgan said: “Christa reminded everybody, at a

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time when education was being lambasted, that our country is full of good teachers who are working really hard in the classroom to do the best they can to help our young people have a bright future”. In the fall of 1986, Morgan returned to McCall-Donnelly Elementary School to resume her teaching career. She continued teaching second, third, and fourth grades for almost 20 years, while continuing to work with NASA’s Education Division of the Office of Human Resources and Education. The “Teacher in Space” program was discontinued by NASA in 1990 amid concerns surrounding the risk of sending civilians to space. The “Educator Astronaut” project was created instead, carrying on the objectives of the “Teacher in Space” program and seeking to elevate teaching as a profession and inspire students. Unlike in the previous program, however, educator astronauts had to leave their job and join NASA’s Astronaut Corps to become full-time astronauts. They would be fully trained to do the same jobs and duties and to fly as crewmembers with critical mission responsibilities, as well as education-related goals. Educator astronauts would be “fully fledged” astronauts as opposed to “spaceflight participants.” In 1998 NASA asked Morgan to apply to the astronaut program as an astronaut candidate and she returned to NASA 12 years after McAuliffe’s death. She was selected as an MS in Astronaut Group 17 in January 1998. That August, she reported to the JSC to begin training as a full-time astronaut, using simulators to learn the systems of the Space Shuttle and the ISS and how to operate them, practicing launches and landings, learning how to maneuver the robotic arm, capture a satellite, dock the Space Shuttle to the ISS, and work in weightlessness. Following the completion of two years of training and evaluation, Morgan was assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Space Station Operations Branch. She served in the Astronaut Office Capcom Branch, working in Mission Control as the prime communicator with on-orbit crews. She took this experience very seriously: “I can’t imagine flying in space without having that job, where we really learn who all the folks are on the ground and how that all works on the ground, and the best ways to communicate back and forth”. After waiting to fly in space for half of her life with perseverance and patience, in December 2002, a month before the Columbia STS-107 accident, Morgan was assigned to mission STS-118, originally scheduled to be flown in November 2003 aboard Columbia. She was a Capcom during the Columbia tragedy in February 2003. Needless to say, the disaster altered the planned flight schedules and Morgan’s mission had to be rescheduled almost four years later: “I’d like to say you’re never waiting for a flight assignment. You’re working and working very hard. That’s really what you do as an astronaut. The spaceflight

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part is the ultimate, but it’s such a small part time wise and really intensity wise of everything that you do. And the other jobs that you do are fascinating, and they’re really important jobs. They help support everybody else flying. They help support the entire program. So we have folks whose technical job is helping to work with the design of the next exploration vehicle, the CEV that we’ll be using for station, for Moon and Mars, etc. My particular assignments while I was ‘waiting,’… every single one of those assignments, I really loved. I felt like I was contributing, which I was; and I was also learning. It’s the best kind of on-­ the-­job training that you can get”.

STS-118 was flown on Shuttle Endeavour and Morgan felt very close to this orbiter, as she explained: “Endeavour has special meaning to me as a schoolteacher, because Endeavour was our replacement orbiter for Challenger, and it was named by schoolchildren all over this country”. In fact, Endeavour was built to replace Challenger, in the aftermath of mission STS-51L. The name of the new orbiter was chosen through a competition in which more than 6,000 US schools participated. Students at McCall-Donnelly Elementary School, where Morgan taught for a total of 22 years before being selected as an astronaut in 1998, submitted the name “Endeavour”. (Students could not suggest just any name: it had to be that of an exploratory or research sea vessel, be appropriate for a spacecraft, capture the spirit of America’s mission in space, and be easy to pronounce. “Endeavour” was the most popular entry, accounting for almost one-third of the state-level winners.) The mission emblem of her mission, STS-118, features the “torch of knowledge” that represents the importance of education. Morgan said (Fig. 4.34): “If you look closely at the patch, you’ll see the trajectory or the orbit that the Shuttle is taking as it circles around the astronaut symbol that’s going up to the International Space Station and beyond. That orbit emanates from that flame of knowledge. It’s education, it’s great education, that propels all of what we’re doing in space exploration and as we learn more about our universe. That’s so important because to us one of the primary purposes of all these missions is gaining knowledge, and it’s gaining knowledge through exploration. The other thing that’s near and dear to our hearts is that flame of knowledge really is there to honor teachers and students everywhere”.

With Morgan on the crew and due to the fact that the official STS-118 mission patch included the torch of knowledge, NASA press releases and media briefing documents improperly stated that STS-118 was the first flight of a Mission Specialist Educator. However, while it is true that tip of the flames touched Morgan’s name on the patch, she did not train in the Educator

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Fig. 4.34.  The “torch of knowledge” in the mission emblem represents the importance of education. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Astronaut Project and flew with technical responsibilities like every astronaut on the team. As NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin clarified in a post-­ mission press conference, Morgan was not considered a Mission Specialist Educator, but rather as a standard MS who had once been a teacher, even if she had made her point that she would “share that experience through a teacher’s perspective and through the eyes, ears, the heart and mind of a teacher.” Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who had been inspired to become an astronaut following in the footsteps of Christa McAuliffe, also flew on the mission. As an MS, Morgan was kept very busy. In charge of the Shuttle’s robotic arm, she helped in coordinating the unloading of over 2,250 kg of cargo contained in the Spacehab, and moving supplies and equipment from the Shuttle to the space station. She also served as Endeavour’s prime Shuttle robotic arm operator during the flight’s three spacewalks that were planned to attach a new truss segment, relocate a stowage platform, and replace a gyroscope that helps to control the station’s orientation. Morgan faced the task with a special perspective, however: “For me, especially from a schoolteacher’s point of view, it is applied mathematics. If you love geometry, it’s geometry”.

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Morgan took ten million basil seeds into space, which were placed outside the station to test how they could withstand the harsh environment of space. Some of them remained on the station to be grown in zero gravity, while the rest were returned to Earth, sorted, and placed into small packets, each containing approximately 50 space-flown seeds. Together with control packets of seeds that had not flown, they were eventually distributed to students to grow in small greenhouses that they had designed. More than 40,000 classrooms in all 50 states and 30 foreign countries participated in the program. Even on this mission, a piece of insulation foam came off the external tank during lift-off, though the impact caused little damage and was not in a critical area. The mission landed successfully at KSC on August 21, a day ahead of schedule due to concerns about Hurricane Dean. Finally, Morgan had achieved her dream at the age of 55. She logged over 209 hours (more than eight days) in space. Barbara Morgan always considered being an astronaut as “a long-while lateral move” and, in an interview while at Houston, she said her plan was always “going back to teaching when all is said and done here.” After her mission, she left the Astronaut Corps in 2008 to join Idaho’s Boise State University as Distinguished Educator in Residence, “an entirely new position created specifically for a uniquely qualified person,6” which entailed a dual appointment in the colleges of engineering and education. Morgan taught in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) area and her work included policy and program development, advocacy, and mentoring. Currently, she works with Boise State University as Emeritus, and continues to work with national and international education organizations, other non-profits, and NASA. She says: “Education is important, just like exploration. They are very much the same. It’s about learning, it’s about exploring, it’s about discovering, it’s about sharing, and building a future”. In 2008, Morgan earned an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Boise State University (only the sixth honorary doctorate in the university’s history). In August 2008, the “Barbara R.  Morgan Elementary School” opened in McCall, the small town where she taught for 22 years. She continues to make public appearances.

 As proclaimed by Cheryl Schrader, Dean of the College of Engineering

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Sources For This Section “Astronaut Friday: Barbara Morgan” in spacecenter.org (August 23, 2019) “Educator Astronaut Project”, en.wikipedia.org. Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 158–164. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). “In Their Own Words: Barbara Morgan”, nasa.gov (December 14, 2011). Journee, M., “Educator astronaut tackles a new frontier launching her next Endeavor” in Boise State University Focus (Fall 2008), p 20-23 Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 105, 118, 133. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Mathews, A., “Learning together – from space” in skytruth.org (April 7, 2021) Moskowitz, C. “Challenger Remembered: Q&A with Teacher Astronaut Barbara Morgan”, space.com (January 25 2011). Nevills, A. “Preflight Interview: Barbara Morgan”, nasa.gov (November 23, 2007). Official biography of Barbara Morgan, nasa.gov (July 2010). Smith, H.R. “The Naming of Space Shuttle Endeavour,” nasa.gov (February 21, 2008). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 125–126. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

4.13 KAREN NYBERG: MARATHON RUNNING ENGINEER Mission

Launch

Return

STS-124 Soyuz TMA-09M

May 31, 2008 May 28, 2013

June 14, 2008 November 10, 2013

Karen LuJean Nyberg (Fig. 4.35) was born on October 7, 1969, in Vining, a very small town (fewer than 100 inhabitants) in central Minnesota. She was the fifth of six children in a family with Norwegian ancestry, and grew up in a house outside of town in the land of 10,000 lakes. She said: “The town that I went to school in is a neighboring town, Henning, and its one school was kindergarten through twelfth grade. So, I went to school with pretty much the same people my entire life. There are a couple drawbacks. Education-­ wise, it was a good education and it all ended up okay. The good side about being in a town like that, in a school that size, is I was able to participate in everything that I wanted to. I was playing sports. I was in the band, in the choir, student council and being a part of a team in that way. It made me a more well-­ rounded person. I think if I had gone to a bigger school, like my sports’ abilities I was OK but I never would have been able to play in a big school”.

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Fig. 4.35.  Karen Nyberg. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Although she chose a career dedicated to science and technology, Nyberg still has varied interests. Her recreational interests include piano, running, drawing and painting, and sewing. She says: “My mom and dad are both very creative people and made a lot for all of us kids: everything from snowmobile suits to prom dresses. My mom taught me to sew when I was about five or six years old. I would sew all day every day if I could, I love it that much”.

She especially enjoys quilting and appliqué work and used those skills to create a lot of the décor for her son’s nursery before he was born. Drawing and painting is another of her hobbies that she inherited from her father, Ken Nyberg, who created painted steel sculptures made from scrap metal. She also packed a sketch book and pencils when preparing for her long-duration mission in orbit (Fig. 4.36). Before leaving, she said: “I’m really hoping to spend some of my free time drawing, I used to mostly draw portraits, and gave them to friends, but I haven’t done it in a long time. I am hoping I can get back to some of that while I am in space”.

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Fig. 4.36.  Commemorative cover of Expedition-36/37 signed onboard the ISS by the crew, including Karen Nyberg, on the day of the 50th anniversary of the flight of Valentina Tereshkova. From the Author’s collection.

Nyberg started running as a graduate student while at the University of Texas and developed a love for long-distance running. She participated in nine marathons and made headlines in 2007 when she completed the Boston Marathon in 3 hours 32 minutes and 9 seconds, in tandem with fellow astronaut Sunita Williams, who ran the marathon while in orbit on ISS.  Nyberg graduated from Henning Public High School, Henning, Minnesota, in 1988. She had wanted to be an astronaut since she was a child (Fig. 4.37): “I can’t pinpoint an event or a person or anything that made me decide that. I just decided that that’s what I wanted to do and I kept that with me and most of my friends in high school knew that’s what I wanted to do. They just called me ‘the rocket scientist’”.

She graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of North Dakota in 1994. She said: “It’s kind of funny how I chose mechanicals because this was before the time of computer-aided drawing and computer-aided modeling, and I like to draw so it was like drafting sounded fun. I do not think I knew enough about engineering to know that that’s what I wanted: at this time I knew that ‘astronaut’ was my ultimate goal”.

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Fig. 4.37.  Biberpost private stamp celebrating the Soyuz TMA-09M mission. Figure Credit: © Ralf Schulz/Biberpost. Reproduced with permissions. All rights reserved.

In 1991, Nyberg got into the Cooperative Education Program at NASA JSC and worked as a co-op student in a variety of areas: in the Robotics Branch on the first semester, in the Mission Operations Directorate (MOD) for another semester, and then with Crew and Thermal Systems Division. In 1994, she received a patent for her work on a robot-friendly probe and socket assembly. She said: “It [the Program] extended my graduation by a while, but I think it was very valuable. I learned a lot about engineering and I got my foot in the door at JSC”. Nyberg decided to continue her studies at the Austin BioHeat Transfer Laboratory of the University of Texas at Austin, where she investigated human thermoregulation and experimental metabolic testing and control, specifically related to the control of thermal neutrality in spacesuits, which was NASA research. This work led to her doctorate in 1998 and she was hired at JSC with the Crew and Thermal Systems Division, working as an environmental control systems engineer in charge of improving the thermal control systems of the spacesuits and designing thermal systems for the future Lunar and Martian missions. That summer, she applied for the astronaut program. She said: “I thought it is time. I have my Ph.D., now I will put in my application. I never thought that I would be selected. Luckily, for some reason, I was selected”. Nyberg joined the 18th Group of NASA Astronauts in July 2000 and, after two years of basic training and evaluation, qualified as an MS and was assigned for technical duties in the Astronaut Office Station Operations Branch. She was crew support astronaut for the Expedition-6 crew during their six-month mission on the ISS, and then became chief of the Robotics Branch. From July 22–28, 2006, Nyberg lived and worked underwater for seven days during NEEMO-10 (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations), a deep-sea training and simulation expedition at the Aquarius underwater laboratory, to help prepare for the return of astronauts to the Moon and manned missions to Mars.

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Nyberg flew into space for the first time in 2008 with Shuttle Discovery mission STS-124, the second of three missions that contributed to assembling and installing the Japanese Laboratory Kibō (“Hope”, in Japanese) and the Japanese robotic arm. In a pre-flight interview, she said: “That’s one of the biggest payloads the Space Shuttle has ever flown, so there’s not a lot else that we’re taking up, other than that module. So that’s the main goal, to deliver that to the space station, install it, activate it, get it up and running”.

Together with the Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, Nyberg was responsible for the installation of Kibō and worked heavily on robotics, being the lead for all the robotic arm operations. She was the first astronaut ever to operate all three robotic arms that were on station at the time: the Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS), also known as Canadarm-1; the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS), known as Canadarm-2; and the Japanese Experiment Module Remote Manipulator System (JEMRMS), used to transfer the experiments from an airlock to the Japanese Kibō module and to the “Terrace” located outside, where they could be exposed to the vacuum of space. One remarkable aspect of this mission was that it helped to highlight the international nature of the ISS program. Nyberg said: “We flew in an American Space Shuttle, carried a Japanese laboratory, used a Canadian robotic arm to install it to a module that was built in Italy, and we did all this traveling 17,000 miles an hour. These modules never having been mated on Earth to see if they fit, and it’s that international aspect of it that I think we have learned a lot”.

This mission started the final assembly phase of the ISS. In a pre-flight interview, Nyberg highlighted: “After this mission the space station is going to be very close to its final configuration, so that it can be used to do the things that it was originally meant to be for, all the science that originally it was intended for. And I hope that it can be used to look at the effects of microgravity on humans which is very important for the future of what we plan on doing in sending humans back to the Moon and even on farther where we’re really going to be in microgravity for very long periods of time”.

In May 2009, Nyberg was assigned to mission STS-132, scheduled for launch in 2010, but had to be replaced a few months later due to a temporary medical

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condition. Instead, she flew to the ISS in May 2013 as flight engineer on the Soyuz TMA-09M mission, the second-ever express trip to the ISS.  For five months she was part of Expedition-36/37, along with the Russian cosmonaut Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin (who carried the Olympic torch for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi into space) and the Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano. Nyberg was one of only two women in space on June 16, 2013, on the 50th anniversary of the flight of Valentina Tereshkova, the other being Wang Yaping aboard the Tiangong-1 on the Shenzhou-10 mission. Nyberg was involved in a number of experiments on ocular health, osteoporosis, and cardiovascular health: “We’ve discovered that there are quite a few astronauts coming home with decay in their eyesight. Luca Parmitano and I have been involved in numerous tests. We’re doing tonometry – we are looking at the pressure of the eye. We are doing ultrasounds to look at the morphology of the eye, we are doing fundoscopy to take images of the retina, vision tests. We are hoping that we can determine exactly what is causing this and hopefully mitigate the problem, especially if we start longer duration missions going to Mars. And I’m confident there will be some type of an Earth application that will come from this: that we could contribute to the success of solving some earthbound eye diseases. Another great one to talk about is bone density: there’s great potential for using that and applying it to earthbound osteoporosis”.

One of the fun pictures she sent during her mission was the “Made in space!” dinosaur, as she wrote on the caption, which she created for her three-year-old son, Jack. “I made this dinosaur for my son last Sunday, September 22”, she said. “It is made out of Velcro-like fabric that lines the Russian food containers that are found here on the International Space Station” (Fig. 4.38). By the time Nyberg flew to ISS, the Shuttle was no longer launching to the station, having been retired in 2011. Instead, the ISS was visited by four different transfer vehicles, prepared by ISS partners to deliver supplies and equipment: the Russian Progress, the Italian-built European ATV, the Japanese HTV, and the first demonstration vehicle of the Orbital Science Corporation’s Cygnus, another Italian-built pressurized module. Nyberg played a major part in grabbing most of them with the robotic arm. She also participated in hundreds of research experiments in physical science, technology, education, and medicine, and generated interest around the world by posting articles on social media, including how to wash your hair in space, sewing in space, and being a mom while in space. Nyberg completed her mission and returned to Earth, landing on November 10, 2013.

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Fig. 4.38.  The “Made in space!” dinosaur that Karen Nyberg made for her son. It was made from Velcro-like fabric that lines the Russian food containers, which Nyberg found on the ISS. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Following her mission, she worked for NASA supporting human spaceflight in the Exploration branch, and as Chief of the Robotics branch. She holds a patent for work done on the Robot Friendly Probe and Socket Assembly. After nearly 30 years at JSC, including 20 years as an astronaut and two spaceflights totaling 180 days in space, Karen Nyberg retired from NASA on March 31, 2020. She is married to astronaut Douglas Hurley who was commander of the first manned SpaceX mission, Crew Dragon Demo-2, in May 2020. Nyberg hit the headlines again in June 2020 during the campaign to re-­ elect President Donald Trump, when she publicly denounced the use of pictures of her and her son in the video ‘make space great again’. She tweeted: “I find it disturbing that a video image of me and my son is being used in political propaganda without my knowledge or consent. That is wrong”, tagging NASA and its chief Jim Bridenstine in the post. The video that politicized the “accomplishments earned through many years of hard work by the NASA and SpaceX teams” violated NASA’s advertising regulations as it depicted astronauts without their consent and included NASA’s iconic logo, and was immediately removed.

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Sources For This Section Anderson, B. “Space Chat with Astronaut Karen Nyberg”, cnn.com (February 20, 2014). Avedisian, W., “Veteran Astronaut Karen Nyberg Retires from NASA”, in nasa.org (March 31, 2020) Binkley, M. “Finding Minnesota: Vining Sculptures in Otter Tail County”, minnesota.cbslocal.com (March 27, 2011). Official NASA biography of Karen Nyberg, nasa.gov (November 2013). Pearlman, R. “‘Made in Space!’: Astronaut Sews Dinosaur Toy from Space Station Scraps”, collectspace.com (September 27, 2013). “Preflight Interview: Karen Nyberg”, nasa.gov (April 4, 2013). “Preflight Interview: Karen Nyberg, Mission Specialist—(STS-124)”, nasa.gov (April 29, 2008). “The Softer Side of Space: A Profile of Astronaut Karen Nyberg”, nasa.gov (October 30, 2013). Valentine, E. “Race from Space Coincides with Race on Earth”, nasa.gov (April 16, 2007). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 127–128. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

4.14 MEGAN MCARTHUR: 50TH BIRTHDAY PARTY IN SPACE Mission

Launch

Return

STS-125 Crew Dragon-2

May 11, 2009 April 23, 2021

May 24, 2009 November 9, 2021

Katherine Megan McArthur (Fig. 4.39) was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 30, 1971, but feels that she doesn’t have a hometown as she grew up around airplanes and airbases, though she considers California to be her home state. Her father was a career naval officer based at the Moffett Field Naval Air Station, but had temporary duty assignment in different countries, so her family moved through California and to Rhode Island, but also to Japan and England. McArthur graduated in 1989 from the Francis High School in Mountain View near Moffett Field. She said: “For a number of years we lived at Moffett Field Naval Air Station, which is also where the Ames Research Center is, when I was in high school. We used to see astronauts come out there to do training in one of the simulators there and

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Fig. 4.39.  Megan McArthur. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

they’d park their T-38s out there on the ramp, and I thought ‘that looks like a pretty neat job.’ But mostly it made me interested in the space program in general, because that seemed like kind of a long shot to ever get selected to be an astronaut. I studied aerospace engineering in college and got interested in some other things along the way, but always came back to the idea of being an astronaut. What appeals to me about it, I think, [is] it’s a challenging job. You are having to know lots of different things. You have to be a generalist as well as a specialist in some areas, and, of course, it’s a lot of fun”.

McArthur went to the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), where she earned a BSc degree in Aerospace Engineering in 1993 (Fig. 4.40). While there she fell in love with the ocean, after she was required to become scubacertified in order to participate in human-powered submarine races with other engineering students who had built a small two-person pedal-powered submarine. She recalled: “Towards the end of my studies at UCLA I got interested in a project with some other aerospace engineering students that was called ‘Human Powered Submarine Project’ and basically we built a small two-person submarine, and

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Fig. 4.40.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-125, signed by Megan McArthur. From the Author’s collection.

raced it against some other colleges. It’s kind of funny that a bunch of aerospace engineering students got interested in this but a friend of mine, Derek, who was going into the Navy as a submarine officer, had read about this project and decided he wanted to participate. As part of that project I ended up being the pilot because, as the only girl, I was the smallest and the only one that would fit in the spot that we had designated for the pilot. I had to get scuba certified in order to do this project. And so I got interested in ocean engineering at that time and ended up working for a few months at an ocean engineering company that designs underwater robots and some manned submersibles as well. Then I went to Ireland for a few months, and I worked in a dive shop. That was a lot of fun. I loved being around the ocean”.

McArthur set out to find a way to combine her new “ocean” passion with her engineering background. She found the Hodgkiss lab at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a graduate school for oceanography that had a program called “Applied Ocean Sciences.” McArthur conducted graduate research in near-­ shore underwater acoustic propagation and digital signal processing. Her research focused on determining geo-acoustic models to describe very shallow water waveguides using measured transmission loss data in a genetic algorithm inversion technique. She served as chief scientist during at-sea data-­ collection operations, and planned and led diving operations during sea-floor instrument deployments and sediment-sample collections. She also actively

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cooperated in in-water instrument testing, deployment, and maintenance, and in the collection of plants, animals, and sediments. While at Scripps, McArthur also volunteered at the Birch Aquarium, conducting educational demonstrations for the public from inside the 70,000-­gallon exhibit tank of the California Kelp Forest, where she dived for in-water tank maintenance, animal feeding, and observations. She also served as a volunteer in CHiPS (Committee for Humanity in Public Services), founded by students at the Scripps for the purpose of encouraging and facilitating student involvement in community services like water-quality monitoring, plant salvage, re-vegetation, and bank stabilization. Before completing her doctorate, McArthur also applied to become an astronaut. She says: “I [worked at Scripps] for six years but always held on to this idea that being an astronaut would be pretty exciting and pretty challenging. And so at one point during my graduate career I went ahead and applied to NASA and just got really lucky and got interviewed and got hired”.

Selected as an MS for Astronaut Group 18 by NASA in July 2000, McArthur reported for training the following month. In 2002, she completed her two years of training and evaluation, and also completed her Ph.D.  She was assigned to the Astronaut Office Shuttle Operations Branch, working technical issues on Shuttle systems in the SAIL. In 2004, she served as the crew support for Expedition-9. During this mission she spent six months in Russia, from April to October 2004. She also worked in the Mission Control Center as a Capcom during several ISS and Space Shuttle missions. Her first flight into space was aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-125. She recalled: “I was one of the last people to find out. That week I was actually working in Mission Control Center and I was working the night shift, so I wasn’t going into my office at all. The Chief of the Astronaut Office, Steve Lindsey, had been calling me at my desk and, of course, I wasn’t there. And so the word was getting out amongst the crew. It happened that I ran into our pilot on the crew, who I see occasionally, and he said ‘Have you talked to Scooter [Lindsey] lately’? He is not somebody I would see very often or talk to on a regular basis. That was very suspicious to me, but I had to go and work a shift in Mission Control and hadn’t time to ask more. But when I got home that night and my phone rang and it was Steve Lindsey, I finally knew what was going on”.

STS-125 was the fifth and final Shuttle mission – and the fourth service mission – to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). During the ascent and return phases, McArthur operated as FE, but her primary responsibility as MS was

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to grasp Hubble and place it in the payload bay of the Shuttle, and then to operate the robotic arm to stabilize HST and assist the astronauts servicing it during five spacewalks. The EVAs were conducted by Andrew Feustel, Michael Good, John Grunsfeld, and Michael Massimino, to “perform impossibly hard, never-before-attempted ‘brain surgery’ on this one-of-a-kind telescope, a telescope that will help unlock the secrets of the universe,” as McArthur wrote in an article. In a pre-flight interview, she explained: “This is the fourth servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, and what we’re going to do is basically extend the life of the telescope for another five years at least, hopefully. We’re also going to repair it by capturing the telescope and placing it in the Shuttle’s payload bay, and then some of our crew members will do five different spacewalks to do this repair and upgrade work. I’ll be driving the robotic arm for all of the EVAs. At the end we’ll use the robotic arm to move it away from the orbiter and do a series of burns to get farther away from it”.

The 19-year-old telescope spent six days in the Shuttle’s cargo bay undergoing vital repairs, including some to equipment that was never designed to be fixed in space. The crew overcame frozen bolts, stripped screws, and stuck handrails to refurbish the HST with rejuvenated scientific instruments, two new instruments (the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph), new batteries, new gyroscopes, and a new computer. McArthur was the last person to have their ‘hands’ on Hubble, as she used the robot arm to maneuver it out of the payload bay again for release. After logging almost 13 days in space, STS-125 landed on May 24, 2009. After her Shuttle mission, McArthur worked with two US commercial companies contracted with NASA to deliver unmanned cargo to the ISS. She said: “I work with those companies to give them input on how the crews will use those vehicles and how they’ll operate in them”. In 2012, McArthur took part as a NASA representative in a Crew Equipment Interface Test (CEIT) inside the SpaceX Dragon capsule at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40) located in Florida. “CEIT” tests are an activity that dates back to the Space Shuttle program, when it provided a training opportunity to assess the compatibility of NASA partners’ equipment and systems with the procedures to be used by the flight crew and flight controllers, and to familiarize astronauts with the actual hardware that they would use in space. Appointed as Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office in 2019, the following year (July 2020) McArthur was assigned to the SpaceX Crew-2 mission and to Expedition-64, her first residency on the ISS. She returned to space, after

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Fig. 4.41.  Biberpost private stamp celebrating the Crew Dragon 2 mission. Figure Credit: © Ralf Schulz/Biberpost. Reproduced with permissions. All rights reserved.

12 years, as co-pilot of the SpaceX Crew-2 mission, the second commercial crew rotation mission to the ISS and the third crewed flight for a Crew Dragon spacecraft (Fig. 4.41). Her space mission started on April 23, 2021 when she was launched from Kennedy Space Center (KSC), together with Commander Shane Kimbrough (NASA), Akihiko Hoshide (JAXA) and Thomas Pesquet (ESA). The crew of four spent around 23 hours orbiting Earth and catching up with the ISS before docking to the Node-2 Harmony module. Alongside commander Shane Kimbrough, McArthur co-piloted the same Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour that her husband7 had piloted one year before, even sitting in the same seat as him. She told reporters that she was able to get “years of experience” with the Crew Dragon vehicle, as her husband had worked alongside SpaceX during the spacecraft’s development process. McArthur said that one of the best ways her husband had helped was to take over all the home-based duties and free her up around the house, particularly with their seven-year-old son, Theodore. Their son was at KSC cheering and giving “distant” hugs to his mom (it was during the Covid-19 pandemic), before she embarked for the launch. Both McArthur and her husband had long prepared their son to make sure that he was ready and that he enjoyed the experience of watching his mother’s launch. The preparation had started one year before when they took him to see a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launching the cargo version of the Dragon to the ISS.  McArthur is married to Robert L. “Bob” Behnken, a fellow member of NASA’s Astronaut Group 18. They have a son, Theodore, born in 2014. Behnken was Chief of the Astronaut Office from 2012 to 2015 and became one of the first two astronauts in space history to launch aboard a commercial orbital spacecraft when he flew on Crew Dragon Endeavour during the historic Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission on May 30, 2020. Behnken stayed aboard the ISS for 62 days. For McArthur’s mission, SpaceX reused both a Falcon rocket and the Endeavour capsule for the first time on this launch. If the mission had gone awry or needed help, Behnken was assigned to the rescue spacecraft. 7

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They wanted their son to feel the rumble of the rocket’s engines, hear its roar, see the flames of a rocket launch, and follow it out of view, with both parents there talking to him about it. A few months later, he was there again when his dad climbed into the SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship to pilot the world’s first crewed commercial spacecraft. After he had seen his dad safely return, Theodore was comfortable enough to give his mom approval to go second, with the stipulation that he was going to go third. McArthur’s flight to the ISS did have its moments. As the four astronauts were preparing for sleep during their 23-hour ride, they had few minutes of suspense when SpaceX flight controllers called up to warn them of a possible risk of collision with a piece of space debris passing unexpectedly close by their Crew Dragon capsule. The astronauts were instructed to put their spacesuits back on as a precautionary measure, get back in their seats and pull their protective visors down. Fortunately the debris passed by without incident and they arrived at the station the next day without any more surprises. Their arrival increased the full Space Station crew complement to seven members – over the previous six  – and allowed NASA to effectively double the amount of science that could be conducted in space. McArthur served as Flight Engineer of ISS Expedition-65/66. She celebrated her 50th birthday in space at the end of August, just as her husband had done in July the year before. “It’s hard to be away from home from your loved ones on a special day like that, but we make it fun together”, she said. They had a cargo vehicle arriving the very same day, so she felt like she got quite a nice present for her birthday, having a birthday dinner with her Expedition-65 crewmates of quesadillas and tortilla-pizzas with real cheese, cake with chocolate “candles and ice cream”, as she shared on Twitter. McArthur returned to Earth on November 9, 2021, after spending 199 days in orbit.

Sources For This Section Cavallaro, U. “NASA-ESA Hubble Space Telescope: The Greatest Leap Forward in Astronomy since Galileo”. Astrophile, 57(1, #317), 13–19 (2015). Cavallaro, U., “Dragon women spacefarers on Falcon wings” AD*ASTRA #49 (June 2021). p. 1-4 Chin, M.; Lin, J. “10 Questions for Bruin Astronaut Megan McArthur”, newsroom. ucla.edu (May 6, 2009). “K. Megan McArthur, 2010 Stellar Award Presenter”, 2010 Rotary National Award for Space Achievement, RNASA Houston (2010), p. 16. Mansfield, C.L. “Astronaut Meets Dragon”, nasa.gov (March 29, 2012).

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McArthur, K.M. “What It Was Like to Capture the Hubble Space Telescope”, discovermagazine.com (November 3, 2014), excerpt from Infinite Worlds: The People and Places of Space Exploration, by Michael Soluri, Simon & Schuster (2014). Official NASA biography of Megan McArthur, nasa.gov (June 2009). Potter, S:, “NASA Announces Astronauts to Fly on SpaceX Crew-2 Mission to Space Station”, nasa.gov (Jul 28, 2020) “Preflight Interview: Megan McArthur, Mission Specialist”, nasa.gov (July 31, 2007). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 124–125. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

4.15 NAOKO YAMAZAKI: ASTRONAUT FOR 4,088 DAYS Mission

Launch

Return

STS-131

April 5, 2010

April 20, 2010

Naoko Sumino Yamazaki (Fig. 4.42) was born on December 27, 1970, in Matsudo City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, and spent two years of her childhood in Sapporo. She says:

Fig. 4.42.  Naoko Yamazaki. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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“Matsudo City is a small town, but because it is a suburb of Tokyo I had the best of both worlds; a small town in which I could enjoy nature, especially the Edo River, and also I could access Tokyo, a big city and its advantages. I also spent two years in Sapporo in Hokkaido in the northern area of Japan and I enjoyed skiing a lot in Sapporo and participating in the ‘star-watching parties’”.

As a young girl, Yamazaki was a fan of science-fiction movies. In her autobiographical book, she recalled: “I’ve always had a steady passion for space. I liked cartoons like ‘Galaxy Express 999’ or ‘Uchu Senkan Yamato’ (‘Space Battleship Yamato’) on TV”. She simply thought that anyone could go to space when they grew up. She remembers that she was fascinated by Matsudo’s Planetarium, which she visited at every opportunity: “I could learn about the stars and the constellations for just 30 cents each visit. I went very often with my older brother and it widened up my interest in space”. Yamazaki dreamed of becoming a school teacher and when she learned that Christa McAuliffe would fly aboard the Shuttle, she was fascinated: “Wow! A teacher goes into space”! So she started to follow the event with much interest and realized “Oh, there are real space rockets in the world. It is not science fiction, but it is a real world”. It was then, she recalled later, that she started to think about the possibility of becoming an astronaut. She was in grade 9 and, one night, she stayed up to watch the launch of Shuttle STS-51L live (because of the time zone, in Japan, it was already 1:30 a.m.). On that flight, the crew included Ellison Shoji Onizuka, the first American-Japanese astronaut, and this was the first time that, through a CNN channel, it was possible to watch a Shuttle launch in Japan. Yamazaki wrote in her book: “Suddenly I saw in the intense blue sky a bush tail of white smoke writhing like a big snake and stretching like a spiral… I was in the middle of the room with a pen in hand and watching bated at the TV screen. What was being broadcast was not a cartoon or a science fiction movie, it was reality. The white smoke hanging in the sky was sadly telling the truth. A sad truth of seven worthy lives that were torn apart in an instant. What may have thought Christa … who was a woman and a regular civilian? … Then I learned that she had left two sons: Scott of nine and Caroline of six. She, Christa was a woman, a wife, a mother, a teacher, and above all an astronaut”.

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For Yamazaki, the “Teacher in Space” became a recurring thought: “Without my knowing it, her dreams and her hopes came little by little in my heart, in the heart of a girl of 15, who lived in a small town in the Far East… The Challenger accident entered my heart and ended up to closely combine my two dreams: teaching and space”.

When it was time to choose a path for her life, Yamazaki remembered Christa McAuliffe’s radiant smile on the way to the launch pad and, following the example of “a person who already made it reality,” she took the decision: “I’ll become a teacher and go to space”. She said: “More than once I’ve been hailed as ‘superwoman’, with a straight life path that has led me straight from childhood to space, supported by parents who encouraged and fostered me. On the contrary; nor I was born a genius, nor I was raised in a particularly favorable environment”.

Yamazaki grew up in a modest family living on the salary of a father who was a military officer. She could not afford to attend after-school activities until the end of the eighth grade. She wrote: “At home I did not even have my own room to study. I always studied on the dining room table, and only during the preparation for the university entrance exam did I manage to have a space for myself, obtained by placing a desk in a corner of the entrance, sheltered by a tent”.

After graduating from the Ochanomizu University Senior High School in 1989, Yamazaki earned a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1993 and a master’s degree in 1996, specializing in space transportation systems and space robotics. She also spent a year in the US at the University of Maryland. She said: “There was a huge water tank which was 30 ft in depth, so we put row boats in the water tank and we could simulate microgravity. So it was a very interesting experience to me”. Yamazaki learned about the call issued by NASDA (the Japanese Space Agency, now the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency or JAXA) to recruit new astronauts and applied, although she was conscious of not having all the requirements, including the three years of employment after university. There were few opportunities to become astronauts in Japan and recruitment by NASDA was rare: this was only the third call in the agency’s history. As Yamazaki explained in her book, in addition to physical skills,

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psycho-­ attitudinal aptitude, and scientific training, astronaut candidates required a good level of general culture. They also require: “… a good humanistic culture, possess a rich expressive ability to vividly convey their experiences, have a deep understanding of Japanese culture and of international society. I had the impression that the selection criteria were the same as a beauty contest, but in short, the candidates are people of science or engineering, who by participating as Japanese citizens in an international project also had to be able to promote Japan.”

Her first attempt to become an astronaut was unsuccessful, but she was instead invited to collaborate with NASDA to serve in the system integration department, helping to work on the development of Kibō, the Japanese lab for ISS. Yamazaki helped to develop failure analysis and assembly/initial operation procedures for the module. From June 1998 to March 2000, she was also involved in the development of the ISS Centrifuge (life science experiment facility) and conducted conceptual framework and preliminary design in the Centrifuge Project Team. She said: “This enhanced my desire to become an astronaut and to go work on the International Space Station, especially on Kibō”. In 1998, Yamazaki reapplied for the Japanese Astronaut Corps and this time she made the final cut. The following year, she was one of the three astronauts selected by NASDA.  Around this time, she met her future husband, Taichi Yamazaki, who was employed at Mitsubishi Space Software, a subcontractor working for Kibō, and they married in 2000. After completing the basic astronaut training in Japan, Yamazaki attended specific training in the countries that are the major partners in the ISS program. She qualified as a Soyuz-TMA Flight Engineer in 2004, and as a NASA Mission Specialist in 2006 (Fig. 4.43). She recalls: “The basic training was held in many countries, in Japan, in Canada and United States, in Russia and in European countries, because these countries are the major partners in International Space Station program. After I finished my basic training I went to Russia for seven months in the Star City to get qualified as a Flight Engineer of the Russian spacecraft Soyuz. After that, I came to Houston to join the NASA mission space training program”.

She became a certified astronaut in September 2001. The following year, she gave birth to her first daughter, Yuki. On October 1, 2003, NASDA merged with ISAS (Institute of Space & Astronautic Science) and NAL (National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan) and

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Fig. 4.43.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-131, signed by Naoko Yamazaki. From the Author’s collection.

was renamed JAXA. Yamazaki returned to Russia to complete her training as a Soyuz-TMA Flight Engineer-1 at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, Star City. Most (90 percent) of the training involved dealing with unexpected accidents. One part of the program was survival training in Russia during a bitterly cold winter, on the assumption that the Russian Soyuz spacecraft might land in a snowy field hundreds of kilometers away from the planned landing site. In June 2004, Yamazaki moved to NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, where she qualified as an MS and was assigned to the Robotics Branch of the Astronaut Office. She was in Japan for training when she learned that she had been assigned as an MS on Shuttle mission STS-131, thus becoming the second Japanese female astronaut, after Chiaki Mukai, and the first Japanese mother to fly into space. The flight was initially scheduled for the 30th anniversary of the launch of the first Shuttle mission STS-1, but it made history for many reasons, especially for JAXA, with two astronauts from the Land of the Rising Sun in orbit together for the first time. Arriving with the Shuttle, Yamazaki met Soichi Noguchi on the station, who had arrived two days before in a Russian Soyuz and was participating in the 22nd ISS expedition. In a pre-flight interview, Yamazaki said: “This is a very big step for Japan. Soichi and I are scheduled to do several tasks together, like experimental rack transfer and installation on the space station, so we are looking forward to working with each other and we are also looking forward to sharing some Japanese culture among the crew members”.

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Fig. 4.44.  Naoko Yamazaki’s personal patch for STS-131. The logo features a seed encompassing life in space, in the hope that the technology and knowledge cultivated through ISS missions will lead all life to a better future both on Earth and in space. The eight four-leafed clovers represent the eight Japanese astronauts flown in space. Figure Credit: © JAXA. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

The main objectives of STS-131 were to continue the assembly of the ISS and bring a payload of supplies and equipment. It delivered the Italian “Leonardo” MPLM filled with six tons of supplies, science experiments, equipment, and critical spare parts, including a new crew sleeping compartment, a tank full of ammonia for the cooling system, and three science racks to be transferred to the orbiting lab. This mission carried the most payloads since STS-107 (Fig. 4.44). Yamazaki was the mission loadmaster, responsible for coordinating all the transfer activities from the MPLM to the station and operating the robotic arm (the SSRMS or Space Station Remote Manipulator System). She used the arm to berth the MPLM to the station, to unload the payloads (which required more than 120 hours), to return three tons of results of scientific experiments and unnecessary items to “Leonardo” to be brought back to Earth, such as equipment used in completed experiments, and to unberth the MPLM and put it back on the Shuttle cargo bay. She explained: “It is very challenging to orchestrate all the activities in order. Some hardware has constraints, so some of them need to be transferred in a certain order and in

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a certain way. So I need to understand the hardware very well. It is a challenging part. It’s like moving into a new house”.

Yamazaki also operated the SSRMS to inspect the Space Shuttle’s heat-­ resistant tiles for possible damage during ascent. As already mentioned in previous entries, this mission also made history by having four women in space aboard the same spacecraft at the same time, when Yamazaki and her two STS-131 colleagues, Stephanie Wilson, and Dorothy Metcalf-­ Lindenburger, entered the ISS to join Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who had arrived two days before with Expedition-23. When the STS-131 crew entered the ISS to join the six Expedition-23 crewmembers, this also tied the record for the most people on one spacecraft: 13. Yamazaki returned to Earth on April 20, 2010, after logging over 15 days in orbit. This was the last Shuttle crew to include any astronauts making their first spaceflight. To help the “Astronaut Mum” – as they called Yamazaki in Japan – to fulfill her dream, her husband Taichi had decided to support her and to personally take care of their daughter Yuki. He temporarily put his dreams aside and left his job at Mitsubishi – where he had the prospect of becoming flight controller of the Japanese Kibō Laboratory once connected to the ISS – thus voluntarily becoming a “full-time homemaker” and stay-at-home dad. The anomalous Yamazaki family, in which the traditional gender roles were reversed, came to the attention of newspapers and provoked heated discussions in the media. Japanese TV filmed Taichi while he was preparing rice, doing the laundry, and engaging in tasks rather unusual for a Japanese husband. In the super-chauvinistic Japanese society, he was seen as an “extraterrestrial husband.” In her book, Yamazaki admitted that the last decade had been a trying one for them, as the unusual redistribution of family responsibilities had not been easy. She made no secret of having narrowly avoided divorce during her long training in the US. Everything seemed to be on track until 2003, when Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas during re-entry, pushing back Yamazaki’s dream of spaceflight by several years. It turned out that her plan was much harder for her family than she had originally expected. Another serious problem was her long stay in Russia without any support from the Japanese Space Agency. She said: “When I tried to consult with my employer, they told me these were problems that should be dealt with within the family,” according to the Japanese mentality that sacrificing the family for work is unavoidable. In an interview, Taichi added: “If we were to come down with a cold and give it to Naoko, we would’ve been blamed for interfering with an important state project”.

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When Yamazaki moved to the US for her training at NASA, Taichi decided to follow his wife to make it possible for the family to stay together as much as possible. After months of unsuccessfully trying to negotiate a way to keep his post while he was in the US, he quit his job in Japan, hoping to find another one in the space environment once they arrived in America. In Houston, they were struck by the support given by NASA to the astronauts’ families. Yamazaki said: “They had an entire department dedicated to caring for astronauts’ families. It wasn’t based on purely altruistic motivations, it was based on the understanding that a stable family life would improve astronaut productivity”. At this point, however, new difficulties arose when, with his wife at work and his daughter in the childcare facility, Taichi realized that he could not acquire a new job because of his visa status as the spouse of a diplomatic visa holder. He said: “I’d find myself at home, wondering what in the world I was doing”. In her book, Yamazaki recalled: “As he could not get a work permit, Taichi could not even get the ‘Social Security Number’. Without this code in America one is not even considered as a person: not only you cannot open a bank account, but you cannot even buy a cell”.

Taichi became seriously depressed, aggravated by the health problems of his elderly and ailing parents in Japan. It was then that he thought of divorce, seeing no other way out. To save the day, Yamazaki’s assignment to her space mission arrived in November 2008, but family relationships remained so sensitive that, in order to avoid hurting the feelings of her husband, she specifically asked a reporter to avoid mentioning her as the “Astronaut Mum,” which would have suggested that she was the only one working hard and juggling her work with child-rearing responsibilities. Finally, after more than ten years since her selection as an astronaut, Yamazaki and her husband’s dream came true in April 2010 and they could happily conclude their adventure: “I felt like the ISS was a miniature version of the Earth, with various crew members from many countries including US, Russia, Japan, etc. I hope that collaborative projects like the ISS will positively influence international relationships on the Earth as well. I hope more nations will be involved in post-ISS human space flight missions”.

Yamazaki left JAXA in August 2011 to spend more time with her family and to start part-time aerospace engineering research at the University of Tokyo. She and her husband told their adventure in the book Astronaut for Four

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Thousand and Eighty-Eight Days (which unfortunately is only available in Japanese – a draft translation, still unpublished, was used for this chapter). The book concludes by calling for the creation of a society that does not require that, in a couple, one partner should sacrifice his or her dreams for the other, and that a woman’s career is not pursued at the expense of her husband’s. In 2017, the Japanese government adopted the policy package “Space Industry Vision 2030,” in which Japan aims to double the market scale of the domestic space industry by as early as the 2030s. Japan already has comprehensive strength in space development with its advanced rocket launching technology, experience in sending astronauts to the ISS for long periods, and space probes like the Hayabusa2, the asteroid sample-return mission operated by JAXA. Within this framework, in July 2019 Yamazaki co-founded the Space Port Japan Association, an organization to support efforts to open spaceports in Japan through collaboration with companies, groups and government institutions. Member companies include Airbus Japan K.K., ANA Holdings Inc., Marubeni Corp., Mitsui Fudosan Co. and SKY Perfect JSAT Corp. She said: “I hope more and more people will be able to go to space as space tourism matures. I personally would love to go back to space someday”. To realize such space travel, Yamazaki says Japan needs a legal framework to enable manned spaceflight, since current laws only cover unmanned space probes. She says: “People who go to space will be different from passengers on airplanes. They must agree on the mission and participate based on the principle of self-responsibility. If people who are not astronauts are to participate in such spaceflights, we need to drastically improve the safety of those commercial operations”. Yamazaki is now involved in policy-making as a member of the Cabinet Office’s Space Policy Committee. She is also Director of the Japan Rocket Society, adviser to the Young Astronaut Club (YAC), and Chairman of Sorajo (Women in Aerospace), activities through which she encourages young people to pursue STEM careers.

Sources For This Section Anon. “Former astronaut Naoko Yamazaki hopeful for commercial space travel”, in The Japantimes, New Year Special 2019 (January 1, 2019), p. 7. Buerk, R. “Japan’s First Female Astronaut Changes Gender Roles”, news.bbc.co.uk (April 7, 2010). Ikeuchi, T.; Saito, K. “Space Mom Wants Equal Opportunity for All”, japantimes. co.jp (April 17, 2014). Kobayashi, C. “Plight of Japanese Astronaut and Her Family”, The Mainichi Daily News, Japan (April 19, 2011).

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Kohtake, N. “EARTHLING Interview: Naoko Yamazaki”, thinktheearth.net (June 1, 2011). “Naoko Yamazaki, Getting Ready for First Spaceflight”, global.jaxa.jp (March 9, 2010). Nishiura, M. “Interview with Astronaut Naoko Yamazaki”, Jaxa Today, No. 02 (August 2010), 3–7. Official biography of Naoko Yamazaki, jaxa.jp. Official biography of Naoko Yamazaki, nasa.gov/externalflash (April 2010). Personal communications with the author via email in January-July 2017 and December 2021. “Preflight Interview: Naoko Yamazaki”, STS-131, nasa.gov (March 8, 2010). Restoy Rodriguez F,. , “Women and Girls in Science Podcast Series: Astronaut Naoko Yamazaki” in www.un.org (February 7, 2019) Tan R., “Asia’s Scientific Trailblazers: Naoko Yamazaki”, in www.asianscientist.com (January 11, 2017) Yamazaki, N. Astronaut for Four Thousand and Eighty-Eight Days. Kadokawashoten, Tokyo (2013) (in Japanese – manuscript translated into English by Federica Cavallaro, pending publication).

5 The Right Stuff

Professional astronauts are selected for their exceptional skill, competence and leadership, Both men and women work alongside each other in space as members of expert teams. Over time, a remarkable number of women with the right credentials have joined the astronaut club. Many of them are accomplished pilots or have innate qualities of professional leadership. Since there is no difference between the training given to male or female astronauts, or in the responsibilities assigned in space missions, their ability, hard work, and dedication gave these women the chance to “show their stuff” in a field once considered the domain of men. The Shuttle program offered equal opportunities to women as pilots and mission commanders, and having a woman in command is becoming commonplace on the International Space Station (ISS). Peggy Whitson was the first woman to command the ISS twice, and by the time Sunita Williams became the only second woman in history to command an ISS Expedition, this was barely mentioned in the media. It is little wonder that many women spacefarers, after retiring from active astronaut service, go on to achieve impressive careers and top level managerial positions in the space agencies or in public and private organizations. Some of them have also featured in the political arena.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Cavallaro, To The Stars, Springer Praxis Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19860-1_5

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5.1 EILEEN COLLINS: THE FIRST FEMALE “SHUTTLENAUT” IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT Mission

Launch

Return

STS-63 STS-84 STS-93 STS-114

February 3, 1995 May 15, 1997 July 23, 1999 July 26, 2005

February 11, 1995 May 24, 1997 July 27, 1999 August 9, 2005

Eileen Collins (Fig. 5.1) broke the last gender barrier in the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1990, when she was accepted as the first woman pilot astronaut and began a NASA career punctuated by firsts. She made history in February 1995 when she became the first woman to pilot a spacecraft, the Space Shuttle Discovery STS-63, the first of her four Shuttle missions during which she accumulated a number of records. Four years later, in July 1999, while the world was celebrating the 30th anniversary of the first Moon landing, Collins would become the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission (Fig. 5.2). It had taken 20 years for NASA to embrace wholeheartedly the

Fig. 5.1.  Eileen Collins. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Fig. 5.2.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-114, signed by Eileen Collins. From the Author’s collection.

idea of admitting women into their Astronauts Corps, and it took another 20 years to entrust the command of a spacecraft to a woman. Collins said: “Most of the guys were very supportive. There were a few of the guys who didn’t want the women there. I wasn’t going to change their mind. The goal I set for myself: ‘I’m going to be the best pilot I can be’”.

Eileen Marie Collins was the second of four children, born of Irish parents on November 19, 1956, in Elmira, New York – an appropriate birthplace for a would-be pilot, since the city is known as the “soaring capital” of the US. Some of her earliest and fondest childhood memories were visiting the Harris Hill with her parents to watch planes take off, or standing around the local airport. She was inspired by the Mercury astronauts and dreamed of flying, but at that time there were no such opportunities for a young girl: “I decided I wanted to be an astronaut in fourth grade. I remember reading an article in Junior Scholastic about the Gemini program. I don’t remember consciously feeling like I couldn’t do it because they were all men and I was a young girl. I remember thinking, I’ll just be a woman astronaut. And I didn’t think there’d be any reason that a woman couldn’t do it. Maybe I was thinking that women just hadn’t asked”.

Collins soon realized that her goal was unusual for a woman: at the time, most women stayed at home and brought up children. There were plenty of women

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nurses and teachers, but few engineers or military officers. So she decided not to advertise her plan: “I never told anybody I wanted to be an astronaut or pilot. I consciously never talked about it because I knew people would say, ‘You can’t do that’. And I just didn’t want to fight it: it wasn’t worth it. Even when I started my flying lessons – and this would have been when I was between my junior and senior year in college – I didn’t tell my friends. I don’t think I even told my parents”.

After graduating from Elmira Free Academy High School in 1974, Collins went on to a community college, as she was needed at home to help out with the family. In 1976, she obtained an associate degree in Math and Science from the Corning Community College. Meanwhile, she took a part-time job, saving the money until she could pay for flying lessons in a little Cessna 150 at the Elmira Corning Regional Airport. But she did not have time to take her private pilot’s license. When she learned that the armed forces had started opening doors to women in 1976, Collins applied to enter the Air Force. In 1978, after she had obtained her degree in Mathematics and Economics from the University of Syracuse and was about to take the last flight examination, the US Air Force called her, 15 days ahead of schedule. She enlisted and was assigned to Oklahoma’s Vance Air Force Base (AFB), where she attended the Undergraduate Pilot Training that was admitting women for the first time: “When I joined the Air Force, I was in the first class to have women go through pilot training at Vance Air Force Base, in Enid, Oklahoma. I think there were 450 pilots on that base, and we were the first four women. The Air Force was testing whether women could succeed as military pilots. We obviously were living in a fishbowl – everyone knew who we were, our personal business, our test scores and our flight performance. My philosophy was to be the best pilot I could be – to stay focused, not engage or get involved in social things or anything that wasn’t directly contributing to the mission. It was important for us to excel in training and for the test program to succeed. If the first women did poorly, that could have caused the cancellation of the program. “I must have been on the base for two days when I was checking out the commissary wearing my flight suit. A woman in a flight suit was a strange sight in those days. The woman behind the register said, ‘Are you one of those new women pilots’? I said yes. She looked at me and said, ‘The wives don’t want you here’. I was thinking, the guys don’t want us here, the wives don’t want us here. I felt horrible. So I asked her why. She said, ‘They don’t want you going ­cross-­country with their husbands’! This frank interaction helped me see our situation through other people’s eyes”.

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Right at the beginning of the course, the base was visited by new astronauts of the 1978 class, which, for the first time, had accepted women candidates. They were there for three days of parachute training. “I never met any of them, but everybody was talking about them. That’s when I decided to apply to the Space Shuttle program as soon as I was eligible. I knew that all the women in the program were mission specialists, not pilots. I also knew that to be a Shuttle pilot you had to be a test pilot. So I applied to test pilot school. That’s when I knew I could be the first woman Shuttle pilot, because there were very few women ahead of me in the pipeline in the Air Force or the Navy”.

After graduating from pilot training, Collins took the final examination flight and received her private Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) pilot license. The following year, she became an instructor pilot for the T-38, the high-­ performance military jet also used at that time by NASA astronauts for training and private transport. For three years, Collins was the only woman who was an instructor in the Squadron: “The years I was there, I was very careful that I did a good job so I could really leave a good impression for the women to follow. I didn’t want women to have a hard time of it. I wanted to make it as easy for them as I could”.

From 1983 to 1985, she transferred to Travis AFB in California, where she became commander and instructor pilot for the Lockheed C-141 Starlifter, a military strategic transport aircraft that served only the US military and was never exported. In 1986, she took a year out to concentrate on studies at the Air Force Institute of Technology and earned a Master of Science (MSc) degree in Operations Research from Stanford University. She was eventually assigned to the US Air Force Academy in Colorado as an assistant professor in mathematics and as a T-41 instructor pilot. In 1987, Collins married Pat Youngs, a civilian pilot for Delta Airlines, whom she had met when they were both flight instructors in California. In 1989 – “by going to school in the evening for two years,” she said in an interview – she earned a Master of Arts (MA) degree in Space Systems Management from Webster University, and applied to become an astronaut. Meanwhile, she was accepted into the prestigious school for military test pilots at Edwards AFB in California, with 800 colleagues (she was one of the first four women ever admitted). Collins was highly motivated to finish the course, having learned during the pilot training that she had been selected for the 13th group

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of NASA astronauts, known as the “Hairballs”. The nickname came from the black cat that was used on an early patch design (before being rejected by NASA) that they carried for luck during the selection, with reference to their “lucky 13.” In June 1990, Collins became the second woman to graduate as a test pilot at Edwards. She had applied to NASA as both a mission specialist and as a pilot, and in her phone call from Houston she was advised that the requirements for pilots were more stringent that those for mission specialists: “In 1990, I learned that I was going to pilot the Space Shuttle when Duane Ross at NASA called me. He handed me off to [Chief Astronaut] John Young. I asked, “Am I going to be a pilot or a mission specialist”? He said, “You’re going to be a pilot. You will be the first woman pilot of the Space Shuttle”.

Collins said: “It was like a dream come true”. She moved to Houston in July and became the first woman pilot ever selected – a prestigious job. In the eyes of the general public, the pilot continued to be regarded as the true astronaut, the one with the “the right stuff” according to the successful expression which became common saying after the famous book by Tom Wolfe. With the arrival of Collins, some at Houston stooped to jokes about an alternate meaning of “the right stuff.” Collins discourages people from looking at the path other astronauts had followed and choosing the same. The exact opposite worked for her; when she joined the corps, there were no astronauts in her field of operations research. “I said ‘I think I can fill a void,’ and I think they bought it”. She was right, as much of her background tied in directly to the operation of the Shuttle. After astronaut training, her first job was in Space Shuttle engineering for about a year and she then moved for 15 months to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) as a “Cape Crusader,” supporting the people at the Cape, getting the orbiters ready to fly and assisting the crews that were due to be launched or had returned from their mission. She said: “It was just a super job because I got to work in the actual Space Shuttle itself ”. Collins also served as a capsule communicator (Capcom) for a few months. She gradually assumed various responsible positions within the Astronaut Office, and soon realized that her career path was quite different from that of a Mission Specialist (MS). As a pilot, she would be eligible to become a commander, a job that would put her in a position to choose the crew. Once on orbit, where there is a strict command chain, she would be at the top. She was also a potential Chief of the Astronaut Office. Everyone knew this, and behaved accordingly.

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In February 1995, Collins became the first woman ever (discounting Tereshkova’s solo flight in which she did not control the vehicle) to pilot a spacecraft, the Shuttle Discovery STS-63 mission. This was the first flight of the new joint Russian-American space program. For the occasion, she invited the legendary pioneering “Mercury-13” to the launch as guests of honor; women to whom she felt particularly close, as they had dreamed of flying and were qualified when Collins was still in kindergarten. But their country did not allow them to fly back then and they were beaten by a much less qualified Russian to the honor of making history as “the first woman in space.” Seven took up her invitation. Mission STS-63 was a “Near-Mir” mission, the first test rendezvous with the Russian space station in which the Shuttle approached to ten meters without actually docking: “We were the first Americans to see the Russian Space Station. We didn’t dock, but we did a close approach rendezvous to 30 feet. We tested out the Shuttle’s, navigation, communication, and flying systems to make sure that the subsequent flight, which would be the first docking, would be ready to go”.

Janice Voss also flew in the same mission as an MS. Shortly after her mission, Collins visited a group of women at the Kennedy Space Center. She later recalled: “One woman said [to me] ‘Thank you for doing what you are doing, because it makes guys respect us more’”. That hit me between the eyes. I thought, “Why didn’t I think of that before’? This isn’t just about me. This is really a big, big deal”. After a year of maternity leave following the birth of her daughter, Bridget, in May 1997, Collins flew as pilot for the second time on the Shuttle Atlantis STS-84 mission, the sixth Shuttle-Mir flight: “We were the Shuttle crew that docked with Mir in between the two major accidents that they had: the fire they had in March ’97, and the collision with a Progress vehicle they had in June ’97. We got to be really friends and co-workers with that Russian crew in space”.

Collins flew with the third female Russian cosmonaut, Elena Kondakova. One of the mission’s goals was to bring Jerry Linenger back to Earth after his dramatic stay on Mir: during the fire, he had feared he would not return home. After that flight, Collins became the Chief of the Space Hardware Branch in the Astronaut Office, which included the International Space Station (ISS) and the Space Shuttle.

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In July 1999, with mission Columbia STS-93, Collins became the first woman to command a Shuttle. In an interview, she said: “My daughter thinks that all moms fly the Space Shuttle”. At that time, Bridget was only three years old. There was a tremendous amount of publicity surrounding STS-93 because of the first woman commander, both before and after the mission. The mission was scheduled for launch on July 20, the 30th anniversary of the first Moon landing, and an exceptionally large crowd had gathered to see the night start for the first female commander, occupying all the hotels within 50 miles. But the countdown was stopped at T–7 seconds, only to discover soon after that the apparent hydrogen leak in an engine of the Shuttle was actually down to a faulty sensor. Once the engines were stopped, however, it took 48 hours to restart them and, at half past one at night, the crowds all had to go back to their hotels. The launch was postponed again due to adverse weather conditions and an electrical storm, but the mission finally lifted off three days later, at night, using the final “launch window” (otherwise the launch would have had to have been delayed for weeks). However, it was not a nominal launch. During the lift-off, a voltage drop shut down the redundant main engine controllers on two of the three engines. Collins maintained a cool head and, with quick thinking, managed to guide Columbia to orbit. However, the orbit attained was seven miles short of that originally planned due to the premature main engine cut-off an instant before the scheduled cut-off. The goal of this mission was to carry the largest and most powerful X-ray telescope that had ever been launched into space: the US$1.5 billion-dollar Chandra X-ray Observatory, initially known as AXAF (Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility), designed to enable X-ray exploration of high-energy regions of deep space, such as exploding stars, quasars, and black holes. Astrophysicist Cady Coleman was the MS responsible for deploying Chandra. The Shuttle landed at Kennedy Space Center in one of the rare night landings in the program’s history. After that mission, Collins had her second child. As with many working mothers, the balancing act required was, for her, the hardest part of the job. STS-93 had kept her away from home for five weeks because the launch was delayed. “But it was manageable”, she said. “I would say there’s a lot of people in professional jobs around this city, around the country, that spend more time away from their families than I ever did as an astronaut”. In 2005, Collins ended her remarkable military career and retired from the US Air Force with the rank of Colonel, after logging 6,751 flight hours in 30

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different models of aircraft. She commanded her last Shuttle mission in July 2005: the highly significant STS-114 mission that marked the “Return to Flight” of the Space Shuttle after the loss of Columbia on February 1, 2003. The launch was delayed by over two years due to the Columbia accident, but the opportunity to visit the ISS is why Collins decided to keep flying at a point in her career when many astronauts were retiring from spaceflight. “Our team had prepared this mission for four years. It’s hard to wait”, she said, recalling that she was about to give up, but the desire to visit the ISS made her want to keep flying: “I had never gone to the Station, and I really wanted to go to there. I really wanted to be part of the Station mission”. On the eve of the launch, the debate over the Shuttle’s safety was rekindled in the media, and one of the most difficult challenges that Collins had to face was to reassure her daughter, who was now seven and was following the debate with some apprehension. She had to do the same thing with her crew, earning the nickname “Mum”. The future of the space program depended upon the success of this “Return to Flight” mission and, as a result of taking every precaution, there were many delays. Collins showed her incredible skill when she performed a new security procedure for the first time. She was the first pilot to execute the “Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver,” taking Shuttle Discovery close to the ISS and slowly flipping the orbiter over a full 180° onto its ‘back’, to make the heat shield visible so that the ISS crew could take hundreds of high-resolution photographs of the heat-resistant tiles. These were sent back to Houston for analysis to identify any possible critical damage. After this, the maneuver became standard practice to ensure that the orbiter was safe for re-entry, until the end of the program in 2011. After the mission, Collins left NASA in May 2006. “It has been wonderful”, she said, “but the number one thing for me now is to spend time with my family”. Her daughter Bridget was ten and her son Luke was five years old at the time. Collins said that she also hoped her retirement would give newer astronauts an opportunity to fly before the Shuttle fleet itself retired in 2011: “It’s important that these young people get a chance to fly. It’s very important to the country to have more people that have flown in space because we take that spaceflight experience with us, which is a valuable thing to have when you go on to design future spacecraft and educate young people. I know there are qualified women out there who would love to do this job, and I encourage them to look at this job and to realize that I have had an extremely rewarding career with a lot of flexibility. I’m married. I’ve had two children while I was in the astronaut

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office. In the 16 years I was here, I’ve flown four missions and had two children, and I’ve been able to do that without too much heartache”.

Across her four spaceflights, Collins logged over 872 hours (over 36 days) in space. But she still has some regret, because there was little time for her to just enjoy being in space on her missions: “Someday I would like to go into space as a tourist, and have the time to have fun”. Hoping for developments in the field of civilian spaceflight, she adds: “I would like to see more people traveling to space someday. I would like to see space tourism blossom. It’s such an incredible experience”. In 2019, Collins was featured, together with fellow astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Cady Coleman, in one of the four new Space Exploration stamps issued in Dublin, Ireland to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, and U.S. astronauts of Irish descent (Fig. 5.3). Warmly welcoming the new stamps, she said “I see myself as someone who took an unusual job at age 21. I see myself as someone who loves to FLY! I always wanted to go further, faster and higher than anyone before. But I don’t see it as ME on a stamp. Rather, it is the position: woman astronaut, or woman Space Shuttle commander. Someone was going to fill that role eventually. I credit the opportunity! The reasons why we go to space now are the same as they were 50 years ago at the time of the Moon landing – most people understand that by going to space we are solving earthly problems”.

Fig. 5.3.  This Irish stamp featuring Eileen Collins was one of the Space Explorations stamps celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, and US astronauts with Irish ancestry. Issued in Dublin, Ireland, on July 18, 2019. Figure Credit: © Irish An Post. Reproduced with kind permission. All rights reserved.

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Sources For This Section Anon. GPO Touch Down for Astronaut to unveil Space Exploration stamps, in www. anpost.com (July 19, 2019) Briggs, C.S. Women Space Pioneers, pp. 79–86. Lerner Publications, Minneapolis (2005). Dean, B. “Eileen Collins: An Astronaut’s Endless Endeavor”, nasa.gov (January 8, 2007). “Eileen Collins – NASA’s First Female Shuttle Commander to Lead Next Shuttle Mission”, nasa.gov (October 4, 2003). Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 125–133. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Gueldenpfenning, S. Women in Space Who Changed the World, pp. 67–73. The Rosen Publishing Group, New York (2012). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 171–176. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Malik, T. “NASA’s First Female Shuttle Commander Retires from Spaceflight”, space. com (May 1, 2006). Mattson, W.O. and Davis, V. “Curation Paper10 – Interview with Eileen Collins”, nmspacemuseum.org (Winter 2014). Official NASA biography of Eileen Collins, nasa.gov (May 2006). Personal contacts with Author by e-mail in June 2016. Theindeliblelifeofme, “The First Commander: Eileen Collins”, in harkaroundthegreats. wordpress.com (August 2, 2021) Wilson, J. “Eileen Collins – NASA’s First Female Shuttle Commander to Lead Next Shuttle Mission”, nasa.gov (October 4, 2003). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 96–97. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

5.2 SUSAN STILL KILRAIN: THE SECOND FEMALE SHUTTLE PILOT Mission

Launch

Return

STS-83 STS-94

April 4, 1997 July 1, 1997

April 8, 1997 July 17, 1997

Susan Kilrain (Fig. 5.4) is a veteran of two Space Shuttle flights. She is the second of only three women to have piloted the Shuttle (Fig. 5.5). Susan Leigh Still Kilrain was born on October 24, 1961, in Augusta, Georgia (USA). As the only sister among brothers, she learned to stand up for herself. As a young girl, she did not think about becoming an astronaut or

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Fig. 5.4.  Susan Kilrain. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fig. 5.5.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-94, signed by Susan Kilrain. From the Author’s collection.

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enlisting into the military. She said in an interview: “All the women in my life were nurses, hairdressers, or secretaries”. In her twenties and thirties, she enjoyed martial arts, triathlons, and playing the piano, but also flying. It all started with flying lessons when she was a teenager: “I’ve always been interested in flying. I learned how to fly when I was 16 and I did my first solo flight after only four hours of instruction. To me, this was just sort of the natural progression”. Kilrain got her private pilot’s license when she was 17 and her instrument rating at 19. After graduating from Walnut Hill High School, Natick, Massachusetts, in 1979, she joined the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Florida, and earned a BSc in Aeronautical Engineering in 1982. While pursuing her master’s degree, she worked as a wind tunnel project officer for Lockheed Corporation in Marietta, Georgia, but she was not completely satisfied with her job. In January 1985, her boss arranged for her to speak with his friend Dick Scobee (who was killed one year later as Commander of Challenger STS-51L). Scobee advised Kilrain to join the military as a pilot if she wanted to increase her chances of being accepted into the astronaut program. She took that advice and joined the US Navy in 1985 but quickly learned that the Navy was not a female-friendly organization. They were quite reluctant to accept women into what until recently had been a male bastion. Kilrain decided to simply tune out what she didn’t want to hear, to ignore their reluctance, and to keep her focus on her goal. She soon realized that while the good aviators were fine, the most negative reactions to her presence tended to come from poor aviators, who felt threatened by her skill: “I realized that I was a woman in a man’s world, so I was going to be an outsider. My whole philosophy was not to make waves. My goal was to be an astronaut. I wanted to fit in without accepting unacceptable behavior”.

Despite the overall cool reception from her fellow pilots, Kilrain qualified as Naval Aviator in 1987, and learned how to take off and land on an aircraft carrier. She said: “I am lucky to have been born in this time. Just in the nick of time doors opened before me”. She was then selected to be a flight instructor in the TA-4J Skyhawk, and later flew EA-6A Electric Intruders for Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 33 (VAQ-33) in Key West, Florida. After completing US Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station (NAS) Patuxent River, Maryland, in 1993, she reported to Fighter Squadron 101 (VF-101) in Virginia Beach, Virginia, for F-14 Tomcat training. She logged over 3,000 flight hours in more than 30 different aircraft.

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At this point, Kilrain was ready to apply to become a NASA astronaut. In 1994, she was selected for the 15th Astronaut Group and, after completing the Astronaut Candidate (Ascan) training, she was assigned to the Vehicle Systems and Operations Branch of the Astronaut Office, and served as a Capcom at the Mission Control Center. In 1997, she flew in space as a Shuttle pilot twice within a few months. She was the second woman ever to pilot a Shuttle, after Eileen Collins. In April, Kilrain took part in the STS-83 mission which carried the MSL-1 (Microgravity Science Laboratory), a collection of 33 microgravity experiments housed inside the Spacelab – the European laboratory built in Italy. The goal of the mission was to test hardware, facilities, and procedures being developed in view of the long-term research program to be performed on the future ISS. The mission, which was supposed to last for 16 days, was cut short due to concerns about one of three fuel cell power generation units that provided electricity and water to Columbia. Shortly after on-orbit operations began, the differential voltage in one sub-stack of fuel cell no. 2 began trending upward. The three fuel cells on the orbiter each contained three sub-stacks. Although one fuel cell produced enough electricity to conduct on-orbit and landing operations, Shuttle flight rules required all three to be functioning well to ensure crew safety and provide sufficient backup capability during re-entry and landing. After unsuccessfully trying to correct the anomaly, on the third day the Mission Management Team ordered the Spacelab to be powered down and terminated the mission, marking only the third time in the Shuttle program’s history that a mission had ended early (the other two being STS-2 in 1981 and STS-44 in 1991). Despite the shortened flight, very valuable information and experience were gathered and two fire-related experiments were conducted. NASA was particularly concerned with accidental fires in space, as had happened a few months earlier aboard Mir. With delays in the ISS construction leaving ample room in the Shuttle schedule, in the days following Columbia’s return the Mission Management Team made the unprecedented decision to leave the equipment installed in the orbiter and to re-fly this mission with the same crew and the same “payload.” The re-flight was first designated STS-83R and then renamed STS-94 (the next available unused Shuttle mission number at the time). The crew patch was updated with the re-flight, changing the outer border from red to blue and changing the flight number from 83 to 94. The new mission, piloted again by Kilrain, lifted off three months later in July 1997 and lasted for 16 days, as originally planned. The crew responsibilities remained the same for both missions, but their experience during the short STS-83 mission helped them to improve the productivity of the new flight which, a few weeks later, resulted in a wealth of data. In addition to carrying out her piloting

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responsibilities, Kilrain was the primary mission photographer for Earth observations. She realized that while the MS had every moment scheduled on a Spacelab science mission, the pilot was often under-tasked. Following the two missions, Kilrain married and became pregnant, taking herself out of assignment to a third mission. While pregnant with her second child, she elected to move to Washington, D.C., to be close to her husband, and served as the Legislative Specialist for the Shuttle for the Office of Legislative Affairs at NASA Headquarters. Kilrain retired from the Astronaut Office in December 2002 and from the Navy in June 2005 to become a stay-­ at-­home mother of four children. As well as logging 471 hours in space, Kilrain holds the record for the shortest interval between two space missions by a female astronaut, together with the late Janice Voss who participated in the same missions. Kilrain regrets the retirement of the Space Shuttle that had “made space travel a common occurrence,” she said. “It’s the only reusable space vehicle, and it may end up being the only one ever”. Another regret was the uncertainty of the US space program: “Other countries are certainly going to [fly in space], and China is ramping up its own program. We’re not in a space race like we were in the’60s, but we’ll have no say in the matter if we have no program at all”.

Susan Still Kilrain is married to Vice Admiral Colin J. Kilrain, who previously served with North Atlantic Treaty Organization Special Operations Command, headquartered in Belgium. She is now a successful and inspiring speaker. Since August 2021 she has become a partner in New North Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on dual-use technologies that both provide solutions to national security threats and help commercial interests create enterprise value. Kilrain is featured on three postal stamps.

Sources For This Section Briggs, C.S. Women Space Pioneers, pp. 86–91. Lerner Publications, Minneapolis (2005). Interview with Susan Kilrain, secure.collegefortn.org. Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 176–178. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Official biography of Susan Still Kilrain, jsc.nasa.gov (June 2005). Pavey, R. “End of Shuttle Era Disappoints Augusta Astronaut”, chronicle.augusta.com (May 14, 2010).

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Personal contacts by e-mail in May 2016. Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space—Following Valentina, pp. 277–278. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 105–106. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

5.3 PAMELA MELROY: THE LAST WOMAN TO COMMAND A SHUTTLE Mission

Launch

Return

STS-92 STS-112 STS-120

October 11, 2000 October 7, 2002 October 23, 2007

October 24, 2000 October 18, 2002 November 7, 2007

Pamela Melroy (Fig. 5.6) first flew as a Shuttle pilot for two missions  – STS-92 in 2000 and STS-112 in 2002 – before becoming the second (and last) woman to command a Space Shuttle mission during STS-120 in October 2007 (Fig. 5.7).

Fig. 5.6.  Pamela Melroy. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Fig. 5.7.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-112, signed by Pamela Melroy. From the Author’s collection.

Pamela Ann Melroy was born in Palo Alto, California, on September 17, 1961, the middle child between two brothers. After moving to different places, following her father who was a pioneer computer expert, her family settled in Rochester, New York. “That was pretty much the longest I’d ever lived in one place and gone to one school”, she said. “So, obviously I’m very rooted there and very connected, and I consider Rochester, N.Y., to be my hometown”. She graduated from the catholic Bishop Kearney High School in 1979. She remembers that becoming astronaut was her dream when she was an adolescent, being fascinated by the Apollo program, like many others at that time. She found lavish support from her father who, when she turned 18, took out a life insurance policy for her, telling her that when she became an astronaut, she might have trouble in getting insurance because of the hazards of the job. Melroy decided that she wanted to major in Physics and Astronomy. After looking at different schools in the northwest, she “fell in love” with Wellesley College, a women’s college just outside Boston, Massachusetts, with an “amazing observatory,” she says. She earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in Physics and Astronomy in 1983 and an MSc degree in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984, conducting a theoretical study of the atmosphere of Neptune by observing the occultation of stars by the planet. Meanwhile, she was commissioned through the US Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training

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Corps (ROTC) program. The following year, she was the only woman in her class when she attended Undergraduate Pilot Training at Reese AFB in Lubbock, Texas. She quickly discovered that inordinate teasing was part of the military culture. However, wanting to be an astronaut, she focused on not letting any of the nonsense get in the way: “I had a reason to put up with it and to figure out how to manage it”. It took two years for Melroy to get used to it, but she learned how to survive in the military environment, which was finally slowly starting to integrate women: “I’m fortunate in my life that I came into the Air Force as a pilot just at the time that women were being integrated. They started in 1976. I went through pilot training in ’85. Women were just achieving a position of middle management in the Air Force as pilots. There were still no senior women managers, of course. You didn’t see the 20-year colonels. But military culture was already starting to change”.

Assigned to Barksdale AFB in Bossier City, Louisiana, Melroy flew the KC-10 for six years as a co-pilot, aircraft commander, and instructor pilot. In 1989, she took part in Operation Just Cause, the invasion of Panama by the US between mid-December 1989 and late-January 1990, when the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was deposed. At the beginning of 1990, she participated in both Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and spent over 200 hours in combat and combat support missions during the first Gulf War. In June 1991, she attended the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB, California and, upon graduation, was assigned to the C-17 Combined Test Force. Melroy was only the third woman test pilot in the Air Force, and the second at Edwards AFB, the legendary base of Chuck Yeager. She served as a test pilot until her selection for the astronaut program at NASA. She eventually retired from the Air Force in February 2007, with the rank of Colonel, after logging over 6,000 hours of flight time in over 50 different aircraft. Melroy joined NASA with the 15th Astronaut Group and started her basic training in 1995, qualifying as a Shuttle pilot. She was assigned to support the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) – with her colleague Mike Anderson – in the role of “Cape Crusader,” assigned as an Astronaut Support Person (ASP) responsible for monitoring the status of the orbiter during preparations for the next flight, initially under the lead of Marsha Ivins. It was, as she recalled: “a nerve-racking job”: “My first mission was the Tethered Satellite [STS-75]. One of the Pc meters told that the engines were dropped to 50 percent after they lifted off and they throttled back. It didn’t throttle back up. The engine was actually working fine, but

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the meter failed. Mike Anderson and I were standing on the roof of the Launch Control Center and listening to this. We had both the same thought at the same time. We looked at each other. We’re like, ‘It wasn’t something I did, was it?’ We were both so scared, ‘I was in the cockpit an hour ago, did I do something?’ That was an amazing experience to do that”. “I also loved the intimacy of spending the last couple moments on Earth with the crew. That was definitely my favorite part of that job, was that last 45 minutes before you close the hatch because the crew has got a million things on their mind. They actually rely on the Cape Crusader… The same thing with bringing them home, being the first one into the cockpit and seeing them”. “I went in shadow mode for multiple experiences with Marsha Ivins who taught me to be a Cape Crusader, before I could actually lead and be prime, as we call it. I primed four or five times. That was great. But hard. It’s operationally very rigorous. It was very comfortable for me as a military pilot in terms of the checklist following, although I was pretty stressed whenever I strapped a crew in, don’t get me wrong. You’re on a timeline”.

Back in Houston, Melroy served for a while as a Capcom: “That’s a really interesting experience, because you’re sitting next to a flight director who is in charge and telling you what to say. But [only by working out] how to translate it to the crew and how to guess in your head what it is they’re doing at that exact moment and in the shortest number of words can you give them the flavor of the situation. Also, recognizing everyone in the world is listening on air-to-ground. It’s a hectic thing on a Station assembly flight to be a Capcom. There’s always drama during the spacewalks so you’re really trying to rack your brain all the time. What are they doing? What do they need from us? How long should we talk about this”?

Melroy soon realized – as had happened to her colleague, Eileen Collins – that she was in a privileged position in the Astronaut Office compared with her colleagues; there was a notable status difference between pilots and mission specialists: “The one thing that was clear to me from the beginning was that the smarter people in the office – and believe me, astronauts are nothing if not smart – figured out pretty darn quickly that because I was a pilot, someday I was going to be a commander, likely, and potentially their boss. It really changes the dynamic in my opinion”.

Shuttle Discovery mission STS-92, the 100th Shuttle mission, lifted off as usual from KSC.  The mission carried a crucial part to the fledgling International Space Station (ISS) in order to prepare it for its first resident

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crew: the Z1 Truss, the first segment of the Integrated Truss Structure. After 13 days, the mission landed at Edwards, which had been Melroy’s home for years. Her second mission, Atlantis STS-112  in 2002, delivered and installed (with the help of Expedition-5) the S1 Truss, the third component of the station’s 11-piece Integrated Truss Structure. It took three spacewalks to outfit and activate the new component, during which Melroy acted as internal spacewalk choreographer. Mission STS-112 was the first mission to mount a camera on the external tank to capture the Shuttle’s ascent to orbit, providing a live view of the launch to NASA TV viewers and especially to flight controllers, to capture images of any debris falling from the external tank and locate possible damage to the heat shield. After the flight, Melroy served in different positions in the Astronaut Office. The following year, she was involved in the Columbia investigation and also served in the Astronaut Office as chief for the Orion Branch, the next generation of NASA’s spacecraft, which will take humans to the space station, to the Moon, and to Mars. In 2007, Melroy commanded the STS-120 mission, thus becoming the second and last woman to command the Shuttle. Originally, the mission had been planned for the Atlantis orbiter, but due to a delay with the STS-117 mission, Shuttle Discovery was used instead. The mission docked with the ISS while another woman, Peggy Whitson, was the commander of the Station for the first time. It was the first meeting of two women commanders in space, who shook hands through the hatch in orbit. Melroy said that this coincidence, caused by the delays in the launch schedule, actually made a deeper impression on her than being the second female Shuttle commander: “I think to me, it was actually a bigger thing that Peggy Whitson and I were flying at the same time in space and that no one had planned it that way” (Fig. 5.8). The main payload of STS-120 was the pressurized habitable Harmony module (also known as Node 2), built for NASA by Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy, as part of an agreement between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). This element opened up the capability for future international laboratories to be added to the station. Melroy said: “I enjoyed the experience much more than STS-112, because as the commander your job is really not to have too much on your schedule. It’s to be with everyone and to make sure that you’re keeping track of the timeline”.

At least, this was true before an accident caused by the solar panel. During the mission, the P6 solar arrays were relocated as a preparatory step to allow the

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Fig. 5.8.  Historic handshake (October 25, 2007) between Space Shuttle commander Pam Melroy (left) and ISS Expedition-16 commander Peggy Whitson. They became the first female spacecraft commanders to lead Shuttle and ISS missions at the same time. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

installation of Node-2 Harmony. The arrays were on the center point of the station on top of the Unity module, and had to be moved to their final position at the far end of the Z1 truss, using both the Shuttle arm and the station arm. This was a challenging operation, not only for to the great distance to be reached to install this element, but also because of its size (approximately 13 × 110 ft, or 4 × 35 m). As Julie Payette highlighted, “it’s like assembling a ship in the ocean during a storm.” While deploying the P6, two small tears occurred in one of the large Solar Array Wings. A further complication was the fact that the whole panel was electrified with 120V DC and it was not possible to disconnect it. It was important to prevent the bad tears from continuing to extend, but the damaged array was hard to reach. Melroy said: “We talked to the chief of the Astronaut Office. We talked to our flight director. And also the Station crew helped. They’ve usually got their own assignments. They’ve got lots and lots of work to do on the Space Station, as we well know. They’ve got their own experiments and things going on. But we had to all come together as a single crew. I think it helped the fact that Peggy and I knew each other so well from having flown together. Everybody played a part”.

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Engineers worked through the night at Houston assessing a variety of options for possible repairs. Finally, the mission managers decided to fix the damaged solar array by installing five hinge stabilizers, or “cufflinks.” The teams worked for two days on the station. Using materials found on board – strips of aluminum, a hole punch, a bolt connector, and 66 ft of wire – the astronauts constructed the cufflinks to the specifications provided by the ground. It was a “mini Apollo 13 moment.” To install them, a contingency EVA was organized, conducted by Scott Parazysnki, who had vast EVA experience having already performed six spacewalks. Melroy said: “We had to wrap every tool and everything that was metal on Scott’s suit. We used up every piece of Kapton tape on the Shuttle and about half of what the Station had. For me, my biggest concern was for Scott’s safety”.

Parazynski was suspended from the space station’s robotic arm (SSRMS) in combination with the orbiter’s boom (OBSS) to bring him within arm’s length of the tears in the P6-4B solar array. After five-and-a-half hours, the five cufflinks were safely installed. Melroy summarized: “This was a monster mission. We had altogether five spacewalks. Thank God we had Stephanie [Wilson] with us, Madam Robotics Expert. She and Dan Tani, they were real-time moving that arm to try to get that last little inch out of it”.

Pamela Melroy logged 924 hours (38 days) in orbit on her three missions. After serving as Chief of the Orion Branch in the Astronaut Office again from January to August 2008, she left NASA in 2009 after 14 years, but retained close ties to the aerospace sector. She joined Lockheed Martin Corporation, where she served as the Deputy Director of Orion Space Exploration Initiatives until April 2011, overseeing over 320 engineers designing Orion. She then became Acting Deputy Associate Administrator and Director of Field Operations in the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, until the end of 2012. As acting Deputy Associate Administrator, she was responsible for developing human commercial spaceflight safety guidelines and oversaw interagency policy coordination with the White House, NASA, and the Department of Defense on space policy. As Director of Field Operations, she was responsible for overseeing and growing activities from three to six field offices supporting operational safety oversight, licensing, and inspection of commercial space activities. From January 2013 to February 2017, Melroy was Deputy Director of the Tactical Technology Office (TTO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

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Following a call from an old friend in 2017, Melroy went to live and work part of the year in Adelaide, South Australia, attracted by the idea that Australia might start its own Space Agency. She became Director of Space Technology and Policy at Nova Systems, Adelaide, and Senior Advisor for Space Strategy. In 2019, Melroy also joined the board of Australian satellite communications company Myriota (which was planning to create a constellation of 50 nanosatellites). Her induction into the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex was planned for May 2020, but the ceremony was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and eventually took place in November 2021. In November 2020, Melroy was named to the Joe Biden presidential transition Agency Review Team, to support transition efforts related to NASA. This fueled speculation that she was in the running for the position of Administrator of NASA during Biden’s tenure, especially since the incumbent Administrator James Bridenstine had stated he did not intend to stay in the role under the new president. On May 3, 2021, however, former Democratic U.S.  Senator from Florida, Bill Nelson, took office as 14th NASA Administrator. Melroy assumed her leadership role alongside him on June 21, 2021, when she was sworn in as NASA’s second-in-command, the first woman astronaut in history to become NASA’s Deputy Administrator. She said: “It is a joy to be back in the NASA family, the smartest and most dedicated workforce of any place that I’ve ever worked in. I always knew this was the most exciting place to work from the time I was a child, inspired by the first landing on the Moon”.

Sources For This Section Anon. “Pamela A. Melroy, Senior Technical Advisor”, faa.gov (November 1, 2011). Anon. “Tactical Technology Office: Ms. Pamela Melroy Bio”, darpa.mil. Bock M., “NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy”, nasa.gov, (Jun 21, 2021) Cavallaro, U. “Pamela Melroy: ‘Try to be True to Yourself ’”, AD*ASTRA, ASITAF Quarterly Journal, 31 (December 2016), pp. 15–20. Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 139–144. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 178–182. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Malik, T. “Female Space Commanders Set for Landmark Mission”, space.com (September 13, 2007).

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Moskowitz, C. “Last Female Space Shuttle Commander Leaves NASA”, space.com (August 11, 2009). Official NASA biography of Pamela Melroy, jsc.nasa.gov (April 2013). Personal contacts by e-mail in May 2016. Ross-Nazzal, J. “Pamela A.  Melroy: Oral History Transcript”, nasa.gov (November 16, 2011). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space—Following Valentina, pp. 293–294, 297. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). “STS-120 Preflight Interview”, nasa.gov (September 27, 2007).

5.4 PEGGY WHITSON: NASA’S MOST EXPERIENCED ASTRONAUT Mission

Launch

STS-111 STS-113 Soyuz TMA-11 Soyuz MS-03 Soyuz MS-04

June 5, 2001 October 10, 2007 November 17, 2016

Return December 7, 2002 April 19, 2008 September 3, 2017

Peggy Whitson (Fig. 5.9) was the very first, and so far only, non-military Mission Specialist to become Chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office, the most senior leadership position for active astronauts at NASA. All previous chief astronauts had been pilots. She was the first female commander of the ISS and the first woman to command the ISS twice. A veteran of three long-duration space missions aboard the ISS, where she spent over 665 days in total, she broke the record for both a US astronaut and a woman astronaut for cumulative time in space. Whitson also set a new record for the oldest female spacewalker and, with a total of ten spacewalks totaling 60 hours and 21 minutes, the record for the most spacewalks and most cumulative time spent outside the spacecraft by a woman. She is NASA’s most experienced astronaut in terms of time spent in space (Fig. 5.10). Peggy Annette Whitson was born on February 9, 1960, in Beaconsfield, Mount Ayr, Iowa, and grew up on a farm in a very rural area with only a post office and a church. She recalls: “The closest town had only 32 people living in it, so my high school was consolidated for the whole county”. From this small environment and from the example of her parents, whom she describes as “the hardest-working people I’ve ever met,” working on the farm from sunup to sunset, she inherited a double dose of dedication and stubbornness in her genes, which has contributed to her success.

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Fig. 5.9.  Peggy Whitson. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fig. 5.10.  Cover commemorating the landing of Space Shuttle STS-113, signed by Peggy Whitson. From the Author’s collection.

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After graduating from the Mount Ayr Community High School in 1978, Whitson double-majored in Biology and Chemistry in 1981 from the Iowa Wesleyan College, a small college in Mount Pleasant, southeastern Iowa. She explained: “Biology was kind of my love. I found chemistry challenging and the aspects of both of those very interesting together, which is why I got my Ph.D. in biochemistry from Rice University”. She confessed that moving to Houston was “a huge culture shock.” After her doctoral degree in 1985, Whitson continued at Rice as a post-doctoral fellow until October 1986, when she began working at Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, as a National Research Council Resident Research Associate. “I’ve never had a real job because I’ve always done what I wanted to do, which was work at NASA”, she jokes. In fact, this had been set as her goal since she was a young girl: “As a kid of 9 years old, I was inspired by the men who walked on the Moon. It really didn’t become a goal to me until I graduated from high school, which was coincidentally the same year they picked the first set of female astronauts. At that point I thought: this is going to be something I’m going to try and do, and so I chose my goals in education to be consistent with working at NASA, even as a scientist”.

Whitson knew her goal was possible thanks to biochemist astronaut Shannon Lucid, she explained later. At that moment, “it became more than just a dream,” and she applied for the Astronaut Corps. She would then apply every year. “I think my talent, if I have any, is perseverance”, she would say later. Hired by KRUG International, one of the medical sciences contractors at JSC, Whitson served as the supervisor for the Biochemistry Research Group from April 1988 until September 1989, when she was hired directly by NASA to lead the biochemistry section at the JSC. There, she started to be involved in the US-Soviet joint scientific activities, and traveled to Moscow for the first time where she conducted joint biomedical research with the Russians. Because of her experience with the new partners, Whitson was asked to help to develop and lead the entire science program during the Shuttle-Mir program. From 1991 to 1992, she was the Payload Element Developer for the Bone Cell Research Experiment (E10) aboard Spacelab-J (STS-47) and was a member of the US-USSR Joint Working Group in Space Medicine and Biology. In 1992, she was named the Project Scientist of the Shuttle-Mir Program (STS-60, STS-63, STS-71, Mir 18, and Mir 19) and served in this capacity until the conclusion of Shuttle-Mir Phase One in 1995. Whitson explained: “I was put in charge of developing the entire US and Russian joint science program, and this gave me a lot of visibility and maybe was a big

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contributor to why I was selected to be an astronaut”. From 1993 until her selection as an astronaut in 1996, she also held the additional responsibilities of the Deputy Chief of the Medical Sciences Division at JSC. Whitson is the co-inventor of a patented “simple, portable, relatively inexpensive apparatus for accurately and efficiently collecting, separating, testing, and even storing blood samples” that does not require a fridge to preserve the sample. It was invented for space use, but has great applications for field workers in remote areas where fridges are not available. From 1991 to 1997, Whitson was invited to be an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and the Department of Human Biological Chemistry and Genetics at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, and also earned a position as Adjunct Assistant Professor at Rice University in the Maybee Laboratory for Biochemical and Genetic Engineering. Selected as a NASA astronaut candidate in Group 16 in 1996, Whitson completed two years of training and evaluation, and was assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Operations Planning Branch. She served as a “Russian Crusader,” leading the Crew Test Support Team in Star City from 1998 to 1999. She then started training for her first long-duration mission on board the ISS. Whitson lifted off on June 5, 2002, aboard Shuttle Endeavour STS-111, and docked with the ISS two days later to begin Expedition-5, together with Russian cosmonauts Valery G. Korzun and Sergei Y. Treshchev. She became the second woman resident and the first science officer to inhabit the ISS. During her stay on the station she was the US expert, trained to manage and, if necessary, repair every US system including communication, life support, guidance, and navigation. As robotic arm operator, Whitson helped to transfer the logistics that had been carried to the station with her on STS-111, the second flight of the “Leonardo” MPLM module which was full of supplies and experiments. Expedition-5 was visited by three Shuttle missions, two Progress resupply flights and one Soyuz. Whitson, as robotics operator, contributed to the installation of the Mobile Base System for Canadarm-2, then the S1 truss segment (which was delivered to the station by STS-112 in October 2002), and finally the P1 truss segment (delivered in November 2002 by STS-113). As the first NASA science officer, she also conducted 21 investigations in human life sciences and microgravity sciences, including one in which she was the primary investigator on the prevention of renal or kidney stones in astronauts living in orbit: “We are interested in trying to reduce that risk of stone formation. We’ve had crewmembers form stones after flight, and there’s one case where a Russian mission was aborted because of a crewmember who, during flight, formed a stone that moved”.

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What little spare time she had, Whitson used to look out of the window: “One of the most beautiful sights is when the rim of the Earth is bright on one side, and you see this defined line of the atmosphere. You see how close and thin it is. We’ve got to be careful. We’ve got to take care of this planet”.

On August 16, 2002, Whitson performed an EVA of 4 hours 25 minutes in a Russian Orlan spacesuit to install micrometeoroid shielding on the Zvezda Service Module, thus becoming the seventh woman to perform a spacewalk: “Outside on a spacewalk takes it up another notch. You are traveling 17,500 miles an hour across the planet. You are looking down with views going past you. It’s like being a bird maybe, the perspective of flying over the Earth”.

After more than 184 days in space, Whitson returned to Earth on December 7, 2002, aboard STS-113. While most people would be ready to go home after six months in space, she found very difficult to leave the station. In June 2003, she served as the commander of the fifth NEEMO mission (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations), living and working in the Aquarius underwater laboratory for 14 days. From November 2003, she served as Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office and as such was a member of the selection commission for the Group 19 astronauts in 2004. From March 2005, she was named Chief of the Station Operations Branch, Astronaut Office, until she began training as backup ISS commander for Expedition-14 from November 2005. Named as commander of Expedition-16, Whitson launched on board the Soyuz TMA-11 on October 10, 2007, a few days after the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik. Commenting on the event, Whitson said: “It’s interesting to me that so much of the early Space Race was a competition, and it has evolved into being a huge international project. I think the legacy of the International Space Station will be the fact that it is a peaceful international project that we have conducted together”.

During Expedition-16, she surpassed Sunita Williams as the woman with the most spacewalks. She was the first woman to command the ISS and in fact the first Mission Specialist (MS) to become a commander; all of her predecessors had been pilots. Hers was a very important mission, which received the visit of the Italian-built ATV-1 “Jules Verne” (the first European Automated Transfer Vehicle), two Russian Progress vessels, and three different Shuttle

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flights (STS-120, STS-122, and STS-123). In her pre-flight interview, Whitson described the ATV-1: “ATV has got a three to four times the mass of a Progress vehicle. It can bring up pressurized gases as well as water for transfer, and it has obviously a lot of volume to carry up food, clothing and other crew provisions. The Europeans wanted to try out a new rendezvous and docking system, so that’ll be a new test. Yuri Malenchenko and I have been trained on it. It’s all automated, but we have to monitor to make sure that the system, which will be tested for the very first time, is actually working correctly. We’ll have two demonstration days where we’ll approach the station to different distances and check and make sure the abort systems all work properly, before we actually approach the station to dock”.

This was a very exciting mission, during which many new key components were installed on the station. While she was ISS commander, Whitson oversaw the first expansion of the working and living areas of the station in six years. In October 2007, Shuttle STS-120 carried the Node-2 Harmony module, and in February 2008, Shuttle STS-122 brought the European Laboratory Columbus to the station. In March 2008, the first of the three components of Kibō, the Japanese Space Agency’s contribution, arrived at the station on board Space Shuttle STS-123. Kibō is the largest pressurized module of the ISS: in the initial phase of the project, this was one of the smallest, but later the US and Europe decided to reduce the size of their modules, while the Japanese component remained unchanged. The Shuttle also brought “Dextre,” the Canadian “robotic hand” to be connected to the Canadarm-2 robotic arm to enable finer manipulations. To assemble all those components, Whitson led five spacewalks, thus attaining the personal record of six spacewalks performed by a woman, and also setting the new record for time spent by a woman on EVA: 39 hours and 46 minutes (this was later surpassed for a short time by astronaut Sunita Williams). One of Whitson’s most intense moments happened when the crew was rearranging solar arrays to prepare for the installation of Node-2 and one solar panel was torn, as referred to earlier (see Pamela Melroy). If the ripped array was jettisoned, there would not be enough power to continue the next mission. Under the guidance of the Mission Control Center, the astronauts on board managed to work with materials at hand to fashion precise “cuff links” to repair the rip. Whitson said: “It was intense up there. It was our Apollo 13 moment”! During the mission, much interest was also devoted to research and Whitson, as a biologist, was at the forefront:

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“We have some integrated immune studies where we’re looking at the effects of spaceflight on the immune function in crew members; we’re looking at the nutritional levels and how that impacts the crew members’ health on orbit. One in particular that most people can relate to is the Vitamin D levels that are very important for bone density. Obviously during spaceflight, we have seen in the past decreased bone density and we’re trying to correlate Vitamin D levels to that process, to get a better feel for how that’s happening and whether or not higher levels might help prevent that loss.”

The crew also explored different solutions of iron in a magnetic field, which one day could be used on suspension bridges and earthquake-resistant structures. After 192 days in space, Whitson returned to Earth on April 19, 2008, together with cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and South Korean astronaut Yi So-yeon. The spacecraft landed 260 miles (more than 400 km) west of the expected landing site in Kazakhstan, after undergoing what is called a “ballistic descent” for up to a minute at eight times the force of Earth-normal gravity, or 8 Gs (the usual figure is no more than 4.5 Gs). Whitson compared the 60-second bumpy ride and rough landing to a “rolling car crash.” She said: “It was pretty dramatic. Gravity is not really my friend right now and 8 Gs was especially not my friend, but it didn’t last too long”. It was the second ballistic descent in a few months: a not uncommon problem with the Soyuz. This return flight is also remembered as the first spaceflight in history to carry more women than men. After her return in October 2009, Whitson was appointed the 13th Chief of the NASA Astronaut Office, the first woman to hold a position that, in the old days of Mercury–Gemini–Apollo was held by the legendary and unfathomable Deke Slayton. In this capacity, she led the selection board for new astronauts in 2009 and acted as deputy chief of the astronaut selection board in 2013. “It wasn’t until I was on the selection board that I realized how lucky I was. We had 8,400, and we picked eight”, she says. This was a challenging time for NASA which suffered several budget cuts, while flight opportunities for American astronauts dropped drastically due to the retirement of the Space Shuttles and the cancellation of NASA’s human spaceflight programs under the Obama administration. Whitson had to face the challenge of a drastically reduced Astronaut Corps competing for a handful of slots on the ISS and flying there on Russian Soyuz capsules. She publicly declared: “We hope we will overcome this hurdle and continue to explore”. In July 2012, Whitson resigned as Chief of the Astronaut Office to get back in line for a mission assignment, and was later selected from the group of 43 active astronauts for her third long-duration mission on the ISS.  She was thrilled at the chance to return to the station, and launched from Baikonur on

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Soyuz MS-03 on November 17, 2016. The ISS had grown in size with several additions since she was there in 2007: “The US has scientific facilities in both the European and the Japanese laboratory so it’ll give me a lot more places to do different science. Most importantly, the Cupola was added on since I was there last. I’m looking forward to the view from the Cupola”.

Whitson returned the ISS for the third time on November 19, 2016, as part of Expedition-50/51 and became the commander of Expedition-51. While she was onboard, Roscosmos made the decision to reduce their crew complement to the ISS temporarily to two cosmonauts. Because this left a vacant seat on Soyuz MS-04, NASA and Roscosmos signed an agreement to extend Whitson’s stay on the ISS into Expedition 52, so rather than returning to Earth in June with her Expedition 51 crewmates Oleg Novitsky and Thomas Pesquet as originally planned, she remained aboard ISS and eventually returned home with Jack Fischer and Fyodor Yurchikhin on Soyuz MS-04. This meant there was a full complement of six astronauts on board the station and increased the amount of valuable astronaut time available for experiments on board the ISS. When informed of her extension, Whitson said: “This is great news. I love being up here. Living and working aboard the space station is where I feel like I make the greatest contribution, so I am constantly trying to squeeze every drop out of my time here”. On June 1, 2017, she passed over the command of ISS to Fyodor Yurchikhin, the designated commander of Expedition 52. During her third expedition, Whitson performed four additional spacewalks, bringing her total to ten, which places her fifth overall for total EVA time, and first for time spent by a woman performing EVAs. Whitson returned to Earth on September 3, 2017, having spent 289 days in space across Expedition-50-51-52, and accruing a total of 665 days in space over the course of her career, during which she performed hundreds of research experiments on board the ISS. This exceeded the time spent in orbit by any other American astronaut and any other woman worldwide. After being part of NASA’s program for almost 30 years, Whitson announced her retirement from the agency on June 15, 2018, effective immediately. She has been honored with various NASA medals in Leadership, Outstanding Leadership, and Exceptional Service. She was included in Glamour’s Woman of the Year (2017), received the Women in Aviation Lifetime Achievement Award (2017) and was named among Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World (2018).

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After leaving NASA, Whitson joined the commercial company Axiom Space, where she was appointed as commander of the Ax-2 mission, the second planned private spaceflight mission for the company. She is due to serve as backup commander for Ax-1, the first-ever private crewed mission to the ISS, which is set to launch by 2023 on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. On the Ax-2 flight, alongside John Shoffner (former racecar driver and pilot), Whitson will conduct genomics experiments for the California company 10x Genomics: “I think it’s so much more than space tourism”, she says. One of her tasks with Axiom is taking care of the astronauts’ training. She says: “Making sure you integrate with the crew is really important. Having been on the long-duration side of it before when many Shuttle crews were visiting, I’m very sensitive to how to best go about integrating our crews so that we don’t get in the way. I want my crew to be a team, just like a NASA crew is. We will do training to ensure that we can become that team and that we can rely on each other”.

Sources For This Section AP, “Astronaut Peggy Whitson returns to Earth after record-breaking spaceflight”, in www.foxnews.com (September 2, 2017) Axiom, “Meet the Team. Peggy A. Whitson, Ph.D., Astronaut Consultant”, in www. axiomspace.com (retrieved on November 4, 2021) Azriel, M. “Peggy Whitson Steps Down as NASA Astronaut Chief ”, spacesafetymagazine.com (August 4, 2012). Chang, K. “For Astronauts, a Vanishing Frontier: As Program Cut, Exploring Takes on New Meaning”, boston.com (April 24, 2011). Firth, S. “Peggy Whitson, First Woman to Command the International Space Station”, findingdulcinea.com (February 9, 2010). Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 145–150. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Kauderer, A. “Peggy Whitson, Preflight Interview”, nasa.gov (October 28, 2010). Kilen, M. “Age Is No Barrier for Astronaut Peggy Whitson”, usatoday.com (March 17, 2015). “Method and Apparatus for the Collection, Storage, and Real Time Analysis of Blood and Other Bodily Fluids”, US Patent Nos 5665238 (September 9, 1997) and 5866007 (February 2, 1999), Inventors: Peggy A.  Whitson, Vaughan L.  Clift; Assegnee: NASA. Official biography of Peggy Whitson, jsc.nasa.gov (October 2012). Parson, A. “Scientist at Work: Peggy Whitson—Testing Limits, 220 Miles above Earth”, nytimes.com (September 5, 2006).

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Contacts by e-mail with the Author in April 2016. Peterson, L. “Shaky Soyuz descents Plague Astronauts’ Only Ride Home”, Houston Chronicle (April 26, 2008). Petty, J.I. “Peggy Whitson, Preflight Interview”, nasa.gov (September 28, 2007). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space—Following Valentina, pp. 297, 334–336. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 114–115. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

5.5 SUNITA WILLIAMS: FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA TO THE HEIGHTS OF SPACE Mission

Launch

STS-116 STS-117 Soyuz TMA-05M

December 9, 2006 July 15, 2012

Return June 22, 2007 November 18, 2012

During her two long-term stays on the ISS, Sunita Williams (Fig. 5.11) broke several records, including the longest continuous spaceflight by a woman (192 days), total female spacewalks (seven), and the longest total spacewalk time for a woman (50 hours, 40 minutes) (Fig. 5.12). She was the second woman ever to command the ISS and the second astronaut of Indian descent to fly into space: “Records are for breaking. They are just little beacons out there that somebody else will want to do and they are measures of the accomplishments that we’ve made so far. I don’t think too much about them because I was also just in the right place at the right time”.

Sunita Lyn Pandya Williams, “Suni” to her family and friends, was born in Euclid, Ohio, on September 19, 1965, to a father from India who lectured on neuroscience at medical schools in Harvard and Boston University, and a mother of Yugoslavian descent who was working as an X-ray technician. Both of them were helicopter pilots. When Williams was a young girl, the youngest of three siblings, her family moved to Needham, Massachusetts, near Boston, which she considers to be her hometown. There, she went through elementary, middle, and high school, and practiced many sports, including swimming, triathlon, biking, baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Williams graduated from Needham High School in 1983. As a little girl, she contemplated becoming a veterinarian, but her way of life led her in quite another direction.

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Fig. 5.11.  Sunita Williams. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fig. 5.12.  Commemorative cover of mission Soyuz TMA-05M, signed by the crew including Sunita Williams. From the Author’s collection.

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Following the steps and the suggestions of her oldest brother, who went to the Naval Academy, Williams decided to pursue Physical Science at the US Naval Academy. She often recalls the shocking, but necessary moment where her long hair had to be chopped off when she entered the Academy. This new environment offered a lot of opportunities and, among other things, she became a swim team captain, and learned leadership and followership, and a sense of camaraderie. After earning a BSc degree in 1987, she was commissioned in the US Navy that May. After a six-month temporary assignment at the Naval Coastal System Command, Williams was designated a Basic Diving Officer. She next reported to the Naval Air Training Command, where she became a Naval Aviator in July 1989. She wanted to fly jets but, as she explains, “There weren’t a lot of women in combat aircraft at the time, so the opportunities were really limited. So I went into helicopters”. She received initial H-46 Sea Knight training in Helicopter Combat Support Squadron 3 (HC-3), and was then assigned to Helicopter Combat Support Squadron 8 (HC-8) in Norfolk, Virginia, with which she made overseas deployments to the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf for Operation Desert Shield and Operation Provide Comfort, to provide humanitarian aid and support the establishment of no-fly zones over Kurdish areas of Iraq. In September 1992, Williams was the Officer-in-Charge of an H-46 detachment for Hurricane Andrew relief operations aboard USS Sylvania. In January 1993, she began training at the US Naval Test Pilot School. She graduated in December, and was assigned to the Rotary Wing Aircraft Test Directorate as a chase pilot. She has logged more than 3,000 flight hours in more than 30 aircraft types. Williams contacted NASA while attending the Test Pilot School. She said in an interview: “There are some people in our Astronaut Office who knew from the very beginning they wanted to be astronauts. Not me. I really just didn’t know anything about becoming an astronaut or really too much about what the program was pursuing. It wasn’t really until later on, when I was established in my career. In my mid-20s, when I was a test pilot, I had the opportunity to go to Johnson Space Center and meet astronaut John Young and understand that he landed on the Moon in some type of vertical apparatus. That sounded like helicopters, and I was a helicopter pilot, so it seemed like it might fit. Then, I started looking at what I needed to do to become an astronaut. I needed a master’s degree”.

After earning that MSc degree in Engineering Management from Florida Institute of Technology in December 1995 – studying at night while in Naval Test Pilot School – she decided to apply to become a NASA astronaut but did

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not succeed at the first attempt. She went back to the Naval Test Pilot School as an instructor in the Rotary Wing Department. After 11 years in the US Navy, Williams eventually joined NASA with the 18th Astronaut Group in June 1998. After intensive training in Shuttle and ISS systems, she worked in Moscow with the Russian Space Agency to coordinate the Russian contribution to the space station and to support the first expedition crew as a “Russian Crusader”. Following the return of Expedition-1, Williams returned to Houston and worked within the robotics branch on the station’s robotic arm and the follow-­on Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (“Dextre”). From May 13 to 20, 2002, Williams lived underwater in the Aquarius habitat for nine days as a crewmember of the NEEMO-2 expedition, the NASA program aimed at investigating survival in a hostile, alien place for humans to live. During the expedition, she performed EVAs to simulate underwater spacewalks. Williams participated in two long-duration expeditions on board the ISS.  Her first trip into space was Expedition-14/15. Launched aboard the Shuttle Discovery STS-116, together with Joan Higginbotham, she participated in the 20th Space Shuttle mission to the station. The launch was originally scheduled for December 7, 2006, but was delayed because of bad weather conditions and left two days later: “My first mission was six-and-a-half months. We weren’t exactly sure how long it was going to be because I went up and back on the Space Shuttle which was dependent on weather for launch and landing. So you might have to say goodbye a couple of times and you might get excited to come home and then have to wait. It was an emotional rollercoaster, particularly because it was my first space flight”.

Before the undocking of Discovery STS-116 Williams had another haircut, this time donating her ponytail to Locks of Love, a Lake Worth, Florida-­ based, non-profit charity organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children under age 18 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis, including cancer treatment. Joan Higginbotham served as hair stylist for the orbital trim. Williams took a copy of Bhagavad Gītā (the traditional Hindu “spiritual dictionary”) and an idol of Lord Ganesha along with her to the space station. She said: “I knew Ganesha was looking after me. When you are thinking about going away for a long duration mission, it has to be part of your mindset that you’re

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leaving your family, but it’s for the right reasons, for good reasons, and hopefully helping humanity. So you settle yourself on that but you also have to prepare yourself. I call it tying up the ends of your life before you go because you never know what’s going to happen. You want to make sure that when you leave, you feel at peace with everything”.

During the mission, Williams set the record for the longest continuous single spaceflight by a woman at 192 days. With four EVAs, she also established another female record, beaten only in 2008 by Peggy Whitson, who made five “spacewalks.” On the subject of EVA, Williams said: “You don’t just ‘go outside.’ Usually that is the fun and easy part of the entire thing. The days leading up to the EVA are the intense days, with battery charging, METOX [CO2 removal cartridge] regenerations, suit sizing, tool gathering and preparation, equipment gathering and preparations, studying new procedures, reviewing and talking through how to get us suited and how to get the airlock depressurized, reviewing the tasks we will do with each other and with the robotic arm, talking about cleaning up, and then talking through a plan to get back into the airlock, and any emergencies that can come up [such as] loss of communications, suit issues, etc.”.

Even returning to the airlock could involve complex decontamination procedures before entering into the ISS. In particular, in her last two spacewalks, Williams came in contact with the ammonia used in the air-conditioning system of the station and had to undergo a long cleaning process to avoid carrying the ammonia – which is toxic – inside the space station. As all the astronauts who have been in space for some time have said, from up there you look at Earth and its problems with different eyes. Williams was no different: “When you’re flying in space, some of the things down on Earth seem trivial. Things like politics leave your mind. I didn’t feel like I was a person from the United States, I felt like I was lucky enough to be a person from Earth. For me, most news wasn’t important but people are important, so when you hear about natural disasters like hurricanes and fires, that makes you miss home and wonder how everybody’s coping. But I would also look back at the planet and think ‘gosh it’s a pretty little place, everybody’s going for a walk on the beach or something like that, they must be enjoying life down there’. If you are having a bad day, you can go to the Cupola window and see a part of the Earth. It makes you smile”.

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The Cupola was her preferred place, “the crowning jewel of the space station,” as she named it. She said: “It’s like being on a spacewalk. but it’s a little bit more comfortable; you’re in just a T-shirt and shorts and you can turn 360°. It’s just spectacular, a great place to have a pretty much heads-on view and to manipulate the robotic arm”. Like many astronauts after their extraterrestrial experience, Williams suggests that we should broaden our vision: “It is hard to believe that we have borders on our planet. In space, all we see are oceans. I believe that we are all citizens of this universe”. Williams made headlines while she was on the ISS, on April 16, 2007, when she ran the famed Boston Marathon, which happened to be in her home town. She had qualified by running a 3:29:57 in the Houston Marathon in 2006, finishing among the top 100 women. With her race number, 14,000, posted on the space station’s treadmill, she successfully crossed the metaphorical finish line in an unofficial completion time of 4:24:00, while circling Earth at least twice, running as fast as 8 mph but flying at more than 5 miles per second. She ran in tandem with fellow astronaut Karen Nyberg, who was running on Earth among the 24,000 other runners participating in the marathon. Despite having to contend with the monotony of running 42.2  km (26.2 miles) on a treadmill without crowds to cheer her on, Williams ran under better weather conditions than her counterparts in Boston, where it was 9°C with some rain, mist, and wind that day. Williams said: “I did it to encourage kids to start making physical fitness part of their daily lives. I thought a big goal like a marathon would help get this message out there”. The media sang the praises of the marathoner “pioneering new frontiers in the running world.” Apart from this event, Williams ran at least four times a week on the station; two longer runs and two shorter runs. Exercise is essential to counteract the effects of long-duration weightlessness on astronauts’ bones and muscles, as she explained: “In microgravity, both of these things start to go away because we don’t use our legs to walk around and don’t need the bones and muscles to hold us up under the force of gravity”. After returning from her mission, Williams was appointed Deputy Director of the Astronaut Office. In July 2012, she was assigned to another long-­ duration mission, Expedition-32/33, and lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard Soyuz TMA-05M, with Russian Commander Yuri Malenchenko and Japanese flight engineer Akihiko Hoshide. That September, Williams became the first person to complete a triathlon in space, which coincided with the Nautica Malibu Triathlon held in Southern California. She used the space station’s own treadmill and stationary bike and, for the swimming portion of the race, the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) to do weightlifting and resistance exercises that approximate swimming in

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microgravity. After “swimming” half a mile (0.8 km), biking 18 miles (29 km), and running 4 miles (6.4 km), Williams finished with a time of 1 hour, 48 minutes, and 33 seconds. She ran this triathlon in tandem with doctor Sanjay Gupta back on Earth. During her mission, Williams performed three EVAs, the first of them being far longer and less productive than planned. The goal of the spacewalk of August 30, 2012, was to replace a failed power distributor, one of the four Main Bus Switching Units (MBSUs) installed in the S-0 truss connecting a box that routes 25 percent of the power coming to the station from the solar arrays. They had to give up because of a “sticky” bolt that did not want to come undone after being exposed for ten years to the 16 day/night heat cycles per day encountered in Earth orbit. After spending more than eight hours outside – making it the third longest spacewalk in history  – Williams and her Japanese colleague Akihiko Hoshide returned inside the ISS without completing the task: “The lesson we learned is that you can’t get married to a plan. Something you thought was going to be difficult turns out to be easy, and something you thought was going to be easy turns out to be hard”.

A second spacewalk was required on September 5 to fix the problem. With this EVA, her sixth spacewalk, which lasted for 6 hours and 28 minutes, Williams broke Peggy Whitson’s record for longest total time spent on an EVA by a woman, receiving live congratulations from Whitson, who at that time was her boss as head of the NASA Astronaut Office. Whitson sent her a message via Mission Control: “It’s an honor to hand off the record to someone as talented as you! You go girl”. Ten days after breaking this record, Williams took over as commander of the ISS from mid-September to November 2012, becoming the second female commander in its history after Whitson. It was a very busy time: within a 17-day period, nine spacecraft docked to the ISS. Williams has so far logged 322 days off the planet. She is behind only Whitson and Christina Koch on the list of women who have spent the most time in space and holds a number of records (although her record for the longest stay in space was first overtaken in June 2015 by Samantha Cristoforetti and then in 2017 by Peggy Whitson  – who also surpassed her records for spacewalks. It was extended again by Christina Koch in 2020). Williams was the second female astronaut of Indian descent to fly in space after Kalpana Chawla, who was tragically killed in the Columbia STS-107 accident in 2003. In July 2015, Williams was selected with three other experienced astronauts – Bob Behnken, Eric Boe, and Doug Hurley: all of them former military test

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pilots with experience with both Shuttle and Soyuz – to work closely with the Boeing Company and SpaceX to develop their new spacecraft to provide crew transportation services to and from the ISS.  Williams was part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Astronaut Corps, eligible for the maiden test flights of the Boeing CST-100 and Crew Dragon astronaut capsules. These new spacecraft were intended to relieve US reliance on Russia’s Soyuz and regain some of the capability lost with the retirement of the Space Shuttle. Additionally, as NASA’s Administrator Charles Bolden stated at the time, they would put Williams and her three veteran colleagues on “a trail that will one day land them in the history books.” (Fig. 5.13) Sunita Williams worked initially with SpaceX for a couple of years with responsibilities for the development of their spacesuit. She said: “I was able to integrate some innovative changes and improvements to SpaceX’s new spacesuit. It was a great experience and there are some amazing people working at SpaceX”. In August 2018. Williams switched to supporting the Boeing spacecraft and was assigned to CTS-1, the first operational CST-100 Starliner mission flight to the ISS, which was scheduled for 2020. Due to extended delays, in October 2021

Fig. 5.13.  Sunita Williams was initially chosen as the only woman in NASA’s Commercial Crew Astronaut Corps, eligible for the maiden test flights of new spacecraft from SpaceX and Boeing. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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NASA announced astronaut changes for upcoming commercial crew missions and reassigned Williams, who is currently training as commander of the first postcertification mission of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, the second crewed flight for that vehicle. In an interview, she said: “I’m earning a Ph.D. in patience at the moment as I wait to fly Starliner, the new spacecraft from Boeing”. She added: “Do you know what is really cool? Each mission into space will have been on three different spacecrafts; the Space Shuttle, the Russian Soyuz, and soon, the Starliner”. Williams was also a part of the program which developed the space suit for the Artemis mission. She is a true pioneer in STEM education: her spaceflight career is impressive, but her can-do attitude and humble outlook are perhaps more inspirational.

Sources For This Section “Astronaut Friday: Sunita ‘Suni’ Williams” in spacecenter.org (March 1, 2019) Ahmad, N. “Working Woman: Sunita Williams”, niralimagazine.com (October 1, 2004). Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 151–157. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Gladden, B. “Interview with Astronaut Sunita Williams”, resources.alljobopenings.com. Latrash A. L. & F., “CAPT Sunita “Suni” Williams, USN (Ret.). From Aquanaut to Astronaut. Breaking Barriers: Sound, Light, Gender – For All Humanity” in “30 Inspirational Women in Naval Engineering, STEM and beyond” NEJ (Naval Engineers Journal) Special Edition Vol. 132 , No. 3 (September 2020) p. 190–196 Jeavans, C. “Astronaut Suni Williams: You Need to Make Peace before Leaving Earth”, bbc.com (July 25, 2013). NASA Press Release. “Astronaut to Run Boston Marathon in Space”, nasa.gov (March 29, 2007). Official NASA biography of Sunita Williams, jsc.nasa.gov (November 2012). Pearlman, R. “Astronaut Cuts Her Hair in Space for Charity”, in www.space.com (December 19, 2006) Pearlman, R. “NASA Assigns 4 Astronauts to Commercial Boeing, SpaceX Test Flights”, collectspace.com (July 9, 2015). Petty, J.I. “Preflight Interview: Suni Williams”, nasa.gov (September 8, 2006). “Preflight Interview: Suni Williams”, nasa.gov (June 4, 2012). Sardesai, R. “Sunita Williams on Why She Loves Samosas!”, ibnlive.in.com (October 4, 2007). Valentine E. “Race from Space Coincides with Race on Earth”, nasa.gov (April 16, 2007). Williams, S. “Space Is Busy, Active and Unkind”, fragileoasis.org (September 3, 2012).

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Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 130–131. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

5.6 SHANNON WALKER: A DRAGON SPACEFARER ON FALCON WINGS Mission

Launch

Return

Soyuz TMA-19 Crew Dragon-1

June 15, 2010 November 16, 2020

November 26, 2010 May 2, 2021

Shannon Walker (Fig. 5.14) was the first native Houstonian to become an astronaut: “Growing up in Houston and always having the astronauts and the Johnson Space Center in my backyard, I was always aware of the space program. So I just decided to pursue it, and was fortunate enough to work at the Johnson Space Center and then eventually become an astronaut”.

Fig. 5.14.  Shannon Walker. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Walker was born in Houston on June 4, 1965: “I had just turned four when we first walked on the Moon, and I think that just set the seed right then”. She went through the public school system in Houston: Parker Elementary, Johnston Junior High, and Westbury Senior High, where she graduated in 1983. She earned a BA degree in Physics from Rice University in Houston in 1987. “Once I graduated I was extremely fortunate and was offered a job out here at the Johnson Space Center to work in the flight control center”, she recalls. Walker began her professional career with the Rockwell Space Operations Company at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in 1987 as a robotics flight controller for the Space Shuttle program. She worked on several Space Shuttle missions as a flight controller in the Mission Control Center, including STS-27, STS-32, STS-51, STS-56, STS-60, STS-61, and STS-66. At the beginning of the 1990s, she took a leave of absence to attend graduate school for three years and went back to Rice University to pursue a doctorate in Space Physics. In 1992 and 1993, respectively, she earned an MSc and a Ph.D. in Space Physics, studying the solar wind’s interaction with the Venusian atmosphere: “After I completed my doctorate I decided wanted to be part of the human spaceflight program, so I was able to come back to the Johnson Space Center and continue my work as a flight controller”. In 1995, Walker was hired by the NASA civil service and served on the ISS program at JSC in the area of robotics integration, working with the ISS international partners in the design and construction of the robotics hardware for the space station: “Primarily I was working in the robotics area, working with the Canadians to build the Canadian robotic arm and our equipment that interfaces with it”. After completing this task, she joined the ISS Mission Evaluation Room (MER) as a manager for coordinating on-orbit problem resolution for the ISS. In 1999, she moved to Moscow, Russia, to work with the Russian Space Agency and its contractors in the areas of avionics integration as well as integrated problem-solving for the ISS. She said: “I took a little jog away from robotics and did avionics integration in Russia for a year, so it was making sure that our computer boxes were talking to their computer boxes, which is very important”. The following year, Walker returned to Houston and became the technical lead for the ISS MER as well as the deputy manager, and then acting manager, of the On-Orbit Engineering Office that was heavily involved in solving ISS problems from the ground: “I went back to the control center but not on the flight control side. I worked on the engineering side, and so I worked in the area and ultimately was the leader of the area in the control center which is responsible for what we call the technical health of the station. So we monitor all its systems and if something’s

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not working properly, then it was our job to figure out not only what went wrong, but how we’re going to fix it. Because sometimes what you need to fix a problem is not what you have on board, and so you have to be a little creative to get problems solved”.

After she applied for and was rejected from NASA’s astronaut program four times, Walker was finally selected as an astronaut candidate in May 2004. The following year, she married fellow astronaut Andrew (Andy) Thomas. In February 2006, she completed her Astronaut Candidate Training and her operational training on the ISS systems. She said: “I know so much on the engineering side and not so much on the operations side. It’s like, ‘How do I turn this on’? But I can tell you all the problems that a component has had”. After qualifying as a Mission Specialist, Walker also completed her training for EVAs. As a member of the support crew for the ISS Expedition-14, from September 2006 to April 2007, she served in the Houston Mission Control Center as a Capcom, a role she also fulfilled during Shuttle mission STS-118 in August 2007. Shortly after that, Walker began training for her long-duration mission on the ISS. Having spent so much time at Mission Control, she started her new experience with great confidence in the support of the people on the ground: “I know how the control centers work. I know how to problem-solve. I know who’s involved in working on the problems and can make a decision, so it is a big comfort factor. I have absolute confidence in the people in the ground, having known them for so many years”.

Walker was initially assigned as a member of the backup crew of Expedition-19, then as backup for Expedition-21/22, and finally as a member of the prime crew of Expedition-24/25. She lifted off from Baikonur on June 15, 2010, as the Soyuz TMA-19 flight engineer (co-pilot). The entire mission lasted for 163 days, with 161 of them aboard the ISS (Fig. 5.15). During her mission the first commercial spacecraft, the SpaceX Dragon, rendezvoused (but did not dock) with the ISS. Walker was part of the crew when the ISS achieved the record for the longest continuous manned presence in space – a mark previously held by Mir11. She was also on the station on November 2, 2010, when ISS celebrated its 10th birthday, commemorating the arrival of astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, the first crew to reside  Mir was occupied continuously for just under ten years.

1

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Fig. 5.15.  Commemorative cover for Soyuz TMA-19, postmarked in Korolyov on the day of undocking, signed by the crew. From the Author’s collection.

onboard the station. Walker also flew on behalf of the Ninety-Nines (the international organization of women pilots), with a watch owned by Amelia Earhart who was their first president. She said: “To me it represents how far women have come in the field of aviation and how far we can go”. She took part in almost 120 scientific experiments and in ongoing work to understand how the body reacts in space. She says: “When people live in space they lose bone density and they lose muscle mass. So a lot of the experiments that we are performing now are geared towards actually understanding the mechanisms of how that happens, so we can try and prevent it in the future. We don’t want to lose too much bone density, and we certainly don’t want to lose too much muscle mass, and one of the things that a lot of people don’t realize or think about immediately is the heart is a muscle. So we actually lose mass in our heart, which is something we certainly want to understand”.

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Some of the experiments were to do with nutrition: “We’re doing very specific diets on orbit to try and understand what would be better, because if we can prevent bone loss through something as simple as changing someone’s diet that would be a very easy way to go and a very helpful way to go in space”.

This research was designed to prepare interplanetary trips, but it does have important positive fall-outs in our daily life on Earth: “One of the most recent accomplishments was a salmonella study that they did on the station and they were actually able to isolate the gene in the salmonella virus that causes it to be rather virulent. Right now the company that sponsored that research is working with the Food and Drug Administration to do clinical trials for a vaccine. So the science is progressing, and it is contributing a lot to Earth”.

Other research concentrated on how to grow plants in space: “Some of the things we do are looking at how plants grow in space. There’s a lot to understanding the detailed mechanisms of how plants are reacting to the stimuli they see in space, be it the nutrients they receive or be it the light, it needs to be well understood. If we’re going to depend on growing our own food in space we need to understand how they’re going to grow, so we can best grow food in space”.

Walker concluded: “Our goal ultimately is living permanently off the planet. Now, whether it’s close by on the Moon or Mars, or if it’s on a spacecraft in the solar system or somewhere else, I won’t say, but what the space station does is help us figure out how to do that. How do you have a life support system that can work for long periods of time and provide you with the water and the atmosphere that you need? How do you grow plants in space? Obviously we can’t keep calling back to Earth for the next pizza delivery, so we’ve got to figure out how to be self-­ sufficient off the planet”.

After returning to Earth in November 2010, Walker commanded the NEEMO-15 undersea exploration mission aboard the Aquarius underwater laboratory in October 2011. The mission, originally scheduled to start on October 17, was delayed by stormy weather and high seas, and began on

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Fig. 5.16.  Biberpost private stamps celebrating the Crew Dragon 1 mission. Figure Credit: © Ralf Schulz/Biberpost. Reproduced with permissions. All rights reserved.

October 20. The mission then ended early on October 26 due to the approach of Hurricane Rina. In 2017, Walker served as backup for NASA astronaut Joe Acaba for Expedition-53/54, and was assigned to fly on the Soyuz MS-12 mission in early 2019 and to serve on Expedition-59/60. However, she was removed from the flight and replaced by Christina Koch well before launch, and returned to the active corps at JSC to assume duties in the Astronaut Office. After ten years, Walker finally returned to space for her second long duration mission (Fig. 5.16). In March 2020 she was assigned to SpaceX Crew-1, also known as USCV-1 or United States Crew Vehicle, mission 1, as it was the first operational crewed flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon to the ISS and the first operational flight of a NASA-certified commercial human spacecraft system in history (Fig. 5.17): “Getting the commercial crew companies on board… is just going to change everything. I feel like the science fiction movies are starting to come to life”.

For the first time, a crew of four reached the Space Station from KSC and Walker became the first female to lift off from American soil since the Shuttle program ended in 2011. She flew together with NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Soichi Noguchi. Just before launching on November 15, 2020, NASA had announced that the Crew-1 astronauts had named their spacecraft Resilience, in recognition of the challenges that people faced and were forced to overcome in 2020 due to the global coronavirus pandemic. Recalling her

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Fig. 5.17.  The astronauts of SpaceX Crew Dragon-1 preparing to head up to the ISS. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

previous launch from Baikonur, Walker said: “I had experiences that I never would have gotten had I flown on the Shuttle, but I did launch out of a foreign country. And so now being able to launch in my home country is really special” (Fig. 5.18). Upon their arrival on the ISS, Walker and her fellow Crew-1 astronauts joined Expedition-64, alongside Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, and NASA astronaut Kathleen Rubins. Walker served as a flight engineer on the ISS again for her second long-duration mission. Together with the Expedition-64 crew, she worked on a number of experiments, including tissue chips that mimic the structure and function of human organs to understand the role of microgravity on human health and diseases, and translate those findings to improve human health on Earth. The astronauts also grew radishes in different types of light and soils as part of ongoing efforts to produce food in space in view of longer space flights, and tested a new system to remove heat from spacesuits. The arrival of Soyuz MS-18 crewmen Oleg Novitsky, Pyotr Dubrov and Mark Vande Hei at the Station on April 9, 2021, temporarily brought the number of astronauts onboard the ISS to 11, the largest number since the final Space Shuttle visit in July 2011.

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Fig. 5.18.  Cover commemorating the docking of SpaceX Crew Dragon-1 with the ISS, signed by the astronauts aboard the station. The cover is franked with one of the six commemorative stamps issued in 2018 by the United Nations Postal Administration (UNPA) to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. The $1.15 stamp features a 2011 photograph captured by Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli of the Space Shuttle Endeavour docked with the orbiting laboratory (the only picture of ISS and Shuttle). From the Author’s collection.

When the Soyuz MS-17 crew left the station in April 2021, Expedition-64 came to an end. Walker and her three crewmates transferred over to Expedition-65, with Walker officially taking charge of the expedition and becoming the third woman ISS commander after Peggy Whitson and Sunita Williams. Walker was also the first native Houstonian to take command of the ISS in its 20-plus-year history. For the first time in ISS history, she was chosen to be the ISS commander while actually in orbit, with the change of command ceremony broadcast live on NASA Television. It was the shortest stint of any ISS commander, lasting only for approximately 11 days, as Crew-1 undocked on May 2 and her mission ended after spending 167 days in orbit. The return of the mission to Earth, originally planned on April 28, had to be delayed twice due to bad weather at their splashdown site. This was the longest-ever duration for a crew launched in an American-built spacecraft. As a mission specialist, Walker worked closely with the commander and pilot to monitor

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the spacecraft during the re-entry. The splashdown of Crew-1 in the Gulf of Mexico, to the south of Panama City, Florida, at 2:56 a.m. EDT, was also the first oceanic return of an astronaut crew during the night in more than half a century: the last NASA crew to land back on Earth at night-time was Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the Moon, which returned in the night of December 27, 1968.

Sources For This Section Brown, K., “NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 Astronauts Headed to International Space Station” in nasa,gov/press-release (Nov 16, 2020) Cavallaro, U., “Dragon women spacefarers on Falcon wings” AD*ASTRA #49 (June 2021). p. 1–4 Northon, K., “Crew-1 Astronauts Safely Splash Down After Space Station Mission” in nasa.gov /press-release (May 2, 2021) Official NASA biography of Shannon Walker nasa.gov (May 2021). Contacts by e-mail with the Author in May 2016. “Preflight Interview: Shannon Walker (Expedition24)”, nasa.gov (June 1, 2010). Williams, M. “Shannon Walker Preps for Six-Month Stint at International Space Station”, naturalsciences.rice.edu. Wilson, J. “Shannon Walker, Mission Specialist”, nasa.gov (May 6, 2004).

6 Military Women Astronauts

“For every soldier who joined the Army to see the world and still hasn’t satisfied their travel wishes, a chance to see the entire globe on a single mission is now available. That’s because qualified candidates have a chance to trade in their Army greens for NASA blues”.

So sounded the announcement issued on armytimes.com to invite the military to participate in the NASA astronaut selection held in March 2020. Space and the military have a long and storied history, with the earliest American astronauts drawn from the military because, in the pioneer era, NASA wanted people who had test pilot experience and were prepared to face dangerous situations (and because it was easier to select them). Russian cosmonaut selections followed the same paths, as did those of Chinese taikonauts later. Even after NASA opened up to civilians, especially in the Shuttle era, the military continued to be well represented among spacefarers, and women are no exception. At the beginning of 2022, at least 17 out of all the women spacefarers have been military, including eight from the US Navy (such as Susan Still Kilrain and Sunita Williams), seven from the world’s air forces (including Eileen Collins, Pamela Melroy, Liu Yang, Wang Yaping and Samantha Cristoforetti), and two from the US Army. Out of the nine female members of the initial ARTEMIS team, the NASA astronauts who have a chance of being the first woman to walk on the Moon, four are actively serving in the military. (For a complete list of military women spacefarers, see Appendix III: Military Astronauts).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Cavallaro, To The Stars, Springer Praxis Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19860-1_6

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6.1 SUSAN HELMS: THREE-STAR GENERAL Mission

Launch

Return

STS-54 STS-64 STS-78 STS-101 STS-102 STS-105

January 13, 1993 September 9, 1994 June 20, 1996 May 19, 2000 March 8, 2001

January 19, 1993 September 20, 1994 July 7, 1996 May 25, 2000 August 22, 2001

Susan Helms (Fig. 6.1) is a retired Lieutenant General in the United States Air Force (USAF). She has been the Commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Space (JFCC SPACE), the operational space component of the US Strategic Command, located at Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) in California, leading more than 20,500 personnel responsible for providing missile warning, space superiority, space situational awareness, satellite operations, space launch, and range operations. Following in her father’s footsteps, at age 18, Helms entered the USAF. Selected for the NASA Astronauts’ Corps in 1990, she became the first US military woman in space, and is one of the six female astronauts to have

Fig. 6.1.  Susan Helms. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license

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Fig. 6.2.  Commemorative cover of the launch of mission STS-54, signed by Susan Helms. From the Author’s collection.

launched into space on five occasions (Fig. 6.2). After participating in four Space Shuttle missions, she finally served aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as a member of the long-duration Expedition-2 crew (March 8 – August 22, 2001) and was the first female crew member aboard the new space station. The oldest of three sisters, Susan Jane Helms was born on February 26, 1958, in Charlotte, North Carolina, but her family moved to Portland, Oregon, when she was very young and she considers that to be her hometown. In Portland, Helms attended elementary school and learned to play the piano. Later, when she joined NASA, she played keyboards in the Max-Q rock band, entirely made up of NASA astronauts (“Max Q” is the maximum aerodynamic pressure that the Shuttle experienced shortly after lift-off) and she also took a keyboard into space during her long-term expedition to the ISS. Helms’s father made his career in the Air Force and passed on his passion for flying to her. During an interview, she said: “Definitely my interest in the Air Force has been there since probably the day I was born. And I basically decided at a young age that the whole thing of being in the military and particularly the Air Force appealed to me. There were a couple of strong points that I wanted. One of them was the opportunity to travel – little did I know how far that would go – and then also the opportunity for a stable career. I like the idea of moving every few years and seeing different

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places, and it appeared that my dad had had a very rewarding Air Force career. It looked like, as an engineer, I could also have the same”.

Helms graduated from Parkrose Senior High School, Portland, Oregon, in 1976 and, that year, joined the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, which was admitting women into the ranks of the cadet corps for the first time. There were about 1,500 cadets among the freshmen that year, including 157 women (though only 98 of them graduated four years later). Helms experienced hostility from some of the male students, who were either resistant to the sudden change or simply did not know how to handle it: “It was a challenge for everyone, from the highest generals to the freshmen. You have to realize that the previous three classes to us, all of them male students, expected to go to an all-male school. And then this changed on them right in the middle of schooling”.

Most of the women decided to keep their heads down. Helms received her Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the US Air Force Academy in 1980. Upon graduation, she served as a weapons engineer with the Air Force Armament Laboratory at Eglin Air Force Base (AFB), Florida, working on F-15 and F-16 weapons systems. As the lead engineer, she worked on the dynamics of weapons separation, preventing the aerodynamics interference that can occur when weapons are released and cause them to return and hit the aircraft that jettisoned them. In 1983, Helms was named the Air Force Armament Laboratory Junior Engineer of the Year. In 1984, she was sent to Stanford University, where the event that changed the course of her life occurred. She met with Sally Ride, who was visiting the university during her second post-flight tour. Helms learned that she wanted to become an astronaut, too: “As an Air Force career officer, I basically flew in jets. When I had a taste of that, I got fairly addicted to it, and at some point along that career path, I decided, ‘Well, how can I fly higher and faster than I am doing right now’? And that, combined with a couple of other brushes with NASA people, made me realize that this could be something I’d be very interested in doing, and I just put my application in, of course never expecting to get selected. But when that happened, my Air Force career sort of took a turn to a NASA career, and I’ve had the chance to do just that: fly higher and faster. And that was what I was originally after”.

After earning her Master of Science (MSc) degree in Aeronautics/Astronautics from Stanford University in 1985, Helms served as an assistant professor of

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aeronautics at the US Air Force Academy. In 1987, she was selected to attend the USAF Test Pilot School Flight Test Engineer Course at Edwards AFB in California, completing her one year of training as a flight-test engineer as a Distinguished Graduate. During the course, Helms met the guest speaker, Colonel Dick Covey, an astronaut who said to her: “I hope we see you in Houston some time”. He was referring to the Johnson Space Center (JSC), the home of astronaut training. Helms said: “I took that as the final sign that I should probably apply for the astronaut program. So Covey was a big motivator in getting me to fill out the application and send it in”. As a flight-test engineer, she was assigned as a USAF Exchange Officer to the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment, Canadian Forces Base, Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada, where she worked as both flight-test engineer and project officer on the CF-18 aircraft. She flew in 30 different types of US and Canadian military aircraft. In January 1990, Helms was leading the development of a CF-18 Flight Control System Simulation for the Canadian Forces when she learned that she had been selected for the astronaut program. She became an astronaut in July 1991 and after completing training she flew as a crewmember on four Shuttle missions  – STS-54 (1993), STS-64 (1994), STS-78 (1996), and STS-101 (2000) – and launched aboard a fifth to serve aboard the ISS as a member of the Expedition-2 crew (2001). Helms became the first US military woman in space when she participated in the Endeavour STS-54 mission from January 13 to January 19, 1993. The primary objective of the mission was to deploy NASA’s sixth US$200 million Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-F) as part of the network used by NASA and other US government agencies for communications to and from the Space Shuttle, satellites, aircraft, and now the ISS. This system had been designed to replace the existing worldwide network of NASA ground stations. In its payload bay, Shuttle Endeavour also carried the DXS (Diffuse X-Ray Spectrometer) that collected high-quality X-ray spectra to investigate the origin of the Milky Way galaxy. In 1994, Helms took part in the Discovery STS-64 mission and served as the primary operator of the Remote Manipulator System (RMS, the robot arm). In July 1996, Helms was Mission Specialist-2 and Flight Engineer (MS-2/ FE), as well as Payload Commander, aboard Columbia STS-78, the longest Space Shuttle mission to that date at 17 days. Later that year, the STS-80 mission would break that record by 19 hours. STS-78 included studies sponsored by ten nations and five space agencies, and was the first mission to combine both microgravity studies and life-science investigations, thus serving as a model for future studies on board the ISS.

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In 2000, Helms was an MS on the Atlantis STS-101 mission, aimed at delivering cargo contained in the Spacehab logistics module and the Integrated Cargo Carrier pallet to the ISS, and preparing the station for permanent occupation. During the mission, some critical hardware was repaired or replaced, including air filters, Zarya module fire extinguishers and smoke detectors, four suspect batteries on Zarya, the Radio Telemetry System memory unit, and other components of the communication systems. Helms’s prime responsibilities during this mission were some critical repairs and the on-board computer network. She also served as the MS for rendezvous with the ISS. After landing, it was discovered that superheated gas had entered into the Shuttle’s left wing during re-entry due to a damaged tile. Had it penetrated deeper, the Shuttle could have been destroyed, as would happen to Columbia STS-107 in 2003. In 2001, Helms became the first woman to inhabit the ISS, as a member of the long-duration Expedition-2, the second resident crew on the fledgling station, which she reached aboard Shuttle STS-102. When she was asked to volunteer, she had little enthusiasm for the prospect, thinking that preparing for the mission would take almost a year, living in Russia in the winter, learning Russian, and leaving home for months in orbit. But she also knew that there would be a long wait for an alternative assignment, if any. “Just to get back into orbit, I said I would take the job”, she explained later. STS-102 carried the “Leonardo” Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) into space for the first time, the pressurized logistics module provided by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), and built in Turin, Italy, by Alenia Spazio. One of the goals of the mission was to unload five tons of experiments and equipment, and install a platform to be used to mount the Canadian-built Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) robotic arm. The docking of the Shuttle was marked by a couple of hitches. Before docking, the Shuttle had to hover 400 ft (120 m) away from the Pressurized Mating Adapter-2 port as it awaited the array latch verification and proper lighting conditions for its final approach. A communications problem occurred just after docking, when signals could not be relayed for about 34 minutes. Helms was welcomed onto the ISS by Commander Yuri Usachev, the cosmonaut who had been in the Mir crew with Shannon Lucid, whom Helms knew well as the two had trained together in Star City. Not surprisingly, Usachev immediately offered her the privacy of Destiny, the American Laboratory module, in which to keep her personal belongings, just as he had offered Lucid his own module on Mir. This was particularly appreciated by Helms, since her entire life at that very moment was up in space: before leaving for space, she had packed up and stored all of her possessions and no longer had an Earth address. She said: “I was very disconnected from Earth.

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When we had to go fly for six months, I effectively just closed down my Earth life. I acted like it was a military deployment. I lived in space. It was my home”. On March 11, together with colleague Jim Voss, Helms performed a world record extravehicular activity (EVA) of 8 hours and 56 minutes, which remains the longest ever spacewalk to date, to prepare some necessary connections for the installation of the “Leonardo” module. The following day, Helms performed the delicate operation to attach the module to the space station, using the long robotic arm Canadarm-2. During her mission, she and her crewmates also welcomed a visiting Soyuz crew that included the first space tourist, Dennis Tito. Helms stayed on board for 163 days, ending on August 22, 2001, with a return aboard STS-105. Helms observed that, in contrast to the Shuttle’s tight time schedule, akin to “a quick business trip,” the scheduling on the station was more relaxed and life was more similar to “a normal workday.” A veteran of five spaceflights, Susan Helms has accrued 5,064  hours (211 days) in orbit, as well as the spacewalk of 8 hours and 56 minutes. In July 2002, after a 12-year NASA career (and 22 years of military service), Helms chose to return to active duty with the USAF rather than retiring. She served in numerous staff positions at the Headquarters of the US Air Force Space Command: “The Air Force has always been so supportive of the things I wanted to do, and I guess I felt the time had come to come back and help with the military space program”. Her staff assignments included tours at Headquarters Air Force Space Command, Air Education and Training Command, and US Strategic Command, where she was the Director of Plans and Policy (J5). In 2005, Helms completed the Senior Executive Course at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. In June of 2006, she was made a Brigadier General (“one-star General”) and became Commander of the 45th Space Wing based at Patrick AFB, Florida, responsible for the processing and launch of US government and commercial satellites from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. After earning the rank of Major General (“two-star General”), in November 2006, Helms moved to Offutt AFB, Nebraska, where she served as the Director of Plans and Policy for the USSTRATCOM (United States Strategic Command). Appointed to the rank of Lieutenant General (“three-star General”) in January 2011, she became Commander of the 14th Air Force (Air Forces Strategic) and Commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Space (JFCC SPACE), the operational space component of the US Strategic Command, located at VAFB in California, leading more than 20,500 personnel providing tailored, responsive, local, and global space effects in support of national objectives. In March 2013, Helms was nominated by President Barack Obama to become the vice commander of Space Command. However, the nomination

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was blocked by Senator Claire McCaskill, a lawmaker representative of the Democratic Party in the Armed Services Committee, due to an “unclear intervention” of General Helms, who, as the supreme authority of the Court Martial, had overturned the sexual assault conviction of her subordinate, Captain Matthew Herrera, at VAFB in February of 2012. Military rape/sexual assault is a growing epidemic among the armed forces. It is estimated that there are 19,000 cases per year, of which only one in six is reported. Helms exercised her legal discretionary authority in the court-martial and decided not to approve the conviction because she was not convinced “beyond a reasonable doubt” – based on the evidence, her best judgment as a senior military officer, and her personal and professional integrity – that the burden of proof had been met. According to Senator McCaskill, such a decision made it more difficult for victims of sexual assault to seek justice. In the face of Helms’s strong opposition, President Obama was forced to revoke her appointment. She submitted her resignation from the Air Force, which was accepted on April 1, 2014, and withdrew from public life. Helms established her own independent consulting company, Orbital Visions, LLC, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and was appointed as a member of the NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) whose mission is to evaluate NASA’s safety performance and advise the agency on ways to improve that performance. President Obama did appoint Helms to a two-year term on the Board of Trustees, Woodrow Wilson International Center, a bipartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. On March 9, 2017, she was elected to the Board of Trustees of The Aerospace Corporation. Among her many awards are the Gen. James V.  Hartinger Award, Thomas D.  White Space Award for Outstanding Contributions to Space, Dr. Kurt H. Debus Award, Women in Aerospace Outstanding Achievement Award, NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, and her induction into the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2004 and into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in 2018.

Sources For This Section Anthony, R. “Interview: Astronaut Susan Helms and DP J. Neihouse”, bigmoviezone. com (April 2002). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 193–196. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Knott, S. “Pioneering the Last Frontier”, Air Force Space Command Public Affairs (March 28, 2003). Official NASA biography of Susan Helms, jsc.nasa.gov (September 2012). “Preflight Interview: Susan Helms”, STS-101, nasa.gov (December 6, 2012).

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Schogol, J. “With Nomination Blocked, 3-Star Applies for Retirement”, airforcetimes.com (November 8, 2013). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space – Following Valentina, pp. 264, 270, 276, 292–293, 329–330. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Whitlock, C. “General’s Promotion Blocked over Her Dismissal of Sex-Assault Verdict”, washingtonpost.com (May 6, 2013). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 86–88. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

6.2 NANCY CURRIE-GREGG: A PASSION FOR FLYING AND A CONCERN FOR SAFETY Mission

Launch

Return

STS-57 STS-70 STS-88 STS-109

June 21, 1993 July 13, 1995 December 4, 1998 March 1, 2002

July 1, 1993 July 22, 1995 December 15, 1998 March 12, 2002

Nancy Currie-Gregg (Fig. 6.3) had served in the US Army as a helicopter instructor pilot and officer, before becoming an astronaut in July 1991. A veteran of four Space Shuttle missions, she has logged 999 hours (41.5 days) in space (Fig. 6.4). She was Mission Specialist-2/Flight Engineer (MS-2/FE) on STS-57 in 1993; STS-70 in 1995; STS-88, the first International Space Station (ISS) assembly mission in 1998; and STS-109, the fourth Hubble Space Telescope (HST) servicing mission in 20021. Nancy Jane Sherlock Currie-Gregg was born in Wilmington, Delaware, on December 29, 1958, the youngest of four siblings. Her father was in the Army Air Corps and, when she was a little girl, her family moved to Troy, Ohio, which she considers to be her hometown: “I knew I wanted to fly since from a very early age: I mean, I just dreamed about flying probably from the time I could walk. My father was a bombardier on a B-29  in WWII, stationed on Tinian Island, which is where the Enola Gay launched off. I think that it was vicariously that I developed this love of flying because he always used to talk to my two brothers about it. I was the one that kind of listened. I was the one that wore his flight jacket to school. I was the one that took all his pictures of his airplanes in and went to air shows with him”.

 She married the award-winning broadcast journalist and corporate manager Tim Gregg in December 2015, after her husband Dave Currie passed away in July 2011 from kidney cancer. 1

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Fig. 6.3.  Nancy Currie-Gregg. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fig. 6.4.  Cover commemorating the launch of Shuttle mission STS-57, signed by Nancy Currie. From the Author’s collection.

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A career in the space program, or even in the uniformed military services, was unthinkable during her childhood, however, and it did not become a concrete goal until much later in her life. Currie-Gregg said: “I guess looking back on it I find it amazing, because I was born in 1958 and in the late ’50s and ’60s a goal of becoming a military pilot or certainly an a­ stronaut was not something that could ever be a reality for a woman at that time. But no one ever told me that”.

Only towards the end of her time in high school did the military begin to accept female aviators, and NASA only began to accept female astronaut candidates when she was at Ohio State University studying biological sciences. She recalled: “So I was very, very fortunate that I was born at just the right time, because in the mid ’70s, when I was in high school, they opened up military flying to women. Of course in the late ’70s, NASA hired the first women astronauts and so I was literally in the right place at the right time all the way through my career”.

When she was in high school, Currie-Gregg used to read stories about “medevac” pilots and how they had extracted the wounded from landing zones in Vietnam, and she decided she wanted to do that: “I had a love for medicine. I had a love for flying. I thought what a great combination. So that was my original plan”. Having earned her degree in 1980, Currie-Gregg entered the army with a dream of becoming an aviator. Women at that time were gradually being introduced into combat positions and she went directly to flight school: “I went through air defense training at Fort Bliss, Texas, and then right into flight school. I had never flown anything in my entire life, and the first day they put me in a helicopter – and flying a helicopter is not all that easy or intuitive – and just as soon as I got in the aircraft, I said, ‘This is for me! This is what I wanted to do’”.

She became a Master Army Aviator and was eventually assigned as an instructor pilot at the US Army Aviation Center. Other positions followed: section leader, platoon leader, and brigade flight-standardization officer. By the end of her military career in 2005, after serving in the Army for 23 years, Currie-­ Gregg had logged over 3,900 hours in the air aboard various rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft. She said: “It was the most fun, the most enjoyable job I’ve ever had in my entire life! I just loved training flight students and sharing with them the same enjoyment of flying and the discipline of flying that I had”.

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Meanwhile, she had continued with her studies and earned a BSc degree, with honors, in Biological Science from the University of Columbus, Ohio, in 1980, and an MSc degree in Safety Engineering from the University of Southern California in 1985. There was a reason behind her choice of degree, as she explained: “When I was in flight school, we actually had an accident that killed my instructor pilots and two of the guys that I flew with every day. It was just kind of a strange coincidence that I wasn’t in the aircraft. And it was at that time that I decided to devote a portion of my career and my academic life to safety and safety engineering. So, that’s why I got a master’s in safety”.

Later, during her NASA career, Currie-Gregg went on to earn a doctorate in Industrial Engineering, specializing in Human Factors Engineering and Artificial Intelligence, from the University of Houston in 1997. She said: “Once I came down to Houston, I then received a doctorate in industrial engineering, again with an emphasis on human factors and safety engineering. [This is] Something I’ve always held very close to my heart because I did see what catastrophic things can happen due to human error in the cockpit, or human error combined with a malfunction in the aircraft”.

In 1986, she applied for admission into that year’s astronaut candidate class for the first time. She recalled: “My first time I applied was actually the year the Challenger happened; the application process was cancelled at that point. They resumed it again in ’87. In ’87 I was not selected but they asked me to come and work at NASA. I really thought it was a standard rejection call. You know, congratulations here, we didn’t select you this time but we’d like you to come and work here. They were very serious. I came down and worked here for two and a half years as a flight simulation engineer on our Shuttle Training Aircraft [STA] and then I was selected in 1990 to be an astronaut”.

In September 1987, having given birth to her daughter, Stephanie, in January that year, Currie-Gregg moved to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) as a flight simulation engineer on the STA. Selected as an astronaut in 1990, she completed the Ascan Training Program in 1991. She worked as a Capcom, providing a communications interface between ground controllers and flight crews, and her technical assignments within the Astronaut Office included Chief of the Astronaut Office Robotics Branch; Chief of the Astronaut Office Payloads

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and Habitability Branch; Spacecraft Communicator (Capcom); and lead flight crew representative for crew safety and habitability equipment. Currie-Gregg participated in four Space Shuttle missions. In 1993, at that time known as Nancy Sherlock, she was assigned to the Endeavour STS-57 mission, as MS-2/FE. She was responsible for operating the Shuttle’s robotic arm to retrieve the Italian-built EURECA platform (which had been floating in space for almost a year) and place it back into Endeavour’s payload bay, while her colleague David Low conducted a spacewalk to manually position the EURECA communications antennas for latching. This was also the first mission to carry another Italian-built module into space, the commercial laboratory Spacehab. This included 22 flight experiments on materials and life sciences research. Currie-Gregg spent every single moment of her limited spare time looking out of the window during the mission. She said later: “I can’t imagine taking a book into space other than I did fly a bible on all of my flights. I can’t imagine spending time doing something other than watching the sunrise on orbit. Every hour and a half you see a sunrise and it is the most incredible experience you have ever seen. As the sun comes up on the horizon you just see every conceivable color painted on the horizon. You see these incredible reds and oranges and yellows and greens, even pinks and purples. Come over the south Pacific and see a lightning storm at night and it is almost like someone set up this giant electrical charge and you just see these flashes just dancing all across the ocean”.

In 1995, she participated in the Discovery STS-70 mission, which deployed the final NASA TDRS (Tracking and Data Relay Satellite), a massive spacecraft that completed NASA’s orbiting communication satellite system. The crew also conducted a myriad of biomedical and remote sensing experiments. During an interview, she said: “We joke in the office that we’re human guinea pigs for a week or two. The problem is that we need the International Space Station. In ten days or fourteen days in a Shuttle you really can’t get that long-term research that really is required in something in like biomedicine”.

At that time, the ISS did not exist. Its construction began in 1998 and, for her next mission that same year, Currie-Gregg flew as MS-2/FE again for STS-88, the first Space Shuttle mission to carry hardware to space for the assembly of the ISS.  That hardware included “Unity,” the first American ISS module, which was connected to the Russian module “Zarya” that had been launched into space a few weeks earlier. Currie-Gregg was once again responsible for

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operating the robotic arm. Flying to the ISS was the fulfillment of her dreams, but there was a lot of pressure, as she outlined in her pre-flight interview: “If I miss it, you know, we may not have a space station. I mean, this is our critical piece”! Everything went well and her dream came true. She said later: “Definitely, without a doubt the most memorable experience of my professional life has been to be a part of the crew, to enter the International Space Station for the first time and to make that call to the ground, ‘Houston, this is the International Space Station’”.

In 2002, Currie-Gregg took part in the Columbia STS-109 mission, the fourth mission to service the HST. She flew as MS-2/FE once again: in fact, in her career she had served as FE on all four of her Shuttle missions – more than any other female astronaut. Her primary role in this mission was to operate the Shuttle’s robot arm to capture and redeploy the HST following the completion of numerous upgrades and repairs. She supported a series of five consecutive spacewalks performed by four crewmembers, moving the astronauts and their equipment so that they could replace both solar arrays and the primary power control unit, and install the new Advanced Camera for Surveys (that replaced the Faint Object Camera) and a scientific instrument cooling system to upgrade the Hubble’s capabilities. During a pre-flight interview, she said: “I can’t think of another mission that will be a better one to be on as the arm operator”. This mission was the last successful flight of Columbia, which was destroyed during its re-entry into the atmosphere in early 2003, killing the entire crew of seven. Following this tragedy, Currie-Gregg was selected to lead the Space Shuttle Program’s Safety and Mission Assurance Office, assisting with NASA’s Return to Flight efforts. She retired from the Army in May 2005 after achieving the rank of Colonel and served at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in a variety of leadership positions. As Senior Technical Assistant in the JSC Automation, Simulation, and Robotics Division, she worked for one year on the development, testing, and evaluation of human-robotic systems interfaces for advanced robotic systems, and contributed in implementing plans for future generation human-robot systems. In 2006 Currie-Gregg became Deputy Chief of the JSC Engineering Directorate, implementing strategic plans to support NASA’s three human spaceflight programs and supervising 2,000 contractors. In 2008 she became Principal Engineer in the JSC NESC (NASA Engineering and Safety Center) and served in that role until 2017, leading engineering and safety assessments and independent studies for future NASA human spaceflight programs and

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projects, and coordinating the contribution of US government agencies, industry, and universities. She concurrently served as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at North Carolina State University. After leaving NASA in 2017, Currie-Gregg accepted the position of Deputy Director and Chief Technology Officer at Texas A&M University, where she is Professor of Engineering Practice, Industrial & Systems Engineering and Aerospace Engineering, teaching courses in human factors engineering and ergonomics, systems engineering, quantitative risk analysis and reliability engineering, and systems safety engineering. In an interview she said: “I want to inspire young people to come this job because it is the most incredible job I could ever imagine. I want to give them the same opportunities that I’ve had”. Nancy Currie-Gregg has co-authored 11 scientific papers on human factors engineering. Among other honors, she was inducted into the Army Aviation Association of America Hall of Fame in 2010. She is a Member of the U.S. Senior Executive Service and a Retired Colonel, U.S. Army.

Sources For This Section Army Officer Makes Fourth Shuttle Flight. The Eagle: United States Army Space & Missiles Defense Command, 9(2), 11–12 (2012). Evans, B. “A Legacy of Women in Space: Twenty Years since STS-57”, americaspace. com (June 22, 2013). Georgsson, A. “Women and Space” (interview with Donna Fender and Nancy Currie), digital.lib.uh.edu (1999). Official NASA biography of Nancy Currie-Gregg, jsc.nasa.gov(January 2016). Personal contacts by e-mail in April 2016. “Preflight Interview: Nancy J. Currie”, STS-88, spaceflight.nasa.gov (April 7, 2002). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 90–92. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

6.3 WENDY LAWRENCE: THE US NAVY’S FIRST FEMALE ASTRONAUT Mission

Launch

Return

STS-67 STS-86 STS-91 STS-114

March 2, 1995 September 25, 1997 June 2, 1998 July 26, 2005

March 18, 1995 October 6, 1997 June 12, 1998 August 9, 2005

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Fig. 6.5.  Wendy Lawrence. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Wendy Lawrence was the third American astronaut to arrive at Star City near Moscow to train for a Shuttle-Mir mission, and was the first female astronaut from the US Navy to fly into space. Wendy Barrien Lawrence (Fig. 6.5) was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on July 2, 1959, and spent much of her childhood without her father, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. After watching the historic Apollo 11 Moon landing, the ten-year-old Lawrence was instantly bitten by “the space bug” and took a giant leap of her own. Sitting in front of a black-and-white television, she decided that she wanted to be an astronaut: “I was actually probably more fortunate than most other kids in that my dad was involved in the selection process for the original group of astronauts, so I had some inside information”. Her father had in fact been a finalist for the 1959 Mercury astronaut selection. After graduating from Fort Hunt High School, Alexandria, Virginia, in 1977, Lawrence chose to follow her father, who was a pilot in the US Navy and had received a Congressional Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War. She entered the US Naval Academy at Annapolis and was awarded a BSc degree in Oceanographic Engineering in 1981. In 1982, she became a US Navy pilot and earned her “Wings of Gold”:

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“I grew up in a Navy family. Both my father and my mother’s father were Navy pilots. My mother’s father had been in the Navy, had gone to the Naval Academy and gone into naval aviation. My dad went to the Naval Academy, went into naval aviation. So I grew up surrounded by planes, and certainly developed a fascination for them. I also knew that a lot of the first astronauts had gone to the Naval Academy and been naval aviators, so I thought, kill two birds with one stone; I’ll go to the Naval Academy and I’ll become a naval aviator, always keeping in the back of my mind that where I wanted the path to lead was to NASA”.

Lawrence served as a special weapons training officer, detachment maintenance officer and squadron Naval Air Training and Procedures Standardization officer. She was one of the first two women to participate in combat actions in the Indian Ocean, as part of a carrier battle group assigned to HC-6, the 6th Helicopter Combat Support Squadron (1983–86), and accumulated more than 1,000 hours in the H-46 helicopter. Selected for the Secretary of the Navy master’s degree program in ocean sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Lawrence earned her MSc in 1988. She was assigned to Helicopter Anti-­ Submarine Squadron Light 30 (HSL-30) as officer-in-charge of Detachment Alpha. They were deployed on the USS Chauvenet and provided support to Oceanographic Unit 5 for coastal surveying operations off Kenya and Vieques Island, Puerto Rico. In October 1990, Lawrence qualified at the Naval Academy as an instructor and novice women’s crew coach. She has logged over 1,500 flight hours in six different types of helicopters and made more than 800 shipboard landings. She was selected by NASA as an astronaut of the 14th group in March 1992. Her technical assignments within the Astronaut Office included flight software verification in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL), Astronaut Office Assistant Training Officer, and Astronaut Office representative for space station training and crew support. Lawrence participated in four Shuttle missions, the first of which was in 1995 when she flew as an MS aboard Endeavour STS-67. That mission carried ASTRO-2, the second dedicated Spacelab mission to conduct astronomical observations in the ultraviolet spectral regions, using three unique instruments to observe objects ranging from some within the Solar System to individual stars, nebulae, supernova remnants, galaxies, and active extragalactic objects. Her on-board duties included stowage and crew equipment, and filming the crew. After this mission, Lawrence became one of only 11 NASA astronauts to train for missions aboard the Russian space station Mir, assigned as John Blaha’s backup for the NASA-4 long-duration Mir mission. Four days before leaving

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Fig. 6.6.  Cover commemorating the launch of mission STS-86, signed by Wendy Lawrence. From the Author’s collection.

for Russia to start her training, she accidently discovered a memo sent from the Russian space agency – that nobody in the office had noticed before – which said that the minimum height for Soyuz had been changed from 160 cm to 164 cm, to use the Russian Orlan spacesuit, which is the suit that cosmonauts use for their spacewalks. As she was exactly 160 cm tall, Lawrence was no longer qualified, but she already had the ticket to Moscow and her chief, Bob Cabana, proposed that she should go to the Star City anyway as Russian Crusader or Director of Shuttle-Mir Operations. Lawrence agreed and helped Shannon Lucid and John Blaha to prepare for their missions. Meanwhile, Valery Ryumin (Program Manager for the Russian Phase-1) wrote a letter granting her a waiver and stating that she could start training for a flight to Mir provided that she would never be considered for a spacewalk in the Russian spacesuit. Lawrence was able to start her training for the sixth increment, scheduled for September 1996, on board Atlantis STS-86 (Fig. 6.6). The biggest challenge of that period was the language, since all the training was in Russian: “Our instructors were very committed to their task, they knew their area of expertise very well, and they spent a lot of hours making sure that they’re able to answer the most in-depth question from the crewmembers that they’re training, so they were truly professionals. The frustrating part was trying to do it in another language, when you felt like you didn’t have the level of proficiency that you needed; we weren’t 100 percent sure of what the person was saying, being

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able to catch maybe 80 percent of the conversation and then the frustration of not being able to exactly ask the question that you wanted to ask, because your vocabulary didn’t enable you to do that”.

The whole nature of the program suddenly changed in June 1997, when a Progress resupply vehicle collided with the Mir’s Spektr module, damaging a radiator and one of the module’s four solar arrays. For a while, it looked as though none of the American astronauts would get a chance to go up to Mir anymore: “It looked like it would probably be the end of the program, but the Russians persevered. They became focused on repairing Spektr with spacewalks. They were very determined that that was the course of action that they wanted to take, and based on that, both sides felt that all three crew members on board should be able to do an EVA in a Russian suit, and it would be an opportunity for US astronauts to get some more spacewalk experience, particularly in the Russian suit. So in July ’97 Bob Cabana replaced me with my backup. He felt pretty adamant about making sure that my participation in the Phase One Program at that point would be rewarded: I would fly on STS-86 and fly on STS-91. I knew that I was getting two space flights out of it; that wasn’t a bad deal for me. Dave Wolf got a spacewalk out of it, and I got to fly twice and got to fly on 91 as the Flight Engineer, which is a job that I really enjoy doing, so I think we were both satisfied with how everything worked out”.

Lawrence was impressed by the Russian space station: “It looks so different than Shuttle. Shuttle is clean and systems look good. And Mir, it looks old, it looks tired, and there’s all this stuff”. People working at the Control Center in Moscow really had no concept of what Mir looked like on the inside. They had lost track. Valery Ryumin himself, who had helped to design Mir, had said: “After about three years of operation, we completely lost track of what is on board Mir”. On STS-86, Lawrence was responsible for transferring five tons of cargo, scientific experiments and spare parts to repair the damaged Mir module. After six days of intense work, Shuttle Atlantis undocked and performed a 46-minute fly-around visual inspection of Mir to check the repaired module: “The fly-around on STS-86, I think will always be very memorable. It’s like, we have these two 100-ton spacecraft that are literally doing this dance around one another, while both of them are traveling around the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour. And then Mir, the modules are white, and with the sun shining on them, they absolutely glisten, and then that, set against the very, very blackness of space, is a strikingly beautiful sight. I think it’s a memory I’ll have all of my life. But then [there was] the fact that we were doing this in space and that two dif-

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ferent countries that had formerly been enemies were now closely cooperating, so that we could maneuver these vehicles around one another”.

In 1998, Lawrence flew aboard Discovery STS-91, and was MS-2/FE during ascent and entry, and then in charge of all of the 2.7 tons of logistics transferred between the two vehicles: a very demanding task: “It always goes very quickly on orbit, unfortunately. That’s the philosophy of a short-duration mission, is to maximize every moment while you’re up there. With a long-duration mission, you know that you have time and you don’t have to work as furiously to get everything done. During our ten days, we were very, very busy, I think at times to the detriment of being able just to enjoy each other’s company, to go over and spend some time in the Mir base block and get a chance to talk with your Russian counterparts. Certainly it’s difficult to grab a couple of minutes just to look out the window. You have to fight to protect that time, also”.

Surprisingly, Mir looked better than it had on her last visit the year before: “The cosmonaut crews over the years had kept it in good shape. In fact, Mir looked better than it did on STS-86. So we have to give them compliments because it takes a lot of effort to keep that thing up and running”.

This was the ninth Shuttle–Mir mission, which ended Phase One, the first phase of the collaboration program between the US and Russia: “Closing the hatch was hard for me, because it was the end of a program that I had spent many, many years participating in, but I think we went out on a good note. It was a great way to close out what has been a very successful program”.

Lawrence’s fourth and last spaceflight was the Discovery STS-114 mission in 2005. This mission to the ISS, commanded by Eileen Collins, marked the American “Return to Flight” after the devastating tragedy of Columbia in 2003. The Columbia tragedy was a tough experience for Lawrence: “It’s hard to lose one friend… but to lose seven of them at once is just absolutely devastating. I think I was very well aware of the risk, but since the Shuttle is an experimental vehicle and we are continuing to learn things about flying in space and how difficult that is, I’m not sure, on a daily basis, I was aware of all the risks that are out there. I can honestly say that I never really thought that entry posed more of a risk than ascent; now I’m very much aware of that. And as far as com-

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mitment to my work, I think the key message that I’ve taken away from the accident is that we can’t take anything for granted”.

One important goal of this first mission after the accident was to show that NASA had implemented the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) recommendations to the best of its ability and that astronauts had the inspection capability, that they could determine the health of the Shuttle’s Thermal Protection System (TPS) tiles, and, if necessary, they had techniques that they could use to repair the tiles. They used lasers to detect very small damage to the leading edge and sent images down to the ground. In fact the following day, during a spacewalk on the exterior of a spacecraft in flight, Stephen Robinson demonstrated repair techniques for the first time. During this mission, Lawrence operated the ISS robot arm to transfer five tons of equipment and supplies to the station from the MPLM “Rafaello”, subsequently returning 3.2 tons of experiments, unneeded equipment and trash materials to the module to bring back to Earth. Altogether, Wendy Lawrence logged 1,225 hours (over 51 days) in space. After 14  years, she left NASA in June 2006 to pursue interests in private-­ sector spaceflight and, in November that year, she joined Andrews Space, Inc. (an integrator of aerospace systems and developer of advanced space technologies, based in Houston, Texas) as a Senior Advisor for Human Spaceflight and Crew Safety. She also participated in the initial development of the Rocketplane Kistler K-1 crew and cargo module. Lawrence is also involved in many different activities, working part-time at Space Camp and the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, informing the public about NASA’s spaceflight programs, constantly encouraging and inspiring the next generation to “Dare to Dream,” and participating in STEM education programs and outreach organizations such as higherorbits.org, girlswhocode.com and astrafemina.org: “I know the impact that having a dream can have on your life. That’s why I tell kids to have the courage to dream their dreams and then be willing to pursue it with a lot of hard work”.

Lawrence also serves on several advisory boards, including the Association of Space Explorers, Association of Naval Aviation, Women Military Aviators, and Phi Kappa Phi. She lives in Ferndale, Washington State, with her spouse Cathy Watson.

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Sources For This Section Brinson R., “History-making Astronaut Wendy Lawrence talks dreaming big”, in bleepmag.com (May 5, 2016) Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 167–168. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Nevills, A. “STS-114 Mission Specialist Wendy Lawrence: ‘Hanging 10’ for Shuttle Countdown”, nasa.gov/vision/space/preparingtravel (March 7, 2005). Official NASA biography of Wendy Lawrence, jsc.nasa.gov (August 2006). Official USNA biography “Captain Wendy B.  Lawrence ’81, Usn (Ret.)” in www.usna.com “Preflight Interview: Wendy Lawrence”, nasa.gov/vision/space/preparingtravel (January 20, 2004). “Preflight Interview: Wendy Lawrence”, STS-114, nasa.gov/vision/space/preparingtravel (February 23, 2005). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space – Following Valentina, pp. 272–273, 280, 284, 300, 328–329, 341. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Wegmueller S. & Lumme D., “Give Yourself Permission to Dream Your Dream Every Kid Needs a Dream” in “30 Inspirational Women in Naval Engineering, STEM and beyond” NEJ Special Edition (September 2020) Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 98–99. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002). Wright, R. “Interview with Wendy Lawrence”, spaceflight.nasa.gov/oral-histories (July 21, 1998). www.AstronautWendyLawrence.com

6.4 CADY COLEMAN: THE FLUTE-PLAYING COLONEL IN SPACE Mission

Launch

Return

STS-73 STS-93 Soyuz TMA-20

October 20, 1995 July 23, 1999 December 15, 2010

November 5, 1995 July 27, 1999 May 24, 2011

Cady Coleman grew up in an exploration-based family. Her father was in the military and was a deep-sea-diving explorer. She recalls: “I grew up in a family with a dad who did undersea exploration. He was part of a program when we first designed habitats where men could live under the sea, and so I actually thought that exploration was normal”.

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Fig. 6.7.  Cady Coleman. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Catherine “Cady” Grace Coleman (Fig. 6.7), the second of four siblings, was born on December 14, 1960, in Charleston, South Carolina, and lived in a number of places around the country: San Francisco, Virginia Beach, and Washington, D.C. She has Irish heritage on both sides of her family: “I am one-quarter Irish on either side and my brother is married to an Irish woman and their kids are champion Irish dancers”.

Coleman moved to Fairfax, Virginia, when she was 12. After graduating from Wilbert Tucker Woodson High School, Fairfax, in 1978, she was an exchange student at Røyken Upper Secondary School in Norway with the AFS Intercultural Programs until mid-1979. Back in the US, she joined the MIT and, in 1983, earned a BSc degree in Chemistry. While many boys grew up wanting to be astronauts, Coleman said that she looked with interest and curiosity at the space program, but she had never thought of becoming an astronaut herself – because that was not something attainable for a girl when she was young – until she happened to meet Sally Ride while she was working on her dissertation at MIT in 1983:

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“After Sally Ride made her first flight, she came to MIT and she talked to the women students, and I just looked at her and I thought, ‘I want that job’. She was a scientist and at the same time she was also somebody that was helping to explore the universe, and she got to fly jets, scuba dive, all these things that I loved, and I was actually just so inspired to meet her and it made a big difference to me. I’d seen a lot of astronauts on TV, in pictures; none of them looked like me. It was a bunch of guys that seemed a lot older to me and they didn’t have much hair, and it just didn’t really make me think, that could be me. And then I meet Sally Ride and I think, maybe that could be me”.

This was the turning point in her life, when Coleman knew what she wanted to do: “I was interested in being in the military, I was interested in science, I loved chemistry, and at the same time I always wished for just a little bit more adventure than just the laboratory”. An astronaut career would offer her the opportunity to fly and explore (Fig. 6.8). That same year (1983), having almost finished her multidisciplinary dissertation in Polymer Science and Engineering, Coleman joined the US Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corp (ROTC) as a second lieutenant, where she met Pamela Melroy and the two became great friends. Coleman took

Fig. 6.8.  Commemorative cover postmarked in Korolyov (where the Roscosmos Mission Control Center is based) on the day of undocking and landing of the mission of Soyuz TMA-20, signed by the crew. From the Author’s collection.

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active service in the US Air Force in 1988 after earning her doctorate and was assigned as a chemical researcher at the Materials Directorate of the Wright Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. She worked in polymer chemistry and synthesized model compounds for optical applications in advanced computer science and data storage. As a researcher, she also contributed to the analysis of the surface of the Long-Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF). This was the experimental platform that NASA had placed in Earth orbit in April 1984, deployed by Space Shuttle Challenger during the STS-41C mission, and left freely floating in space for nearly six years to study the effects of longterm exposure to space on materials, components, and systems, with reference to the design of the space station. The platform was then recovered in January 1990 by the Space Shuttle Columbia during mission STS-32, in which two women astronauts, Marsha Ivins and Bonnie Dunbar, also flew, with Dunbar recovering the LDEF using the robotic arm. While she was at Wright-Patterson, Coleman volunteered to be a test subject in the centrifuge program at the Crew Systems Directorate of the nearby Armstrong Aeromedical Laboratory, which was doing medical trials for NASA. She recalls: “On several occasions, the five women who were part of the twenty-people volunteer panel outperformed the men”. Coleman set several endurance and tolerance records during her participation in physiological and new-equipment studies. She then decided to go back to school and, in 1991, earned her doctorate in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts. She applied to enter the NASA Astronaut Corps and was selected for the 14th group of astronauts in 1992. Initially assigned to the SAIL for flight software verification, Coleman subsequently served in the Astronaut Office Payloads and Habitability Branch, working with experiment designers to ensure that payloads could be operated successfully in the microgravity environment of low Earth orbit. As the lead astronaut for long-term habitability issues, she led the effort to label the Russian segments of the ISS in English and also tracked issues such as acoustics and living accommodation aboard the station. She served for a number of years as a Capcom in Mission Control for both the Space Shuttle and the ISS, and represented the Astronaut Office as Lead of the Tile Repair Team for NASA’s “Return to Flight” after the Columbia accident. She also served as the Chief of Robotics for the Astronaut Office, tasked with overseeing astronaut robotics training and the integration of crew interfaces into new robotics systems. Coleman is a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions (STS-73 and STS-93) and one long-duration mission on the ISS (Expedition-26/27). On all three missions, she was responsible for operations with the RMS robotic arm.

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Fig. 6.9.  The patch of the STS-73 mission features the shape of the Cupola because the research performed in the United States Microgravity Laboratory (USML) was paving the way for space station science. This was before the existence of the ISS, whose construction did not begin until three years later. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Mission STS-73, the second United States Microgravity Laboratory (USML) flight in 1995, was one of the longest Shuttle missions (Fig. 6.9). The launch was postponed six times, twice due to adverse weather conditions and another four due to technical problems. During the 16-day scientific mission, experiments on material science, biotechnology, combustion science, and fluid physics were conducted in the Spacelab. At that time, the ISS still didn’t exist: its construction began in 1998. In an interview, Coleman said: “If you look at our patch, you’ll see actually the shape of the Cupola, because our job was to go and pave the way for space station science, to allow scientists to really maximize the resource of microgravity up there”.

Coleman experienced the hectic schedule of the short-duration Shuttle missions: “I personally interacted with 30 experiments, many of which were in fluid physics and crystal growth. This is where my training as a scientist really came in

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handy, as it is a challenge to work quickly but well. It is like having 30 customers in 16 days. There isn’t time for mistakes. You need to go up there and do your best”.

In order to provide the best stability for the experiments, Shuttle Columbia was flown in a “gravity gradient attitude,” with its tail pointed towards Earth. Other than Pilot Kent Rominger, the crew consisted of only scientists. Only Commander Kenneth Bowersox and Payload Commander Kathryn Thornton had flown before. During her second mission, STS-93 in 1999, Coleman was the lead Mission Specialist (MS), responsible for deploying the Chandra-X-ray Observatory, NASA’s orbital telescope designed to enable scientists to study exotic phenomena such as exploding stars, quasars, and black holes, and to improve our knowledge and understanding of the universe. Chandra is still being used to detect X-ray emissions from very hot regions of the universe, such as exploded stars, clusters of galaxies, and matter around black holes. STS-93 was the first mission ever commanded by a woman, Eileen Collins, who – like Coleman – has Irish ancestry and had been a test pilot of military jet aircraft. In October 2004, Coleman participated in the seventh NEEMO expedition (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations), the NASA program aimed at investigating survival in a hostile, alien place for humans to live, during space-exploration simulation missions performed in the Aquarius underwater laboratory, the world’s only undersea research station. Operated by Florida International University (FIU), Aquarius is located 5.6  km (3.5 miles) off Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and is deployed next to deep coral reefs 62 ft (19 m) below the surface. During this expedition, Coleman lived and worked underwater for 11 days. In 2009, she retired from the US Air Force with the rank of colonel. In December 2010, Coleman was launched into space for a third time, as flight engineer aboard the Russian Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft. As part of the long-duration Expedition-26/27, together with Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli, Coleman spent 159 days aboard the ISS, serving as the lead science officer, lead robotics officer and flight engineer for Expedition-26/27, and contributing to many scientific research experiments. She supervised more than 100 science and technology experiments aboard the station, including the investigation of the deterioration of the human skeletal structure: “We are lab rats, and I don’t mind being a lab rat. It is part of what we go up there to find out. How does space really affect us? One of the really exciting areas

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I think is osteoporosis – what happens to bones and bone health as we get older. Up in space we don’t necessarily get older any faster but we do by floating around in microgravity. We don’t actually put stress on our bones and we lose bone mass at a very high rate, much higher than your average 70-year-old woman with osteoporosis, and that means in just a few months we can understand what happens to bones when they start to ‘dissolve’, and how do they rebuild themselves, and how can we prevent that from happening. Here on the Earth we can look at those questions but they take a few years to look at, and we’re looking a population that often has a number of different kinds of health problems in addition to osteoporosis, whereas we as astronauts often have a fairly clean medical history. “Another example is the investigation on our circulatory system. When we go up to space where our hearts do not have to actually pump blood from our feet all the way up to our head against the force of gravity, it means that we can observe our hearts under some different circumstances that allow some of those really subtle factors to be better understood. On our mission we’re doing a very comprehensive experiment called the Integrated Cardiovascular Experiment, and it’s a whole bunch of different investigations all over the body that have to do with circulation, with breathing, with blood chemistry associated with those, with the physical effects on your organs. We’re going to do ultrasound on each other to look at our hearts when we first get up there, after a month, after two months, after three months, because this different behavior of the heart up in microgravity means that it’s going to actually start being a different size, perhaps have a different strength in muscle volume, and we are doing a number of tests to measure all those different factors”.

Expedition-26/27 hosted a record number of visiting vehicles to the ISS: two Space Shuttle missions (STS-133 and STS-134), three Russian Progress supply ships, the second Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) Johannes Kepler from the European Space Agency (ESA), and the second Japanese supply vessel HTV Kounatori. Notably, Coleman was the lead robotic arm operator for the capture of Kounatori and became the second-ever astronaut to capture a free-­ flying supply ship from the ISS (the first had been Nicole Stott, in 2009). Coleman’s long-term expedition started on December 15, 2010 – the day after her 50th birthday – when she lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard Soyuz TMA-20. It ended on May 23, 2011 when she returned to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-19, landing in the steppes of Kazakhstan. She was in space during the commemoration of important anniversaries, such as the 50th anniversary of the flights of Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard, and the 30th anniversary of the first Shuttle flight.

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An accomplished flutist, Coleman formed a traditional Irish band called Banelot with NASA astronaut Stephen Robinson, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, and Micki Pettit (wife of the astronaut Donald Pettit). She took some flutes with her to the ISS and, on April 12, 2011, to salute 50 years of human spaceflight in honor of Yuri Gagarin, she performed the first space-­ Earth musical duet. Together with musician Ian Anderson, the founder of the Jethro Tull rock band, she played an arrangement of the famous Bach’s Bourée, which Anderson and Jethro Tull had performed during their 1969 US tour to commemorate Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepping on the Moon. Anderson played his part from Perm, Russia, while Coleman played her part from 220 miles above Earth. The two parts were played separately and then joined together (Fig. 6.10). During the mission Coleman recorded three songs for The Chieftains, a prominent traditional Irish band formed in Dublin in 1963. The songs were featured on Chieftains In Orbit (the band’s 50th anniversary album) which was the first album ever recorded in space (Fig. 6.11). Coleman also gave advice and tips from space to actress Sandra Bullock while she was shooting Gravity, the science-fiction movie directed by Alfonso Cuarón, which won seven Oscars at the 86th Academy Awards, and

Fig. 6.10.  Flute duet. Cady Coleman playing on the International Space Station and Ian Anderson playing on the ground. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Fig. 6.11.  Cover flown in space, carried aboard the ISS from the ATV-2 and signed by the crew of Expedition-26, including Cady Coleman. (Thanks to astronaut Paolo Nespoli, who also put the seal of his magISStra mission on the cover.) From the Author’s collection.

compliments from NASA. According to Coleman, although life and movie are two different things, having put the spotlight on the astronaut’s work helps to make us think: “Our planet sits in a neighborhood within the universe, and we are all space explorers. I think space movies, in general, bring that message home to us. Whether we live with our feet on the planet or whether we live on the space station, we are all space travelers, and we are a people of space exploration”.

During her three missions, including the long-duration expedition on ISS, she accumulated over 180 days in space. On the ground, Coleman served in a variety of roles within the Astronaut Office, including Chief of Robotics and Lead Astronaut for integration of supply ships from NASA’s commercial partners, Space-X and Orbital ATK.  Before retiring from NASA, Coleman led open-innovation and public-­private partnership efforts for the Office of the Chief Technologist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., and helped cultivate commercial partnerships with NASA.  The Crew Dragon and CST-100 Starliner’s

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launches are the most concrete examples of the success of those efforts. After 24 years and three trips to space, Cady Coleman left NASA on December 1, 2016. In 2019 she was featured, along with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Eileen Collins, on one of the four new Space Exploration stamps issued in Dublin, Ireland to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, and US astronauts of Irish ancestry (Figs. 6.12 and 6.13). “The fact that two women are featured is really significant”, Coleman said. “They’ll be seen for years by a bunch of girls who will think it’s normal to do these kinds of things”. She is currently a public speaker and consultant, passionate about sharing her experiences in leadership and inclusive collaboration, as well as making science accessible to the general public. She lives in western Massachusetts with her husband Josh Simpson, who is a glass artist. Coleman says: “I would love to go back to space again. You are travelling around the earth 16 times a day and the view is quite profound – you feel like a citizen of the Earth”.

Fig. 6.12.  The Irish stamp featuring Cady Coleman, one of the Space Exploration stamps celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, and US astronauts with Irish ancestry, issued in Dublin, Ireland, on July 18, 2019. Figure Credit: © Irish An Post. Reproduced with kind permission. All rights reserved.

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Fig. 6.13.  (Top), Cady Coleman holds an enlarged version of her Irish Space Exploration stamp. (Bottom) Coleman joins musician Matt Molloy on the flute at the launch of the Irish Space Exploration stamps. Figure Credits: © Maxwells, Dublin. Reproduced with kind permission. All rights reserved.

Sources For This Section Anon. GPO Touch Down for Astronaut to unveil Space Exploration stamps, in www. anpost.com (July 19, 2019) Dismukes, K. “How to Become an Astronaut 101”, spaceflight.nasa.gov/outreach (April 7, 2002). Frevele, J. “The First Ever Space–Earth Flute Duet”, themarysue.com (April 16, 2011). Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 134–138. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014).

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Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 182–186. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Moskowitz, C. “Back on the Ground: Q&A with Astronaut Cady Coleman”, space. com (June 21, 2011). Moskowitz, C. “Gravity’s Astronaut Describes the Trials of Space”, scientificamerican. com (October 1, 2013). Official NASA biography of Cady Coleman, jsc.nasa.gov (January 2012). Pearlman, R. “Astronaut Gave ‘Gravity’ Advice to Sandra Bullock from Space”, collectspace.com (September 13, 2013). “Preflight Interview: Catherine Coleman [before Expedition 26]”, STS-93, nasa.gov (October 28, 2010). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space—Following Valentina, pp. 275, 277, 292. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 101–102. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

6.5 KATHRYN HIRE: THE FIRST AMERICAN WOMAN ASSIGNED TO A COMBAT AIRCREW Mission

Launch

Return

STS-90 STS-130

April 17, 1998 February 8, 2010

May 3, 1998 February 21, 2010

Kathryn “Kay” Patricia Hire (Fig. 6.14) was born on August 26, 1959, in Mobile, Alabama, the youngest of the three daughters of a land surveyor and a draftsman. She was raised on the Gulf Coast: “I was very fortunate to have access to Mobile Bay and the Gulf Coast and we were especially interested in anything had to do with the water: water skiing, swimming, surfing, sailing”. She used to look at craters on the Moon using her father’s surveying equipment and started to develop a love for aviation and space: “I didn’t really have a specific goal to be an astronaut as a child because there were no women astronauts and I guess I just never really thought about it that way. However, I was very interested in space. I remember watching all of the NASA activities and being quite interested as a very young child watching the Moon landings and looking at the Moon with a telescope” (Fig. 6.15). After attending St. Pius X Grade School, in Mobile, Alabama, Hire graduated in 1977 from Murphy High School. She credits her Mobile teachers for nurturing her curiosity:

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Fig. 6.14.  Kathryn Hire. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fig. 6.15.  Cover commemorating the delivery of the Cupola, built by Thales Alenia Space in Italy. The cover was signed by Kay Hire and other crewmembers when visiting the Thales plant in Turin, Italy, where the Cupola was designed and built. From the Author’s collection.

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“I had such a great foundation at St. Pius the Tenth Catholic School, not only academically but just as a whole person. The way the teachers instilled curiosity and absolutely encouraged us to explore that helped me ask a lot of questions about math, science and certainly be curious about space and space travel. This is where it all started for me. At Murphy High School we had such great teachers and again, they inspired us to work harder. And then there was a little bit of competition among the students who wanted to be the best”.

Hire heard rumors that military academies were about to take in women. As she wanted to pursue her scholarship without weighing heavily on the family budget, she applied for the Naval ROTC program and went to Annapolis for an interview, was accepted, and entered the US Naval Academy. She recalls that it truly broadened her horizons: “Growing up in Mobile, I was very drawn to the water, spent a lot of time as a kid on the water. So the Navy certainly interested me. So it really wasn’t a tough decision”. In 1981, Hire graduated with a BSc degree in Engineering Resources Management from the US Naval Academy, and her attention was caught in April 1981 by the launch of the first Space Shuttle. As she really wanted to fly but was not keen-eyed enough to become a pilot (20/20 vision was a requirement), she went through flight training and became one of the first women naval flight officers, the air crew members that fly with the pilots and operate the aircraft systems and the weapons systems. She explains: “The Navy had women pilots since 1973, but they had just opened to women the Naval Flight Officer position, the ‘back-­seaters’, the year before I graduated”. In 1982, Hire earned her Naval Flight Officer Wings and was assigned as a navigator/communicator to the Oceanographic Development Squadron Eight (VXN-8). She participated in worldwide oceanographic research missions to collect data during North Atlantic, European, and Caribbean operations aboard specially-configured Orion P-3C Update III maritime patrol aircraft. Over three years, Hire flew to 25 different countries: “I joined the Navy to see the world, so that was just a tremendous experience”. After this experience, from 1986 to 1989 she instructed other naval flight officers in navigation over land and over water “and long-range over-water navigation.” During those three years, she taught over 600 students in the US Navy “Naval Flight Officer Training,” progressing from Navigation Instructor through Course Manager to Curriculum Manager. Hire was awarded the rank of Air Force “Master of Flying Instructor” while concurrently assigned as a navigator flight instructor in the USAF T-43A aircraft. After serving in the US Navy for seven-and-a-half years, Hire left full-time service. Continuing in the aviation field as a Navy Reserve Officer, she began work at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in May 1989 as a Space Shuttle

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ground processing engineer for Lockheed Space Operations Company, a contractor to NASA. She also joined the Florida Institute of Technology, where she earned an MSc degree on Space Systems Technology in 1991. That same year, she was certified at Lockheed as a Space Shuttle Test Project Engineer (TPE). During her six years at KSC, she was an Orbiter Mechanical Systems Engineer, then TPE, and eventually Supervisor of Launch Pad Access Swing Arms. She served as a “Cape Crusader” and Astronaut Support, processing Space Shuttles from landing through ground preparations and launch countdowns for over 40 missions, and working closely with flight crews. Hire also headed the checkout of the Extravehicular Mobility Units (spacesuits) and Russian Orbiter Docking System: “It was very exciting to be working directly on the Space Shuttle flight hardware and preparing so many different missions. So during that time I went ahead and submitted my application to become an astronaut”.

She applied before finishing her master’s degree but she received notification that while she was on a good path she still needed to get a little more experience and finish her education. Meanwhile, Hire had continued her Navy Reserve duty with various units based in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, and was routinely deployed for flight operations throughout the North Atlantic, Europe, and the Caribbean. She became the first American woman assigned to a combat aircrew, on May 13, 1993, when she reported to Patrol Squadron 62 (VP-62) to fly the P-3 maritime patrol aircraft. She said: “I always felt the combat restrictions would go away, and eventually they did. When that happened I was right there ready to take advantage of the new opportunities”. When she applied again for the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1994, Hire was called in for an interview. She was selected by NASA for the 15th Astronaut Group in December 1994. At the time she was a supervisor at the KSC, and became the first astronaut to be selected from the Kennedy Space Center workforce. The news arrived in the afternoon during the Space Center’s annual year-end picnic. She had to hold a press conference and all her colleagues started to gather around to congratulate her. “These people that I had known and worked with for many years came up to me and what they had were paper plates, and they thrust their paper plate at me and said: ‘Can I get your autograph’? I thought they were kidding. I burst out laughing, and they were serious. They were really upset. I got a pen and started sign-

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ing paper plates. I felt so weird in signing paper plates for people that I’d known and worked right besides for several years”.

Hire left KSC and reported to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston in March 1995, while still a commander in the Navy Reserve. She initially served in SAIL and eventually headed that laboratory. She then worked on Shuttle payloads, flight crew equipment, and as spacecraft communicator: “Serving as Capsule Communicators or CAPCOM in Mission Control gives a lot of insight into how the ground portion of our team is functioning while we are on orbit”. Hire flew in space twice: in 1998 and in 2010. In 1998, she was an MS for mission STS-90 known as “Neurolab,” the last mission of the Spacelab Long Module (LM) payload prior to the start of the construction and habitation of the ISS. The mission also carried a couple of thousand of rats, mice, crickets, swordtail fish and oyster toad fish. The seven-member crew played both the role of experiment subjects and operators for 26 life science experiments focused on the effects of microgravity on the brain and central nervous system: “This was the only NASA mission that was dedicated solely to just one area of science and that was neurology. There were twenty-six primary neurological experiments conducted. We took along with us animals that were test subjects and we ourselves were test subjects and it was quite interesting. The interesting overall result from the Spacelab was that the human central nervous system is very complicated. We already knew that, but it’s also very adaptive. It’s amazing how quickly the human body adapts to the zero gravity. Also the animals that we took with us adapted very quickly to this new environment and then when we came back to Earth, all of us adapted very quickly again back to the 1 g environment here on the surface of the Earth”.

After the events of 9/11, Hire was recalled to active naval duty from 2001 to 2003 to support Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom during the second Gulf War, as a member of US Naval Central Command staff at MacDill AFB, Florida. After serving in multiple leadership roles throughout her Navy career, and logging more than 3,400 flight hours in various aircraft, she was promoted to her current rank of Captain in the US Navy on December 1, 2002. After the Gulf War operations, she resumed her part-­ time reserve status. In 2010, Hire flew to space on a second mission, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-130, to help assemble the ISS (Fig. 6.16). She was the RMS operator, in charge of supporting the installation of two major additions to the ISS: the Node-3 Tranquility module and the seven-windowed Cupola, both built and integrated in Italy by Thales Alenia Space. Node-3 provided

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Fig. 6.16.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-130, signed by Kay Hire and other crew members. From the Author’s collection.

additional room for space scientists, with room for habitability items such as equipment to process the water, the toilets and the gym, which had previously been housed within the US laboratory section restricting the available room there for experiments. The Cupola, the panoramic control tower positioned on the Earth-facing side of the ISS, has become a beloved section for anyone aboard the station: “the new window that forever changed our view of Earth,” as the New York Times called it. In the NASA mission pre-flight interview, Hire said: “When people look at STS-130 and they see the six crew members, we are just a small representative of the entire team. To make this mission happen and to make it successful, we have thousands of people working all across the country, at NASA centers and even at subcontractors and vendors scattered all across the country to provide individual pieces and parts of not only the Space Shuttle but also the payload that we carry and every bit of controlling the mission once we are on orbit. It takes all of these different people, also our trainers and instructors that prepare us for the mission, not to mention our international partners as well. Our payload is coming from Italy and we’ve had just tremendous support from the folks in Italy that have provided this fantastic payload for us to bring to the International Space Station to enhance the capability there, so it’s

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not just the six crew members that you see. We are just representatives of this entire effort that is just fantastic”.

As loadmaster, Hire used the robotic arm to transfer 4.5 tons of materials and supplies to the station, and helped install water recycling, air cleaning and cooling, and crew exercise equipment in Node-3 and Cupola. At the end of her second mission, Hire had logged over 711 hours in space. After a 30-year career with NASA, Kay Hire retired from the agency on February 28, 2019. She is now a successful and inspiring speaker who pushes today’s students to excellence in whatever fields they desire: “You need math and science, and you need some art to balance it out. Build a good foundation of solid academic performance with sports and other activities, too. So when an opportunity comes, you can raise your hand and say, ‘I can do that’”.

Sources For This Section Byrd, R. “The Interview: Navy Capt. Kay Hire”, fox10tv.com. “Interview with Astronaut Kay Hire”, kids.usa.gov (February 1, 2016). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 183–184. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Official NASA biography of Kathryn Hire, jsc.nasa.gov (March 2010). “Preflight Interview: Kathryn P. Hire, Mission Specialist”, STS-130, nasa.gov (January 27, 2010). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space—Following Valentina, pp. 283–284. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 108–109. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

6.6 LAUREL CLARK: FROM DEEP OCEANS TO THE STARS Mission

Launch

Return

STS-107

January 16, 2003

–

US Navy Captain Laurel Clark (Fig. 6.17) died at the age of 41, together with her six crewmates, over the southern US on February 1, 2003, when Space Shuttle Columbia and the crew perished during re-entry, 16 minutes prior to the scheduled landing (Fig. 6.18). Before going into space, Clark was an undersea medical officer and then a flight surgeon.

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Fig. 6.17.  Laurel Clark. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fig. 6.18.  Cover commemorating the launch of Space Shuttle mission STS-107, signed by Laurel Clark. From the Author’s collection.

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Laurel Blair Salton Clark, known as “Laurie” to her family and friends, was born on March 10, 1961 – the oldest of four children – in Ames, Iowa, where her father, Robert Salton, attended graduate school at Iowa State University. But Clark did not remember Ames because the family left when she was just two years old and moved to her parents’ hometown, the tiny hamlet of Delhi, New York, with a population of just 2,000. She attended elementary school at the Delaware Academy until 1975. Then the family moved again to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and, after her parents got divorced, Clark ended up settling with her mother and her siblings in Racine, Wisconsin, which she considered to be her hometown. She enjoyed scuba-diving, hiking, camping, biking, parachuting, flying, and traveling. In an interview she said: “I was interested in the Moon landings just about the same as everyone else of my generation. But I never really thought about being an astronaut or working in space myself. I was very interested in environment and ecosystems and animals.”

Clark described herself in another interview as “a boring, straight-A student, without many hobbies,” but she was on the swim team and in the ski club. Those skills became important when she decided to go through the very demanding US Navy diving program. After graduating in 1979 from William Horlick High School, Racine, Wisconsin, Clark earned a BSc degree in Zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983. Eventually, she decided to pursue medicine and, in 1987, earned her Medical Doctorate (MD) from the same university. To help pay for her college education during medical school, Clark did active duty training with the Diving Medicine Department at the Naval Experimental Diving Unit in March 1987. After completing medical school, she underwent post-graduate medical education in Pediatrics from 1987 to 1988 at Naval Hospital Bethesda, Maryland. The following year, she became a Navy undersea medical officer and was involved with submarines and with divers: “Submarine crews, like astronauts, are selected from a pool of people who turn out to be very healthy. If you have medical problems, then you’re not allowed to continue in the submarine service because you’re out at sea for long periods of time”.

Clark was then assigned as the Submarine Squadron Fourteen Medical Department Head in Holy Loch in Scotland, dove with US Navy divers and Naval Special Warfare Unit Two Seals, and performed numerous medical

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evacuations from US submarines: “People get appendicitis and can get infections. And there were certain times when I had to be involved in getting people off the submarine and getting them to hospitals for further medical care”. After two years of operational experience, Clark was designated as a Naval Submarine Medical Officer and Diving Medical Officer, and did her job with interest and passion: “If you’re trying to get someone who’s sick with a fever off of a submarine and it’s cold and raining outside, and then you’ve got to get them off of the submarine (they’re not able to walk), and the only way in and out of a submarine, generally, is through a fairly narrow hatch. So, you have to be able to transport them without hurting them or anyone else who’s trying to move them off of the submarine. And then, once you get them off the submarine, you still have to get them onto another ship, then to land. And you’re doing all of this in a different country, with a different medical system”.

Clark then undertook six months of aeromedical training at the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute in Pensacola, Florida, where she made numerous deployments, practiced medicine in austere environments, and flew on multiple aircraft. Her squadron won the Marine Attack Squadron of the year for its successful deployment. She was then assigned as the Group Flight Surgeon for the Marine Aircraft Group MAG 13 and served as a flight surgeon for the Naval Flight Officer advanced training squadron VT-86 in Pensacola, Florida. Clark was a Basic Life Support Instructor, Advanced Cardiac Life Support Provider, Advanced Trauma Life Support Provider, and Hyperbaric Chamber Advisor: “In the Navy I was exposed to a lot of different operational environments, working on submarines and working in tight quarters on ships, and learning about radiation medicine. And it was really just sort of a natural progression when I learned about NASA and what astronauts do, and the type of things that they are expected to do, that I thought about the things I had done so far and became more interested in that as a career”.

Clark was selected as a NASA astronaut in April 1996. She had previously applied in 1994, but did not make the program on her first attempt. When she tried again two years later she was five months’ pregnant with her son Iain, and she got in. As she said during a pre-flight interview: “Motherhood has been incredible, and I tell my son all the time that my most important job is being his mother”.

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Prior to receiving her first flight assignment, Clark worked in the Astronaut Office Payloads/Habitability Branch. Originally, it seemed that she would be assigned to a long-term expedition to the ISS, which would have made her the first woman ever to participate in an ISS long-duration mission. She went through the severe Russian winter and water-survival training courses and became familiar with the Soyuz spacecraft. Clark was then assigned as an MS on the ill-fated STS-107 mission in 2000. The launch was planned for June 2001, but a series of unrelated delays postponed the flight again and again. She always referred to this mission with passion: “STS-107 is very exciting. It’s the first multidisciplinary science mission we’ve done since STS-95, and the longest mission that we’ve done since STS-90. And we’re doing a multitude of different scientific experiments on orbit, also using ourselves as test subjects. As a physician, the life science research that we’re doing is extremely exciting. It’s just a great feeling to be part of the team of researchers and investigators that have been working for years to bring this all to fruition”.

During the 16-day mission, working 24 hours a day in two alternating shifts, the crew successfully conducted approximately 80 experiments  – almost a record. Clark was mainly involved with bioscience experiments, including OSTEO (Osteoporosis Experiment in Orbit). On January 27, the 11th day of the mission, the team commemorated the Apollo 1 accident in in 1967, in which Virgil Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Edward White had been killed. The next day, they commemorated the Challenger disaster of January 28, 1986, in which seven astronauts were killed, including two women. It is curious to note that all three of the tragedies in the American space program happened within just six days on the calendar, at the end of January. The day before reentry, Clark sent what would be her last e-mail to family and friends: “Hello from above our magnificent planet Earth. The perspective is truly awe-­ inspiring. This is a terrific mission and we are very busy doing science round the clock. Just getting a moment to type an e-mail is precious so this will be short. I have seen some incredible sights: lightning spreading over the Pacific, the Aurora Australis lighting up the entire visible horizon with the city glow of Australia below, the crescent Moon setting over the limb of the Earth, the vast plains of Africa and the dunes on Cape Horn, rivers breaking through tall mountain passes, the scars of humanity, the continuous line of life extending from North America, through Central America, and into South America, a crescent Moon setting over the limb of our blue planet. Mount Fuji looks like a small bump from up here, but

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it does stand out as a very distinct landmark. Magically, the very first day we flew over Lake Michigan and I saw Wind Point, Wisconsin clearly. Haven’t been so lucky since. Every orbit we go over a slightly different part of the Earth. Of course, much of the time I’m working back in Spacehab and don’t see any of it. Whenever I do get to look out, it is glorious. Even the stars have a special brightness. I have seen my ‘friend’ Orion several times. Taking photos of the Earth is a real challenge, but a steep learning curve. I think I have finally gotten some beautiful shots the last 2 days. Keeping my fingers crossed that they’re in sharp focus. My near vision has gotten a little worse up here so you may have seen pics/video of me wearing glasses. I feel blessed to be here representing our country and carrying out the research of scientists around the world… The food is great and I am feeling very comfortable in this new, totally different environment. It still takes a while to eat as gravity doesn’t help pull food down your esophagus. It is also a constant challenge to stay adequately hydrated. Since our body fluids are shifted toward our heads our sense of thirst is almost non-existent. Thanks to many of you who have supported me and my adventures throughout the years. This was definitely one to beat all. I hope you could feel the positive energy that beamed to the whole planet as we glided over our shared planet. “Love to all, Laurel.”

Her eight-year-old son, Iain, who was very close to his mum, had wanted to go with his father Jonathan (“Jon”) Clark that Saturday morning to wait for his mum to return from space. He eagerly awaited the sonic booms that would herald Columbia’s approach. Ironically, Iain, his parents, and the family dog had survived a harrowing crash just six weeks earlier in December, when Jon’s singleengine Beech Bonanza airplane hit a violent downdraft while trying to land during a storm. No one was injured, but the plane was destroyed. The experience haunted young Iain and he begged his mother not to fly on the Shuttle. In a family video conference during Columbia’s flight, Iain asked his mother “Why did you go”? She traveled often and had even been sent to Russia, so it was not just the separation between mother and son that bothered the child. Jon recalled: “He was very worried about her. He had some very moving premonitions that something bad was going to happen, and he didn’t want her to go”. Once it was clear that there had been trouble, the families were hustled to crew quarters, where they received the grim news. The joy and the longing of Iain to see his mum return from space turned quickly into anguish (Fig. 6.19). Laurel Clark has had a crater on the Moon named after her. She was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

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Fig. 6.19.  Laurel Clark and her family. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Sources For This Section Chien, P. Columbia: Final Voyage—The Last Flight of NASA’s First Space Shuttle, pp. 69–76, Springer/Praxis, New York (2006). Dismukes, K. “Laurel Clark: Preflight Interview”, nasa.gov (November 12, 2002). Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 194–195. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Official biography of Laurel B. Clark, jsc.nasa.gov (October 2012). “Racine Remembers a Hero”, racine.wi.net (January 31, 2003). Shayler, D.J.; Moule, I. Women in Space—Following Valentina, pp. 298–299. Springer/Praxis Publishing, Chichester, UK (2005). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 116–117. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

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6.7 LISA NOWAK: THE FIRST FEMALE ASTRONAUT EVER DISMISSED BY NASA Mission

Launch

Return

STS-121

July 4, 2006

July 17, 2006

Lisa Nowak was one of NASA’s rising stars until she gained international attention on February 5, 2007, when she was arrested in Orlando, Florida, and subsequently charged with the attempted kidnapping of a US Air Force captain. Lisa Marie Caputo Nowak (Fig. 6.20), the oldest of three girls, was born in Washington on May 10, 1963, a month before the historic mission of Valentina Tereshkova. She grew up in Rockville, Maryland, near Washington, and graduated from C.W. Woodward High School there in 1981, the year of the first Shuttle mission, Columbia STS-1. While she watched the development of the Space Shuttle Program with interest, becoming an astronaut was not in her plans, though she enjoyed studying math, science, and engineering. She also liked quiet hobbies such as reading and doing crossword puzzles, taking care of indoor plants, gourmet cooking, bike riding, and sailing. After

Fig. 6.20.  Lisa Nowak. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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graduation, Nowak enlisted in the US Navy and joined the Naval Academy in Annapolis. She majored in Aerospace Engineering in 1985 and was sent on temporary duty for six months to Ellington Field in Houston, to provide engineering support for the Johnson Space Center’s (JSC) Shuttle Training Aircraft Branch. Then something changed, as she recalled: “I got to meet everybody in the program, not just the astronauts but everybody that works in all the different jobs. What impressed me was that all of the people were so into the mission and knew they were a big part of it. It seemed really exciting seeing it up close. I thought if there was a chance to be able to come here that I would love to do that”.

After her temporary duty at JSC, her less than perfect eyesight meant that Nowak was unable to be a pilot for the Navy, but she knew there were other ways that she could get to fly: “If something looks like, ‘I can’t do this’ it doesn’t mean it’s the end of the road”. She spent six months at the Naval Flight School Training Squadron VT-86 at Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola, Florida, earning her wings as a Naval Flight Officer in June 1987: “That’s the person in the Navy airplanes that does communications and weapons systems and navigation”. In 1988, she married Richard Nowak, a colleague whom she had met at the Flight School. The two had a son in 1991. After an assignment to Electronic Warfare Aggressor Squadron 34 (VAQ-34) at NAS Point Mugu, California, where she flew both the EA-7L and ERA-3B aircraft supporting the US Pacific Fleet, Nowak joined the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. In 1992, she earned both an MSc degree in Aeronautical Engineering and a degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, and began working as an aircraft systems project officer at the Systems Engineering Test Directorate at Patuxent River, Maryland. She was then assigned to the Naval Air Systems Command, working on testing and acquisition of new aircraft and new navigations and weapons systems for naval aircraft. She logged over 1,500 hours of flight in over 30 different aircraft during her career in the Navy and reached the rank of captain. Selected by NASA in April 1996, Nowak reported to the JSC in August and began two years of training and evaluation, qualifying as a Mission Specialist (MS). Initially assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Operations Planning Branch, she also served in the Astronaut Office Robotics Branch and in the Capcom Branch, working in Mission Control as prime communicator with on-orbit crews. In 2001, she had twin daughters. In 2006, Nowak was assigned to Space Shuttle mission STS-121, the second “Return to Flight” Mission after the Columbia tragedy in 2003 (Fig. 6.21). She said:

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Fig. 6.21.  Cover commemorating the Shuttle mission STS-121. From the Author’s collection.

“The first two flights, instead of just bringing up supplies or assembling part of the Station, which are all very important, are dedicated to testing out some new repair methods that we might have if something did hit the Shuttle during a flight. We have a new boom that we’re attaching to the robotic arm. That’s something that we’ve never used before”.

Nowak flew as MS-2/FE during the ascent phase and was in charge of the robotic arm. In a pre-flight interview, she explained: “From a robotics point of view that’s one of the most interesting spacewalks we are doing. We’re doing some things we’ve never done before. We’ll be using the Shuttle’s robotic arm to go and get that large boom, that’s actually as long as the robotic arm itself. In fact it was built from pieces that were originally going to be another robotic arm. So, we’re going to have a very long extended arm to work with and the idea is that with the extended piece we would then be able to inspect different places of the orbiter that we couldn’t reach or see with just the robotic arm itself. But a new thing that we’re looking at is putting an EVA person on the end of that arm with the idea that they might be able to repair a small piece of damage on the Shuttle somewhere. But we’re going to test if that long extended arm and boom can handle the loads of a person on it moving around and, say, smoothing out an area that they had fixed. And we’re going to move

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them to what we call a strong position, where we think is probably OK to take those loads. Then we’re going to stretch it to what we call a weak position where we’re not sure”.

The mission also carried the Italian-built “Leonardo” Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) with tons of supplies and pieces of equipment, but Nowak explained: “We’re not doing any assembly because we are a test flight. We will be bringing up some spare pieces to put up on a pallet that some later flights will use for assembly, but our main goal of this flight is to test the new safety features and repair techniques”.

Shortly after the end of the mission, in January 2007, Nowak separated from her husband after 19 years together. They have a teenage son and young twin daughters, and Nowak is considered by family and friends to be “an extremely caring and dedicated mother to her three children”. In a 2005 NASA interview, she talked about the amount of time that space training took her away from her family. Regarded at the time as one of the best NASA astronauts, with “all the right background credentials, skills and abilities,” Nowak’s career suddenly crashed on February 5, 2007. Leaving NASA officials, and anyone who knew her, absolutely stunned, Nowak was arrested at Orlando International Airport on charges of attempted kidnapping and attempted first-degree murder. She had confronted a woman she believed was romantically involved with another astronaut whom Nowak loved, and had sprayed pepper spray into the woman’s car. Nowak’s two-year affair with William Oefelein, “Billy O” to his friends, an astronaut and Shuttle pilot who turned out to have been involved in a bizarre love triangle, came to the surface. The state’s attorney argued that the facts indicated a well-thought-out plan to kidnap and perhaps to injure her victim. After being confined for two days in jail, Nowak was released on US$25,500 bail and ordered to wear a satellite-tracking device while awaiting trial. NASA immediately grounded her, removed her from mission activities, and put her on a 30-day leave, together with Oefelein. Since she was a US Navy officer, Nowak was sent back to the US Navy. Nowak and Oefelein became the first astronauts ever to be dismissed from NASA. After this case, NASA announced that it would review the astronauts’ psychological screening process “to determine if any modifications are needed.” Nowak’s family said: “Considering both her personal and professional life, these alleged events are completely out of character and have come as a tremendous shock to our family”.

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On November 10, 2009, Nowak was sentenced to a year’s probation and the two days already served in jail, with no additional jail time. Following this trial, a US Navy administrative panel decided to give her a discharge of “other than honorable” and to downgrade her rank from captain to commander effective on September 1, 2011. Jon Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon who lost his wife, astronaut Laurel Clark, in the Columbia STS-107 disaster in 2003, said that he was shocked about the charges against his friend and recalled how Nowak had rushed to help his family after his wife’s death. He added that Nowak had supported his family then and he wanted to support her now: “My son losing his mom has left this tremendous void in his life and Lisa, who also looks a lot like Laurel, just was able to come in and be a part of that, and it was just a wonderful thing. She was a mother before she was an astronaut. She really was into family life, and what’s happened has just been totally a shock. She is a really wonderful, good, caring person. You have to find forgiveness and love in your heart to get her through this”.

Nowak has vanished from public life and now lives in a modest home in Texas and works in the private sector, but she does not give interviews and has tried to put the past behind her. In 2019, the film Lucy In The Sky was produced based on Nowak’s story.

Sources For This Section Curtis, H.P. “Lisa Nowak: Records Sealed in NASA Astronaut’s Love-Triangle Arrest”, orlandosentinel.com (January 18, 2012). McLaughlin, M.E. “Shuttle Astronaut Visits Stone Ridge”, web.archive.org (October 26, 2006). |Mihelich, P., “Astronaut’s star was on the rise at NASA” in edition.cnn.com (February 7, 2007) NASA Press Release. “Statement Regarding the Status of Lisa Nowak”, nasa.gov (March 7, 2007). Official NASA biography of Lisa Nowak, jsc.nasa.gov (March 2007). Petty, J.I. “Lisa Nowak: Preflight Interview”, nasa.gov (August 11, 2005). The Associated Press, “Astronaut Flown to NASA for Evaluation: Weeks Ago Nowak and Her Husband Separated after 19 Years”, nbcnews.com (February 7, 2007). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts pp. 126–127. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

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6.8 HEIDEMARIE STEFANYSHYN-PIPER: FROM DIVER TO ASTRONAUT Mission

Launch

Return

STS-115 STS-126

September 9, 2006 November 14, 2008

September 21, 2006 November 30, 2008

Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper (Fig. 6.22) has said: “To me exploring space is just a natural progression of where humans are going, as we become more advanced and we have more technology to go farther. Thousands of years ago people would just go beyond the next hill, go over the mountain, go across the river. Then it led to going across the oceans. And then it was, ‘OK, let’s go into the skies’. We now have airplanes. We can fly. We have submarines and submersibles; we can go into the waters. So looking into the skies and looking at the stars and at the planets and thinking, ‘what’s out there?’ We’re curious. We, as humans, always want to know what’s out there. To me it just seems natural that we’ve looked around here and we’re just going to go look out farther. We’re still developing the means to go out there farther. But that’s

Fig. 6.22.  Heidemarie Stafanyshyn-Piper. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Fig. 6.23.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-126, signed by Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper. From the Author’s collection.

just where we’re going to go next. To me, exploration makes sense because we’re always looking at what’s the next thing out there, what else can we learn, and how can we go there. Maybe we can learn something that we can bring back here and help solve some of the problems we have on Earth”.

Captain Heidemarie Martha Stefanyshyn-Piper was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on February 7, 1963, second in line with four brothers in a typical Midwestern, middle-class family. Both of her parents were Europeans who migrated to the US after the World War II: her father came from Ukraine and her mother from Germany. Stefanyshyn-Piper was raised in the Ukrainian cultural community of St. Paul, Minnesota, where she learned to speak Ukrainian and became a member of Plast, a Ukrainian scouting organization that taught her how to use maps and compasses, and how to paddle a canoe and hike in the woods (Fig. 6.23). She said later: “The biggest part of scouting that I use as an astronaut is being part of a team. In scouting, you learn to work as a team to accomplish a goal. As an astronaut, you are a small part of a very large team to put people in space”.

As a small girl, her favorite movie was Heidi because she thought it was named after her. She said: “My parents wanted all of us to have a good education. School was very important. That’s why they sent us all to Catholic schools thinking that we would get a better education there”. In 1980,

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Stefanyshyn-­Piper graduated from the all-girls Derham Hall High School, St. Paul. Very active in sports, she practiced running, roller blading, ice skating, swimming, and scuba-diving: “One of the things I learned after not living in Minnesota for a while is that I really like four seasons. It gets very cold in Minnesota in the wintertime, but that never hindered us as kids. You always went out and played in the snow, and if it was cold you just put on another sweater or another scarf or an extra pair of mittens. It was nice to have different seasons. In the summertime it was actually hot, but in Minnesota there are lots of lakes and rivers. I learned to swim, which I guess helped when I became a diver”.

Since math and science were her stronger subjects in high school, and there was a big push to get a lot more girls to go into engineering, Stefanyshyn-­ Piper decided – at the suggestion of her older brother – to go to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for Mechanical Engineering. She applied as a Navy pilot and took the US Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) scholarship to help pay for college: “I’ve always had a fascination with flying. As my mother came from Germany, every couple of years she and my father would send one or two of us, usually two of us, to Germany. I remember when I was four years old going and flying in an airplane and I thought that that was the neatest thing. So I’ve always had this bug in the back of me that says ‘I really want to fly.’ I was going in the Navy, and I decided I was going to try to fly for the Navy. After I graduated, I decided that, or it was decided for me that, because I didn’t pass the eye exam I wasn’t going to become a pilot. And so I became a Navy diver”.

Stefanyshyn-Piper earned a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1984 and a Master of Science (MSc) degree in Mechanical Engineering the following year. She was commissioned an Ensign in the Engineering Duty Officer Community in 1985. After completing her training at the Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center in Panama City, Florida, as a Navy Basic Diving Officer and Salvage Officer, Stefanyshyn-Piper served at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, Shore Intermediate Maintenance Activity Pearl Harbor, for the Commander, Naval Surface Force, US Atlantic Fleet, and for the Naval Sea Systems Command Supervisor of Salvage and Diving: “Most of my time in the Navy was spent doing ship repair. I was at the shipyard in Pearl Harbor, ashore maintenance in Pearl Harbor, in Little Creek or Norfolk, Virginia, as a tech command staff doing maintenance”. Stefanyshyn-Piper qualified as a Surface Warfare Officer on board USS Grapple (ARS 53), becoming the first woman to reach this position in the US

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Navy. As an experienced diving and salvage officer, she took part in major salvage projects that attracted high attention in the media, including developing a plan for the Peruvian Navy’s salvage of the submarine Pacocha in 1988 and the de-stranding of the tanker Exxon Houston, off Barber’s Point, Oahu, Hawaii, in 1989. It was at this time that she first thought of becoming an astronaut: “When I was growing up I didn’t really think much of being an astronaut. I was pretty much removed of the space program so I just didn’t think that I could become an astronaut. It wasn’t until when I was in college and I was in the ROTC program, we had an astronaut come talk to us and, even at that time, I thought, ‘OK. That’s pretty neat.’ but I never really put two and two together that that would be me. It wasn’t until seven or eight years after that I was in the Navy and a fellow officer that was stationed with my husband had applied to the astronaut program. I was talking to him and I looked up what NASA was doing and they were talking about building space station Freedom. I looked at what they were planning and some of their training they were doing and I thought, ‘You know, that looks to me more like diving than flying’. I was fixing ships for the Navy, doing underwater ship repair and I thought, ‘You know, if I could fix ships underwater, I can build a space station in space’. I thought I had a lot to offer, to help build the space station. That’s how I applied to the program”.

In 1996, Stefanyshyn-Piper was selected as a NASA astronaut for the 13th Group: “I remember that morning because I was scheduled to take my physical fitness test for the Navy. They happened to have caught me right before I was leaving to take the test and my secretary called me and said, ‘You have a phone call from NASA’ and I said, ‘Oh, I better take this’. So I went over and I took it and it was Bob Cabana who at the time was the head of the Astronaut Office. You always knew that if you got the phone call early in the morning by the head of the Astronaut Office that was good news, as opposed to getting the call later in the day saying that you can try again in a couple of years. He said, ‘We’d like you to come down and be part of the astronaut program’. I was very excited but, I figured, ‘OK, I’m in a professional office here. I can’t start screaming and jumping up and down’. I had to take my physical fitness test and my husband, who was also stationed at the Naval Sea Systems Command, was taking his test the same time so he was there, and he could tell that something was up because I just walked in and he said I had the biggest smile on my face. And so I told him”.

Stefanyshyn-Piper reported to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in August 1996. After two years of training and evaluation, she qualified for flight

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assignment as a Mission Specialist (MS). Initially assigned to astronaut support duties for launch and landing, she also served as lead Astronaut Office Representative for Payloads and in the Astronaut Office’s Extravehicular Activity (EVA) branch. During her two Shuttle missions – STS-115 and STS-126 – Stefanyshyn-­ Piper had the chance to make the best of her diver’s skills to maintain the International Space Station (ISS). She learned of her assignment to her first mission, STS-115, on her birthday. She recalls: “It was a great birthday present, the best birthday present that I had”. She began what turned out to be a long training schedule: “We’ve stayed together as a crew for four years. We don’t need that much time to train for a Shuttle mission. When the Columbia accident happened, we were about 3–5 months from flight. After the accident our training obviously was put on hold, or it wasn’t an intense, daily training. Some of us did do some other technical assignments. For example, I was doing some of the EMU recovery. They had a problem on board station that they couldn’t get cooling to the EVA suits, the EMUs. So I spent a year and a half working the technical issues. That was something that helped me understand more about the suits, so now I know more about the suit and I know more about station systems”.

The STS-115 mission was finally launched in September 2006. This was the mission in which NASA returned to building the ISS after the three-year break following the Columbia accident. In a pre-flight interview, Stefanyshyn-­ Piper explained: “The main goal of our flight is to deliver the P3/P4 Truss element to the station. On P4 there’s a set of solar arrays, so that after our mission, station will have the capability to generate more electricity. And by having more electrical capability, you can add the partner modules. You can bring up the European laboratory and the Japanese modules, and now the partners are able to have their components on orbit and we can also increase the crew size so that we are able to utilize the space station for what it was built for”.

To complete the installation of the truss and activate the solar arrays, Stefanyshyn-Piper participated in two of the mission’s three EVAs for a total of 12 hours, which made her the second most experienced female spacewalker. With astronaut Joe Tanner, she conducted initial installation of the P3/P4 truss onto the space station, connected power cables on the truss, installed a GPS antenna on the Japanese Logistic Module, and lubricated the Port SARJ

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(the joints on a solar array). The following year, from May 7 to 18, 2007, Stefanyshyn-Piper was commander of the 12th NEEMO (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) expedition in the Aquarius undersea laboratory near Key Largo, Florida. The mission tested telerobotic surgery experiments to evaluate their performance with a view to long-duration spaceflight. Her second flight, STS-126, was the ULF-2 mission (second Utilization Logistics Flight) to the ISS that delivered an extra bathroom, a kitchen, two bedrooms, an exercise machine, a water-recycling system, and all that was required to expand the living quarters of the space station to eventually house six crewmembers. Before the mission, Stefanyshyn-Piper explained: “Our mission will be a ULF or Utilization Logistics Flight and we are a logistics flight. We’re not bringing up a new module to space station so we’re not really changing the outside of station, or the inside. But we’re going to add a ­tremendous capability to the inside of space station. We’re taking up the largest MPLM that they’ve had. It’s packed full, with more equipment, more spares up to space station so that we can enhance the capability. We’re bringing up some crew quarters that will be needed for a year from now when we double the size of space station and go from three to six crew members. For that we’re bringing up another space toilet and another space galley. More important is we’re bringing up what they’re calling the ECLSS, the Regenerative Environment Control and Life Support System”.

Sandra Magnus was also flying on this mission and remained on board the ISS as a member of the long-duration Expedition-18. Stefanyshyn-Piper participated as the lead spacewalker in three out of the four spacewalks that resulted in restoring full power-generation capability to the ISS.  During her first spacewalk, she had a now-infamous mishap: on November 18, while she was trying to clean up grease that had inadvertently spurted from her grease gun, her US$100,000 toolbag drifted out of her reach and sailed off into space. The toolbag remained in orbit circling Earth and was visible from the ground for more than eight months. During her two missions, Stefanyshyn-Piper logged over 27  days and 15 hours in space, including 33 hours and 42 minutes of EVA in five spacewalks, putting her at 25th in the all-time list of spacewalkers by duration. In July 2009, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper left NASA and decided to return to the US Navy and finish her career. She reported to the Naval Sea Systems Command as Naval Systems Engineering Chief Technology Officer. Two years later (on May 20, 2011), she was appointed commander of the Carderock Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Maryland, and

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Commanding Officer of Southwest Regional Maintenance Center. She retired from active duty in 2015. Stefanyshyn-Piper is now a motivational speaker and is also a member of AstraFemina, a non-profit organization of women who are leaders in STEM fields, with a mission to inspire today’s girls to become tomorrow’s STEM stars by sharing their stories: “You don’t realize when you talk, how much of an impact you can have by showing the great things that engineers do and what is actually possible. I know with my own story, if back in the late ’70s the engineering department at the University of Minnesota hadn’t thought it was important to show high school girls what engineers do, I probably would’ve never become an engineer. And I don’t know what my life would have turned out to be, but I might not have been accepted into the astronaut program”.

When talking to students, Stefanyshyn-Piper always stresses the importance of math and science: “Math really can be fun. It’s like a puzzle. There is one answer and sometimes it just takes a while to figure out that answer. Never give up, there always will be an answer, just keep at it”.

Sources For This Section Hitt, D. “Dream of Flying”, nasa.gov (August 29, 2006). Lumme L., Wegmueller S. & Lumme D., “Heidemarie Martha Stefanyshyn-Piper, An Out of This World Inspiration – Navy Diver Turned NASA Astronaut” in “30 Inspirational Women in Naval Engineering, STEM and beyond” NEJ (Naval Engineers Journal) Special Edition Vol. 132 , No. 3 (September 2020) p. 36–41 Official NASA biography of Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, jsc.nasa.gov (July 2009). “Preflight Interview: Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper”, STS-126, nasa.gov (October 31, 2008). “Preflight Interview: Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper”, STS-115, nasa.gov (July 19, 2006). Woodmansee, L.S. Women Astronauts, pp. 118–119. Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario, Canada (2002).

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6.9 ANN MCCLAIN: FROM EAGLE TO ASTRONAUT Mission

Launch

Return

Expedition-58/59 (Soyuz MS-11)

December 3, 2018

June 24, 2019

The inspiring pictures, taken by NASA photographer Bill Stafford, quickly went around the web in August 2017 when Anne McClain posted the official NASA photos – now deleted – on her Twitter account, showing herself in her astronaut suit. She had brought her four-year-old child along to the ritual official NASA portrait session in a space suit. The photos depict McClain in her space suit, with her child sitting next to her, giving her a kiss on the cheek and inspecting the details on her suit. McClain tweeted: “Sometimes, I bring him to work with me. Not sure who enjoys it more”! She had wanted to include her son in the special moment in support of working moms who struggle everywhere to find a work-life balance. She further tweeted: “The hardest part about training for space is the four-year-old I have to leave behind every time I walk out the door. I try to remember he will grow up and know what it looks like, behind the scenes, to pursue a dream. He is my ‘why’”.

McClain said: “He thinks it’s pretty normal to be an astronaut. His teacher asked their class what their parents did, and he told her I am an engineer. I asked if he told her anything else. He responded, ‘Mama, NONE of my friends have ever met an engineer…’”. McClain recalls she was even younger than her son when she first dreamed of being an astronaut. In a NASA video, she said: “I’ve wanted to be an astronaut since I was three years old. That’s when I first told my mom I wanted to be an astronaut. When I went off to preschool, I told her I was going off to school to learn to be an astronaut, and when I was in kindergarten, I wrote my first, poorly written, book on going to space – on the Soyuz vehicle”. This was a curious foresight, given that the US space program during McClain’s childhood used the Space Shuttle, not the Soyuz. In another interview, McClain said: “Flying is definitely what I wanted to do ever since I was very young; flying and be an astronaut. I never really considered any other career path. When Top Gun came out, I watched that movie probably twice a day for an entire summer, until my older brother actually took our VHS tape and broke it in half because he was so tired of watching it”.

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Fig. 6.24.  Ann McClain. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Anne Charlotte McClain (Fig. 6.24) was born on June 7, 1979 and raised in Spokane, Washington, where she graduated from Gonzaga Preparatory School in 1997: “I’ve always been drawn toward math and sciences. It’s been not only interesting, but I’m a lot better at it. So one of my teachers said: ‘You know, mathematics is the study of what is, and engineering is the study of what could be’. Also, I’m not the best essay writer”.

She is remembered among her teachers for her tenacity. In an interview, her high-school math teacher and softball coach Shari Manikowski said: “What made her really stand out is she had an incredible amount of perseverance and grit. When she got cut from the volleyball team in high school, she went out for soccer”. McClain then became an avid rugby player. She came across rugby by chance in 1997, when she was 18: “The year before entering West Point, I was walking around the campus of Gonzaga University in Spokane and I saw a group of people playing a very

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interesting-looking sport. And I approached and asked what it was about. They saw me curious, and explained it to me. The next day I was starting a rugby match, and that started off my career, and I had no idea what I was doing. I played rugby throughout college. Playing rugby was my priority every weekend. But I really got into it seriously when I was in graduate school”.

It was indeed the beginning of an unexpected international career. In 2002, it brought her to play at a competitive level for the Women’s Premiership, the top level for rugby teams in England: “Obviously during my stay at West Point I started playing and then I was lucky enough to continue my studies in Bath [England], and in 2004 I was the hooker [a front row position] of the national team”. McClain went to the U.S.  Military Academy at West Point, where she attended graduate school and earned a BSc in Mechanical/Aeronautical Engineering in 2002. She was commissioned as an Army officer. Instead of going straight to flight school, McClain spent the first two years of her Army career in graduate school in England, after receiving a prestigious Marshall Scholarship for two years at the University of Bath. In 2004, she earned an MSc degree in Aerospace Engineering there. Her research on “Unsteady aerodynamics and flow visualization of free-to-roll non-slender delta wings” was later published through the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). McClain concurrently researched the “Security burden in developing countries” at the nearby University of Bristol, England. “What I was really interested in was engineering, but international relations was a way for me to understand how do we employ solutions across the world? How do we better living conditions across the world? How do we share appropriate technologies across the world? And I really wanted to look into that”. In 2005 McClain earned an MSc degree in International Relations at the University of Bristol. In an interview, she said: “Living in England and seeing the US from an outside perspective and understanding that we are a piece of the puzzle that fits into this greater community, I really started to get interested in how we govern worldwide”. McClain played rugby in the Women’s Premiership until 2004. She said: “In England, rugby is much more common and a lot more competitive, and so I was fortunate to play at a very high level and that’s where I started playing a lot of rugby, training for it specifically, and then, at the end of that two years, I was fortunate enough to be selected for the US National Team”.

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She started playing for the United States women’s national rugby union team – known as the Women’s Eagles – in 2003, and earned her first cap at the 2004 Churchill Cup. She transitioned to coaching USA Rugby South in 2012 and then became assistant coach for USA Rugby’s Women’s All-Star Team. Following post-graduate school in England, McClain returned to the US and went to the Army Flight School at Fort Rucker, Alabama, where she earned her wings as a scout/attack helicopter pilot and began her operational flying career. Quoting Frank Borman, the Commander of Apollo 8, McClain remembers the important principle that was one of her drivers during her flying career: “A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to keep him out of situations that require the use of his superior skills.” She served a 15-month deployment as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, flying more than 800 combat hours on 216 combat missions as pilot-in-command and Air Mission Commander. Her US Army commitments prevented her participation in the 2006 Women’s Rugby World Cup. McClain started playing rugby again in 2009 when she returned from Iraq, while attending the Aviation Captain’s Career Course. She played with the Atlanta Harlequins and captained USA Rugby South in 2010 and 2011. After her experience in Iraq she thought she would have a competitive chance at NASA and applied to be an astronaut in 2009, but was not accepted. In May 2010, McClain was appointed Commander of C Troop, 1st Battalion, 14th Aviation Regiment, responsible for the Army’s initial entry training, instructor pilot training, and maintenance test pilot training in the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior. She completed Command and General Staff College and the C-12 fixed wing multiengine qualification courses in 2011 and 2012. She then attended the US Naval Test Pilot School, graduating in June 2013. In total, Lieutenant-Colonel McClain has logged over 2,000 flight hours in 20 different rotary and fixed-wing aircraft. In June 2013, the same month she graduated as a test pilot, McClain was successful at her second attempt to be an astronaut, as one of the eight members of NASA astronaut Group 21, which was the first ever with an equal number of men and women. They were chosen from a pool of over 6,100 candidates, the second largest number in history, despite the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011 and a public perception that NASA’s human spaceflight program was on the decline. McClain recalls: “There were more than 6,100 other applicants for our class of eight and I’d made my peace with not getting in. I still remember getting the call that I’d been selected. I was at Test Pilot School, at Patuxent River, Maryland, with the Navy, and I was preparing to move to Huntsville, Alabama, to work at the Redstone Test Center with the Army. I just dropped to my knees, I couldn’t even talk. I couldn’t even

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breathe. It was one of the most overwhelming experiences that I’ve ever had. It was this culmination of something I’d wanted since I was three and it actually came true”.

Her Astronaut Candidate Training included a series of intense tests measuring medical and psychological condition, language aptitude, mechanical skills, scientific and technical briefings, intensive instruction in ISS systems, spacewalks, robotics, physiological training, T-38 flight training, and water and wilderness survival training. In addition to traditional selection criteria, the candidates were also asked to compose tweets during their interviews with the selection board. This just underscores that as well as being smart with technical skills, astronauts must also serve as high profile public figures. McClain completed training in July 2015, making her available for future missions. In an interview published on November 30, 2018 on the NASA JSC YouTube channel, McClain said that the rugby training was helpful when training with a space suit in the giant pool in Houston: “Rugby has astonishingly helped me a lot as an astronaut, and when I’m training in the space suit… and we’re working in our large pool, the Neutral Buoyancy Lab underwater, we’re under there for six hours at a time. You really work yourself to physical and mental exhaustion. The only other time that I’ve hit that point of exhaustion is the 60th minute of a rugby match. When your body gets that physically tired, you can’t mentally give up. You truly have to think about things more deliberately, with more clarity, because you’re more prone to mistakes”.

McClain also discovered to her great surprise that her experience gained as an Army helicopter pilot provided many useful lessons for becoming an astronaut: “When something looks really risky from the outside, [it’s about] what people are doing on the inside – they’re not professional risk takers. But they’re probably professional risk mitigators”. McClain was assigned to her first spaceflight as flight engineer on ISS Expedition-60/61, scheduled for launch aboard Soyuz MS-13  in June-July 2019. However, in January 2018, NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps was removed from the prime crew of Expedition-56/57 and replaced by her backup, Serena Auñón-Chancellor. As a consequence of this puzzling removal and personnel reassignment, McClain was in turn moved up to take Auñón-Chancellor’s spot on the Expedition-56/57 backup crew, and was assigned to the prime crew of Expedition-58/59. She successfully launched aboard Soyuz MS-11 to the ISS on December 3, 2018 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. It was the 100th orbital launch of 2018 (Fig. 6.25).

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Fig. 6.25.  Anne McClain signs the wall at the Korolyov Museum of Baikonur, on November 29, 2018. This is one of the traditional rituals that crews at the Baikonur Cosmodrome follow before every launch. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

In one of her first messages after her arrival on the station, McClain tweeted: “Putting this journey into words will not be easy, but I will try. I am finally where I was born to be”. During Expedition-58 there were only three crew members, as Aleksey Ovchinin and Nick Hague could not reach the station due to the in-flight abort of the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft. The two men were safely jettisoned from the top of their Soyuz-FG rocket on October 11, 2018, when the launcher failed at booster separation just over two minutes into flight. During Expedition-58/59, the crew was in charge of conducting about 250 research investigations and technology demonstrations in biology, Earth science, human health, physical sciences and technology development (Fig. 6.26). Among them, McClain took part in one of the first “Tissue Chips” experiments to study the effects of reduced gravity on organ cells. The complex biological functions of specific organs were replicated using an advanced combination of miniature organ tissue models on transparent microchips. The research will allow scientists to better understand aging and

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Fig. 6.26.  Commemorative cover cancelled at Baikonur, with a special pictorial postmark at the launch of Soyuz MS-11. Signed by all the crew including Ann McClain. From the Author’s collection.

may reveal how to slow it, according to the National Institutes of Health, a partner of the ISS National Lab. McClain said: “One of the things I really like is getting into academic areas I had no experience with before. I am an aerospace engineer by training, and I was a test pilot in the Army. One of my favorite things now is biology and learning about the human body. To me this is really fascinating, and I could have had a totally different career and love it also”.

Among the Space Science she conducted, there was also the “Time Perception in Microgravity” experiment to investigate the perception of time of crew members aboard the station. Almost half of their time is dedicated to station maintenance. McClain also installed small satellite deployment hardware inside the Kibō laboratory, to eject a set of CubeSats outside the Japanese module. On March 3, the Crew Dragon Demo-1 (SpaceX DM1) successfully docked to the Harmony module of the ISS, as the first uncrewed test flight of a new generation of human-rated vehicles. No berthing was required as the Dragon spacecraft docks automatically, like the European ATV had done. This was the

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Fig. 6.27.  Ann McClain snapped this image of the SpaceX Crew Dragon approaching the ISS on March 3, 2019, calling it “a dawn of a new era in spaceflight.” Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license

first launch of a man-rated spacecraft from US soil since NASA’s Space Shuttle program ended in 2011. McClain snapped a breathtaking photo of Crew Dragon approaching the ISS, calling it “a dawn of a new era in spaceflight.” Once the hooks had secured the Crew Dragon, McClain announced: “We can confirm hard capture is complete”. During the live broadcast of the welcoming ceremony, she added: “Our sincere congratulations to all Earthlings who have enabled the opening of this next chapter in space exploration” (Fig. 6.27). On March 22, 2019, McClain and Nick Hague conducted their first extravehicular activity (EVA) of 6 hours and 39 minutes (the first spacewalk of the year), to perform maintenance along the ISS truss structure and to upgrade the station’s power system. McClain was scheduled to perform a second EVA on March 29, which would have been the first ever spacewalk featuring only women. NASA had announced that the EVA would be performed by the two women on board the ISS, Anne McClain and Christina Koch, while support on Earth would be provided by female mission controllers Mary Lawrence as lead flight director, and Jackie Kagey as the lead EVA flight controller. This historic first was not orchestrated to be this way, NASA said, but was the result of scheduling shifts because the upgrading of the space station’s power system with new batteries (the goal of this spacewalk) was originally scheduled to take place in the fall. However, due to last-minute logistics and spacesuit availability on the ISS, Nick Hague took McClain’s place instead. The news of the astronaut swap was met by the media with widespread disappointment and outrage.

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McClain said: “That was my recommendation”, defending NASA’s decision to scrap the first all-female spacewalk. After she had successfully completed her first spacewalk wearing the medium suit, she intended to use a large-size hard upper torso (essentially the shirt of the spacesuit) on her second spacewalk. However, she decided that the medium-size fit her best, but because preparations for the EVA on March 29 had included one medium and one large-size suit, Koch was already assigned the medium size. NASA spokesperson Stephanie Schierholz added on Twitter that “McClain had trained in both medium and large spacesuits. She thought she could use a large one, but changed her mind after her first real spacewalk”. The teams made the decision to keep to the schedule by swapping spacewalkers rather than reconfiguring a spacesuit. The first all-female spacewalk was completed a few months later, when Christina Koch and Jessica Meir conducted an EVA of 7 hours and 17 minutes to replace a power controller on October 182. McClain did conduct a second spacewalk, with Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques on April 8. She stayed aboard the ISS until June 24, 2019, when she was replaced by Luca Parmitano. This was a curious exchange between rugby players, given that Parmitano is also a fan of the oval ball. Two days before returning to Earth from his first space flight, he symbolically kicked off the Italy-Australia rugby match in Turin, Italy, the first ever kickoff from space. An article issued in the New York Times on August 23, 2019, reported that former Air Force intelligence officer Summer Worden had filed a complaint against Anne McClain, through the Federal Trade Commission, accusing her of illegally accessing financial information while residing on the International Space Station, despite not seeing any indication of moved or spent funds from the account. This accusation outed McClain as Ms. Worden’s spouse. It turned out that the pictures of the official NASA portrait session where McClain brought her step-child had been removed from social media at Worden’s request because she did not want McClain to claim to be the mother of the child, who had been born about a year before the two met and McClain had  Former Astronaut Mae Jemison commented six months later, after the first all-female spacewalk performed by Christina Loch and Jessica Meir: “…wearing space suits designed primarily in the 1970s, when the U.S. had flown no women astronauts and women were just 16% of NASA’s workforce, compared with 34% today. Men’s physiology, perspectives, values, measurements, comfort and ambitions have mostly been the default template for designing major human endeavors. I believe that Koch and Meir, by their sheer skill and execution, shift us closer to a template based on intelligence, agility, capability, integrity, courage and excellence.” (Mae Jemison, “The 100 most influential people of 2020: Astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir” in time.com. September 22, 2020.) 2

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adopted. Ms. Worden had filed for divorce in October 2018. After returning to Earth, McClain denied that she did anything improper and contended that she was merely doing what she had always done, dealing with the couple’s intertwined account to make sure the finances were in order and there were enough funds to pay bills and care for the child they had been raising. After investigating the allegation of potentially the first space cyber crime, the federal grand jury in Houston, Texas, charged Worden with making false statements to federal investigators and cleared McClain of any wrongdoing. Anne McClain has spent a total of 204 days in space and conducted two spacewalks totaling 13 hours and 8 minutes. She is on a list of nine female astronaut candidates NASA is considering for its Artemis program to return to the Moon. As such, she could be the first woman to walk on the lunar surface. This mission, set to launch in 2025, will be NASA’s first venture to the Moon since 1972.

Sources For This Section Baker, M., “NASA Astronaut Anne McClain Accused by Spouse of Crime in Space” in www.nytimes.com (Aug. 23, 2019) Brooks, A., “From Eagle to Astronaut”. usarugby.org (June 15, 2018). Chow, D., “Astronaut duo performs NASA’s first spacewalk of 2019”, in www.nbcnews.com (March 21, 2019) Cavallaro, U., “Anne McClain: to preschool at 3, to learn to be an astronaut” in AD*ASTRA # 40 (March 2019) p. 14–18 Cutshaw, J., “Army astronaut prepares for December launch to International Space Station” in www.army.mil (September 11, 2018) Gebhardt, C., “100th orbital launch of 2018: International trio set for launch to Space Station” in NASASpaceflight.com (December 2, 2018) Houston We Have a Podcast: ‘Fly ‘em All’ an interview with Anne McClain www. nasa.gov (Dec. 7, 2018) Ivins, M., “I’m a Retired Female Astronaut and I Can’t Understand the Obsession With ‘Gender Diverse’ Space Crews”, in time.com (August 28, 2019) Weitering, H., “All-Female Spacewalk Was Cancelled on ‘My Recommendation,’ Astronaut Anne McClain Says” in www.space.com (April 02, 2019) Whiting, M., “Anne C. McClain (Lt. Col, U.S. Army) NASA Astronaut” www.nasa. gov, (Oct 7, 2019) Zdanowicz, C., “NASA astronaut’s estranged wife charged with lying about claim that spouse improperly accessed account from space”, in edition.cnn.com (April 8, 2020)

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6.10 KAYLA BARRON: A PIONEERING SUBMARINER TURNED ASTRONAUT Mission

Launch

Return

Crew Dragon-3

November 11, 2021

May 6, 2022

Navy Lieutenant Commander Kayla Barron (Fig. 6.28) flew to the ISS as the fourth crewmember of the SpaceX Crew-3 mission3. Her assignment was announced five months after that of her three colleagues. NASA’s original

Fig. 6.28.  Kayla Barron. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

 SpaceX Crew-3 was the third operational NASA Commercial Crew flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft, and the fourth crewed flight for NASA.  Crew-3 flew with a brand new Dragon spacecraft, called Endurance to honor both the SpaceX and NASA teams that built the spacecraft and trained the astronauts, and the workers who endured through a pandemic. 3

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hope was to assign the fourth seat to a Russian cosmonaut but, despite months of negotiations, the agreement with Roscosmos could not be finalized in time4. Barron was officially the 601st person to enter space and the 71st female spacefarer in history. A naval officer, she was a member of the first Naval Academy class from which women were allowed to commission into the submarine force and to become a submarine warfare officer. She said: “There is no better preparation for spaceflight than serving aboard a submarine” (Fig. 6.29). Kayla Jane Barron (nee Sax) was born on September 19, 1987, in Pocatello, Idaho, to Laura and Scott Sax. Her family moved to Richland, Washington,

Fig. 6.29.  Cover commemorating the docking of SpaceX Crew-3 with the ISS, signed by the eight astronauts onboard the station. The cover is franked with one of the six commemorative stamps issued in 2018 by United Nations Postal Administration (UNPA) to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. The $1.15 stamp features a 2011 picture captured by Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli of the Space Shuttle Endeavour docked with the orbiting laboratory (the only picture of ISS and Shuttle). From the Author’s collection.

 A barter agreement was proposed to Roscosmos by NASA, to exchange seats between Crew Dragon and Russia’s Soyuz crew vehicle in order to allow the space agencies to maintain their segments of the orbital outpost, even if their own space taxis were grounded for a longer period of time. Roscosmos expressed concerns about the safety of the vehicle’s systems and was reluctant to fly Russian cosmonauts on the private American spacecraft, citing SpaceX’s lack of experience. 4

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which she considers to be her hometown, and she graduated in 2006 from Richland High School. Barron did not grow up thinking she would become an astronaut. From a young age she was interested in STEM, especially engineering and, inspired by 9/11, she decided to enter military service to help counter what she realized was a “darker” world than the one she knew as a child: “I did not dream specifically of becoming an astronaut growing up, which makes me a little different from some of my colleagues at NASA”.

Her interests drove her to study engineering at the US Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland, where she graduated in 2010 with a BSc with Honors in Systems Engineering. Encouraged by a mentor, as she was very interested in renewable and clean energy as well as in helping develop solutions to climate change, Barron eventually became a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and in 2011 earned a master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Cambridge, UK, focusing her research on modeling the fuel cycle for a nextgeneration, thorium-fueled nuclear reactor concept known as an accelerator-­ driven subcritical reactor. She said: “I realized that nuclear energy was a hugely under-utilized resource around the world, so I became really interested in next generation reactor concepts. That is how I found my way to being interested in studying at Cambridge, working with Dr. Geoff Parks for my MPhil project on modelling the fuel cycle for a next generation, thorium-fueled nuclear reactor concept. “While being a Gates Cambridge Scholar is about pursuing a degree, whether studying or conducting research, a big part of the experience is also joining this global community and exploring opportunities at Cambridge. The chance to go to Cambridge and be part of such a diverse community allowed me to form friendships with people who grew up all around the world and are passionate about things I had never even thought about before. Those friendships had a big influence on me in terms of how I interact with the world and my curiosity as a person”.

During a Gates Cambridge orientation weekend, she met Thomas M. Barron, a US Army Special Forces officer whom she married in 2013. While she was studying, Barron was appointed as a Navy officer in 2010, and qualified as a submarine warfare officer, thus becoming a member of the first class of women to be enlisted in the submarine community. Assigned to the USS Maine (SSBN 741), an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine homeported in Bangor, Washington, she completed three strategic deterrent patrols while serving as a division officer.

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Fig. 6.30.  Biberpost private stamp celebrating the Crew Dragon 3 mission. Figure Credit: © Ralf Schulz/Biberpost. Reproduced with permissions. All rights reserved.

After this experience on the submarine, Barron had a chance to meet NASA astronaut Kay Hire, who had already served in the Navy, to talk about her missions assembling the ISS, and about the engineering challenges the crew faced and the teamwork required to succeed. Talking to her was a “lightning strike” moment for Barron. She found parallels between what it takes to live, work and complete a mission aboard a submarine, and to live in the confined space station, and was intrigued by the similarity. Encouraged by her mentor, Admiral Ted Carter – then Superintendent of the Naval Academy – Barron decided to apply to become a NASA astronaut (Fig. 6.30). More than 18,300 applications were received by NASA in 2016, the largest applicant pool ever, and the whole process took about 18 months. Barron was one of the 12 astronaut candidates chosen for NASA Group 22 (The Turtles). As she was in a parade when NASA rang her mobile on May 25, 2017, she missed the call, but it was impossible to call or text back on that number. A second call arrived 45  minutes later, which, she said “was one of the most cherishable moments of my life.” She reported for duty in August 2017 (Fig. 6.31). In an interview, Barron said: “It’s important to give yourself the freedom to take things one step at a time. I think it’s important to dream and have big goals and things that you shoot for, but … where I expected to be as a kid is different from the path I ended up walking because along the way I was always evaluating the range of opportunities that lie ahead”.

And the key, she added, is never to lose the sense of curiosity and willingness to dream or push yourself to the next adventure. After completing her two years basic training in spacewalking, robotics, ISS systems, T-38 jet proficiency, and Russian language, Barron became eligible for selection to fly in space.

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Fig. 6.31.  The call from NASA that Kayla Barron missed – and could not return – on May 25, 2017 because she was involved in a parade. Figure Credit: © Kayla Barron. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

She was assigned to the Dragon Crew-3 mission, the fifth SpaceX crewed spaceflight, with NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer. Their training was impacted by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Due to Covid concerns, most of the training took place at NASA’s JSC in Houston, and at SpaceX in Hawthorne, California. The crew did travel a few times to Germany and Russia to train with their international partner agencies, and did remote training with the Japanese space agency. Originally, Crew-3 was supposed to launch on October 31, Halloween night, but instead of a treat they got a trick, as a series of delays kept stalling the Crew-3 launch; firstly due to bad weather, then further delays due to a “minor medical issue” affecting one of the astronauts, then again because of unfavorable weather. The spacecraft finally took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A on November 11, 2021. After a brief welcome ceremony, broadcast live on NASA TV, Barron and the other members of SpaceX Crew-3 joined NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov to complete the station’s Expedition-66 crew (Fig. 6.32). A few days later, on November 15, the seven inhabitants of the ISS faced a dramatic moment when they received an early emergency call from Mission

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Fig. 6.32.  Kayla Barron in the ISS Cupola. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Control in Houston, warning them that they needed to scramble into their spacesuits, evacuate the space station and take shelter in their transport spacecraft, ready to head for home. It turned out that a possible collision was threatening the ISS, after a destructive anti-satellite weapon test conducted that morning by Russia had broken up a two-ton decommissioned Cosmos spy satellite, thus creating a large cloud of more than 1,500 trackable pieces of debris, and many thousands of smaller ones that could not be traced, some of which were heading in the direction of the ISS. Needless to say, this generated controversies on the ground over “Russia’s irresponsible and destabilizing action,” as the satellite was flying at an altitude of about 480 km in a fairly congested environment of commercial and government satellites. The kinetic blast sent debris from the satellite across a broad range of altitudes, from as high as 1,100 km to as low as 300 km above the Earth. “The long-lived debris created by this dangerous and irresponsible test will now threaten satellites and other space objects that are vital to all nations’ security, economic, and scientific interests for decades to come”, said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. In a statement, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said: “With its long

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and storied history in human spaceflight, it is unthinkable that Russia would endanger not only the American and international partner astronauts on the ISS, but also their own cosmonauts. Their actions are reckless and dangerous, threatening the Chinese space station as well”. On November 30, just hours before Barron was due to venture out of the ISS for a planned EVA with crewmate Thomas Marshburn to replace a faulty antenna connecting to NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS), it was decided to halt the EVA because of the space debris warning. NASA said: “While the debris field was very concentrated at first, it has dispersed over time, and it had raised the risk to the spacewalkers by 7 percent. The pieces that could penetrate the spacesuits are much smaller than anything we are able to track”. Barron’s first 6-hour, 32-minute EVA to replace the antenna was completed on December 2. She also participated in many experiments, including space gardening, and the GRASP human research experiment that tests how astronauts perceive up and down movements and grip and manipulate objects in microgravity: “We’re doing a lot of amazing stuff on ISS that will contribute to lunar missions. We’re doing some technology demonstrations of environmental control and life support, so really trying to understand how we can reclaim all the water and turn it back into drinking water, how we can generate oxygen. “We’ve had these systems aboard the space station for 20 years, but what we’re trying to understand is how to improve their reliability and make them easier to maintain, because now, if something breaks, we have these cargo resupply missions coming to the space station every couple of months. So we can get new hardware to replace things, but we’re not going to have that luxury, really, on the Moon or especially on a trip to Mars”.

On March 15, 2022, Barron ventured into the vacuum of space for her second spacewalk – the first spacewalk of the year – this time with crewmate Raja Chari, to assemble and install modification kits required for upcoming solar array upgrades. Over 6 hours and 54 minutes, the two astronauts installed struts and brackets that will be used to support new ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays. These had been delivered to the space station by the 22nd SpaceX Dragon cargo resupply mission on June 5, 2021. The upgrade is expected to increase the available supply from 160 kilowatts to 215 kilowatts. Barron conducted many studies during her mission, including the Habitat-05 investigation, a botany research study for space agriculture which explored genetic expression in cotton cultures to learn more about the process

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of plant regeneration, with a view to possibly improving crop production on Earth. She also conducted the SoundSee experiment by setting the AstroBee robotic flyer up with an experimental audio sensor to use acoustic technology to detect anomalies and possibly identify early indications of space hardware failure. Among the most peculiar experiments she carried out was the International Space Station Archaeological Project (ISSAP), the first archaeological research ever performed outside the Earth, focusing on the orbiting habitat as a “microsociety in a miniworld” to help NASA design better space habitats. The Crew-3 SpaceX Dragon Endurance safely splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tampa, Florida, on May 6, 2022, at 12:43 a.m. EDT after 177 days in space. As part of the NASA Artemis generation of astronauts, Barron is one of the nine women who have a chance at being the first woman to walk on the Moon. Among other things, she worked with the engineering team designing and developing the space suits that will be used for future exploration missions of the Artemis program: “Unlike Apollo, we hope to go to the Moon to stay. We want to build permanent habitats. We want to explore new areas of the Moon”.

Sources For This Section Anon., “Artemis astronaut feature: Kayla Barron” in spacecenter.org (May 20, 2021) Barmada, A., “An Interview with NASA Astronaut Kayla Barron” in www.thescholar. online (May 19, 2021) Berger E., “New images and analyses reveal extent of Cosmos 1408 debris cloud” in www.arstechnica.com (November 17, 2021) Clark, S., “Kayla Barron, a pioneering submarine officer, is ready for her first flight to space” in spaceflightnow.com (October 28, 2021) Grush, Loren. “SpaceX successfully returns four astronauts from the International Space Station in www.theverge.com (May 6, 2022) Hunt, K., “Debris warning postpones NASA spacewalk” in edition.cnn.com (November 30, 2021) NASA Official biography, “Astronaut Kayla Barron”in www.nasa.gov (Updated: June 2, 2020) Venhuizen, H., “More than half of NASA’s moon-bound astronauts are active-duty military” in www.militarytimes.com (December 11, 2020)

7 Spaceflight Participants

“Spaceflight participant” is the term used for space travelers who are not career astronauts. It was originally used for participants in programs like NASA’s Teacher in Space and the Soviet Interkosmos program. Christa McAuliffe was scheduled to become the first teacher in space, but she perished aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger STS-51L on January 28, 1986, along with NASA astronaut Judith Resnik and their five male colleagues. Helen Sharman holds the distinction of being the first British astronaut in space. During her sojourn in 1991, she also became the first woman to visit the Russian space station Mir. Space travel was opened up to tourists in the post-perestroika era, when the Soviet economy was increasingly suffering. To raise funds for a space program that was especially starved for cash, Roskosmos decided to sell tickets to the Mir space station and then to ISS.  In 2006, Anousheh Ansari became not only the first Iranian-born woman in space, but also the first self-funded woman to fly to the ISS. In 2008, Yi So-yeon made South Korea one of only three nations to date to have a woman as its first astronaut, after the UK and Iran. The term “Spaceflight Participant” gained new prominence with the advent of the commercial space tourism era. Today, they are more often called “space tourists”. In July 2021, space companies founded by billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos completed a pair of suborbital flights to the edge of space, in a new sort of space race. The race was won by Branson, the founder of Virgin Galactic, who flew with five crewmates on

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Cavallaro, To The Stars, Springer Praxis Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19860-1_7

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his company’s rocket plane to an altitude of 53 miles (86 kilometers) over New Mexico on July 11, 2021, experiencing several minutes of weightlessness before returning to Earth. Nine days later, on July 20, 2021  – the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing – Bezos’s space company Blue Origin launched four people – including Bezos himself – to an altitude of 66 miles (107 kilometers) over West Texas. Like Branson, the Blue Origin crew floated in their capsule for a few minutes before descending back to the planet. On the same day, July 20, 2021, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced revisions to its criteria for awarding astronaut wings to those flying on commercial spacecraft, in order to maintain the prestige of the Commercial Space Astronaut Wings program. The FAA issued new rules, making the requirements stricter: to gain the astronaut wings, crew members had to perform “activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contribute to human space flight safety”, in addition flying to an altitude of at least 50 miles (80 kilometers). While in previous years a handful of “space tourists” had flown into orbit – all launched on spacecraft commanded by a professional astronaut – a new scenario began in September 2021 with the history-making charity mission “Inspirati④n”, the world’s first all-civilian space flight in Earth orbit, in which no one on board was a professional astronaut. At the end of 2021, the FAA decided to award astronaut wings to the 15 people who had flown to date on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, Blue Origin’s New Shepard, and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Inspirati④n. But they also decided to officially discontinue the Commercial Astronaut Wings Program on December 31, 2021. Starting from January 2022, individuals who reach space are instead simply recognized on the FAA website and will no longer receive astronaut wings.

7.1 CHRISTA MCAULIFFE: “NASA TEACHER IN SPACE” Mission

Launch

Return

STS-51L

January 28, 1986

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Christa McAuliffe (Fig. 7.1), the “first private citizen passenger in the history of space flight,” as Vice President George Bush called her in making the announcement at a press conference at the White House, was chosen

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Fig. 7.1.  Christa McAuliffe. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

from nearly 10,500 candidates who had participated in “NASA Teacher in Space,” the first program of its kind, which President Ronald Reagan wanted to use to attract student interest to the sciences and space exploration, and to endorse teachers (Fig. 7.2). NASA had envisioned a series of civilian “payload specialists” in space. In the summer of 1983, as Sally Ride circled the planet aboard Challenger as the first female astronaut, a NASA-appointed task force issued a report that called for sending professional communicators such as broadcast journalists, newspaper reporters, artists, song writers, and poets on future missions. As the group explained, “It is desirable for NASA to fly observers on the Shuttle for the purpose of adding to the public’s understanding of space flight”. By the spring of 1984, NASA had decided that the initial honor should go to an educator. Announcing the decision in a speech on August 27, 1984, in the midst of an election campaign, President Ronald Reagan said that the first citizen passenger would be a teacher:

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Fig. 7.2.  Commemorative cover of mission STS-51L, signed by the crew including Christa McAuliffe and Judy Resnik. From the collection of Bob McLeod. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

“I am directing NASA to begin a search in all of our elementary and secondary schools and to choose as the first citizen passenger in the history of our space program one of America’s finest: a teacher. When that Shuttle lifts off, all of America will be reminded of the crucial role teachers and education play in the life of our nation. I can’t think of a better lesson for our children, and our country”.

This large “public relations” operation came at a critical time for NASA, whose budget was under pressure, and provided a much-needed publicity boost for the agency. It aroused huge expectation and attracted the attention of young people, the general public and the media who, after many years, had returned to show interest in the space program. McAuliffe’s smile filled the covers of magazines. Hers was an infectious enthusiasm: “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on”! (Fig. 7.3) Eight hundred journalists had amassed on that morning of January 28, 1986, to watch the launch of the mission: twice the average of the previous launches. All of McAuliffe’s students, friends, parents, and her husband and two young children, aged nine and six years respectively, were at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), anxiously watching and waiting for the Challenger Space Shuttle to take off. Sharon Christa Corrigan McAuliffe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 2, 1948. She was the eldest of the five children of Edward

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Fig. 7.3.  McAuliffe’s name on the mission patch for STS-51L is the only one followed by a symbol: the apple, traditionally a powerful symbol for knowledge and education. Apples are associated with the biblical Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, which is often depicted as an apple tree. But the apple also recalls an important tradition: in past centuries, when governments did not pay for education, poor families in northern European countries, and then also in the United States, gave teachers baskets of apples as a sort of compensation for teaching their children. Giving an apple is still a kind, symbolic way to show appreciation for a teacher. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

C.  Corrigan of Irish descent and Grace M.  Corrigan, whose father was Lebanese. As a youth, McAuliffe was inspired by the race to the Moon and the Apollo Moon landing program. The day after John Glenn orbited Earth in Friendship 7, she said to a friend: “Do you realize that someday people will be going to the Moon? Maybe even taking a bus, and I want to do that”! McAuliffe attended the private Catholic high school run by the Archdiocese of Boston. She graduated in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Education and History at the Framingham State College in her hometown. A few weeks later, she married her longtime boyfriend Steve McAuliffe, whom she had known since high school, and they moved to Washington, D.C., where she obtained her first teaching position as an American history teacher at Benjamin Foulois Junior High School in Morningside, Maryland. She continued there until the birth of her first baby, Scott. In 1978, after completing a Master of Arts (MA) in Education Supervision and Administration from Bowie State University in Maryland, McAuliffe

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moved to Concord, New Hampshire, when her husband accepted a job as an assistant to the New Hampshire Attorney General. After the birth of her daughter, Caroline, she took a teaching post at Concord High School, where she developed innovative and engaging teaching techniques. She also delivered the course “The American Woman,” which she had designed, and became very active in the local community, giving her time to the church, a tennis club, the local playhouse, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), the Girl Scouts, and Concord Hospital. In 1984, McAuliffe learned about the “NASA Teacher in Space” program. NASA hoped that sending a teacher into space would increase public interest in the Space Shuttle program and also demonstrate the reliability of spaceflight, at a time when the agency was under continuous pressure to find financial support. A bit hesitant, but encouraged by friends and acquaintances, at the last minute McAuliffe filled out the 11-page form and mailed it, so becoming one of the 10,463 applicants. In her NASA application, she explained: “As a woman, I have been envious of those men who could participate in the space program and who were encouraged to excel in the areas of math and science. I felt that women had indeed been left outside of the one of the most exciting careers available. When Sally Ride and other women began to train as astronauts, I could look among my students and see ahead of them an ever-­ increasing list of opportunities. I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies. I watched the Space Age being born and I would like to participate”.

During her interview at NASA, she added: “I want to demystify NASA and spaceflight”, adding that she wanted to keep a diary to “humanize” her experiences. “I want students to see and understand the special perspective of space and relate it to them” (Fig. 7.4). There was fierce competition for the designation of “Teacher in Space.” In every State and Territory, a committee was appointed that proposed two candidates each. Even when she knew that she had been selected for the group of 114 finalists, McAuliffe still did not believe that she would be the one picked because she felt she was an ordinary person and knew that other competitors could boast many publications and many more academic titles than she could. But this time, NASA were not looking for a researcher to be sent into space; they already had those. They wanted a teacher who most people could identify with as the kind they had known when they were young students: someone

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Fig. 7.4.  Christa McAuliffe experiencing weightlessness during a KC-135 parabolic flight. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

who had left an unforgettable mark in their memory. And the “ordinary” McAuliffe was just what they were looking for. The final choice among the ten finalists (six women and four men) was made by James M. Beggs, the NASA Administrator. McAuliffe was shocked but ecstatic when she learned, in the summer of 1984, that she was going to make history as the first school teacher in space. Vice President George H.W. Bush delivered the good news at a special ceremony at the White House: he said that McAuliffe was going to be the “first private citizen passenger in the history of space flight.” After taking a year-long leave of absence, in September 1985, McAuliffe arrived at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston to begin her training. She feared the other astronauts would consider her an intruder and worked hard to prove herself. But she discovered that the other crewmembers treated her as part of the team and she quickly gained self-confidence and developed trust in the mission: “A lot of people thought it was over when we reached the Moon. They put space on the back burner. But people have a connection with teachers. Now that a teacher has been selected, they are starting to watch the launches again”.

McAuliffe was assigned as a Payload Specialist to the Challenger STS-51L mission. During her mission – which she called her “ultimate field trip” – she

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planned to conduct two live lessons from the Shuttle, of 15 minutes each, connected via satellite with students all over the world. The first lesson would detail daily life aboard the Shuttle and the second was aimed at helping students to understand the goals of space exploration. Her infectious enthusiasm was condensed in her motto: “I touch the future. I teach”. The motto expressed her vision of her profession as a teacher, aware of the great opportunity that was offered not only to her, but also to the whole category of teachers. Now  – through her  – they could show the world the important job that teachers do in their daily life: “I’m hoping that this is going to elevate the teaching profession in the eyes of the public and of those potential teachers out there, and hopefully, maybe one of the secondary objectives of this is students are going to be looking at me and perhaps thinking of going into teaching as professions”.

Barbara Morgan, who lived with McAuliffe for two years as her backup (and flew in space 20 years later), said: “Christa was, is, and always will be our ‘Teacher in Space,’ our first teacher to fly. She truly knew what this was all about – not just bringing the world to her classroom, but also helping to show the world what all the good teachers do across our country day in and day out”.

The STS-51L launch was delayed three times. After over two decades of successful space missions, spaceflights were being somewhat taken for granted, and NASA’s self-confidence had slipped into complacency and a sense of infallibility. The press had worked to create an atmosphere in which the delays were seen more as components of the Shuttle-launching ritual than as necessary safety measures that would be less well tolerated. After three delays, the launch was again postponed by two hours on January 28 to allow time to remove the icicles hanging on the launch tower. The go-ahead was finally given at 11:38 (Fig. 7.5). Seventy-three seconds later, Challenger was engulfed in smoke and flame. Emotions changed. Though it was unclear at first what had happened, one thing was obvious: none of those aboard had survived. Challenger exploded at a height of just over 14,500 m, well before it crossed the Kármán line that, according to the definition of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), conventionally represents the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, and lies at an altitude of 100 km (62 miles) above Earth’s sea level (Fig. 7.6).

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Fig. 7.5.  The icicles hanging from the launch tower on that cold morning in January 1986. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

Fig. 7.6.  Just 73 seconds after launch, Challenger was lost in a cloud of smoke and flame. Figure Credit: © NASA. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

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Strictly speaking, Christa McAuliffe should not be regarded as an “astronaut”, but we cannot do without mentioning her here since, for many of her colleagues, during her intense preparation the “Teacher in Space” was a significant contributor to the revival of interest in the space program, and captured the imagination of the US and of the entire world, as President Ronald Reagan remarked in his eulogy: “We remember Christa McAuliffe, who captured the imagination of the entire nation, inspiring us with her pluck, her restless spirit of discovery; a teacher, not just to her students but to an entire people, instilling us all with the excitement of this journey we ride into the future”.

The investigating committee eventually established that the cause of the disaster was a seal (“O-ring”) that had failed having been exposed to unusually cold temperatures on the launch pad. Even more devastating was that engineers knew exactly what was going to happen and had tried to halt the launch. Bob Ebeling was one of the engineers at the NASA contractor Morton Thiokol who tried to warn their managers and NASA about the problem, but they were overruled. “It’s going to blow up”, Ebeling told his wife the night before the launch. He knew the temperature was going to be an issue. But perhaps the problem was more political than technical. The Space Shuttle program had an ambitious launch schedule that year and NASA wanted to show it could launch regularly and reliably. President Ronald Reagan was also set to deliver the State of the Union address that evening and reportedly planned to tout the Challenger launch. McAuliffe’s family respected the astronaut code of silence until after the death of her father, Ed Corrigan, in 1990. Eventually, her mother, Grace, published a memorial that included some notes left by her husband, who had written: “My daughter Christa McAuliffe was not an astronaut. She did not die for NASA and for the space program. She died because of NASA and its egos, marginal decisions, ignorance, and irresponsibility… one of the Commissioners stated: ‘It was no accident. It was a mistake that was allowed to happen’. NASA betrayed seven fine people who deserved to live. President Reagan said that the act was not deliberate, was not criminal. But I say that the sins of omission are no less sins that those of commission. I say ‘they’ deliberately neglected to make necessary corrections to the O-rings and are, therefore, as guilty as if they planned a deliberate criminal act”.

A specialist in education at NASA reproduced McAuliffe’s lessons and exercises, and made them available to allow teachers to replicate in the classroom what she

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did not get the chance to do from space1. As mentioned, besides her lessons, McAuliffe was planning to keep a journal of her adventure. She had said: “That’s our new frontier out there, and it’s everybody’s business to know about space”. The tragedy put an end to NASA’s ambitious plan to send civilians into space. Eventually, some NASA managers were removed and others promoted in their place. Christa McAuliffe’s name has been given to the asteroid No. 3352, a crater on the Moon, and another on Venus. Dozens of schools worldwide also bear her name, and scholarships and other events have also been established in her memory. Grants in her name, honoring innovative teachers, are provided by many institutions. At least 40 Challenger Centers for Space Science Education were established in different US States, in Canada and in South Korea, their mission being to engage students and teachers in dynamic, hands-on exploration and discovery opportunities that strengthen knowledge in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In 2021, to commemorate McAuliffe on the 35th anniversary of her death, a Silver Dollar Commemorative Coin was minted from the United States. Artists from the US Mint developed 12 candidate designs for the heads-side of the coin, and 15 concepts for the reverse. The designs were reviewed by the McAuliffe family, the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee and the US Commission of Fine Arts. The new US silver dollar depicts the first teacher in space. The image on the final design is based on an official NASA photograph of Christa McAuliffe taken on September 12, 1985. The reverse side depicts her legacy as a teacher: three students looking with McAuliffe, their eyes following the direction of her finger pointing to the stars. Engraved above their heads is McAuliffe’s motto: “I touch the future. I teach”. The seven stars represent the seven people who lost their lives aboard the Challenger: McAuliffe, Dick Scobee, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Mike Smith and Ellison Onizuka. There were 350,000 silver coins released in collector qualities of proof and uncirculated, and were sold at a price that included the face value of the coin, the cost of its design and issue, and a $10 surcharge intended to benefit an organization called FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) that organizes robotic competitions to encourage children to pursue opportunities in STEM. According to the data provided by the well known philately itemizer Peter Hoffmann, McAuliffe has featured on 36 different stamps issued by 20 countries worldwide.  The lessons are now available online at www.challenger.org/challenger_lessons/christas-lost-lessons/

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Sources For This Section Barbree, J. “The Challenger Saga: An American Space Tragedy”, nbcnews.com. Cavallaro U. A coin to commemorate Christa McAuliffe in 2021, AD*ASTRA #46 (October 2020), p. 13. Cunningham, W. The All-American Boys, pp. 369–376. iBooks, Inc., New York (2004). Evans, R. Tragedy and Triumph in Orbit: The Eighties and Early Nineties, pp. 440–443, 446. Springer-Praxis, New York (2012). Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 158–164. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Greene, N. “I Touch the Future: Christa McAuliffe, the Space Shuttle Challenger Astronaut Teacher”, space.about.com (December 9, 2014). Kevles, T.H. Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space, pp. 100–105. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, UK (2006). Mayfield, B. “Christa’s Lost Lessons”, Space Educator’s Handbook, OMB/NASA Report #S677. Official NASA biography of Christa McAuliffe, nasa.gov (April 2007). Stahl, L. “Christa McAuliffe’s Mother Had Premonition”, The Hour (quotidiano di Norwalk), January 20, 1996, p. 48.

7.2 ANOUSHEH ANSARI: THE FIRST IRANIAN SPACEWOMAN Launch Soyuz TMA-9

Return September 18, 2006

Soyuz TMA-8

September 29, 2006

Ever since she could remember, Anousheh Ansari wanted to be an astronaut. As a child, she would draw pictures of herself sitting in a spacecraft, blasting into orbit. Her dream, which she kept in her heart since she was a little girl in Iran, was fulfilled on September 18, 2006, a few days after her 40th birthday, when she captured headlines around the world as the first Iranian astronaut, the world’s first female Muslim in space, and the first ever self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station (ISS). Anousheh Ansari (Fig. 7.7) was born Anousheh Raissian, in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city, on September 12, 1966. When she was a young girl, her family moved to Teheran, where she attended school. She left her country, which had become unstable after political turmoil (culminating in the overthrow of the King of Persia and the Islamic Revolution in 1979), when universities were closed for two years and it was no longer possible for her to pursue an advanced education. In 1982, as a teenager, without knowing a

Fig. 7.7.  Anousheh Ansari. Figure Credit: © NASA.  Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

single word of English, Ansari emigrated with her family to the US to join a family member living in Virginia. She said: “When I left Iran, I was 16 years old and in class XI. But in the US, I was admitted to class IX”. However, she was determined not to waste those academic years: “In the holidays, I went to the nearby college and attended non-stop English classes from eight in the morning to eight in the evening”. In 1989, Ansari earned a bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Computer Engineering from George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. After graduation, she began working at telecommunications company MCI, where she met her future husband, Hamid Ansari. They married in 1991, and Ansari became a US citizen. In 1992, she earned a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from George Washington University. A successful serial entrepreneur with a strong personality, in 1993, together with her husband and her brother-in-law, Amir Ansari, she co-founded Telecom Technologies Inc. (TTI), a service provider that invented an innovative software switch technology, allowing integration between existing legacy telecom networks and next-­ generation networks, and enabling voice communications over the Internet. Assignee of three key US patents, in 2000, TTI successfully merged into Sonus Networks, Inc., a provider of IP-based voice infrastructure products, in a deal worth approximately US$750 million. Ansari served as general manager and vice president of the Softswitch division.

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Fig. 7.8.  Commemorative cover cancelled in the military post office of Baikonur on the day of the launch of Soyuz TMA-9, signed by Anousheh Ansari. From the Author’s collection.

In 2006, she co-founded and was chairwoman of Prodea Systems, a company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Prodea provides the “Internet of Things”; managed service solutions for global operators and service providers via their powerful Residential Operating System (ROS). Ansari recalls that she has always been fascinated with space (Fig. 7.8): “I remember it has always been in my heart and a part of me. I don’t know how it began or where it began. Maybe I was born with it. Maybe it’s in my genes. I don’t know. My husband sometimes jokes and says ‘You know I think you’re not from this planet. You may have come from another planet and you’re just trying to get back home’”.

Endorsing the motto of her hero, Mahatma Gandhi – “Be the change you want to see in the world” – Ansari is an active proponent of world-changing technologies. With the support of her family, on May 5, 2004 (the 43rd anniversary of the first American suborbital flight of Alan Shepard), she decided to contribute a US$10 million cash award for the first non-governmental organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. The Ansari X-Prize, as it was renamed to honor the generous family,

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was won that same year by the legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan with his SpaceShipOne. When Rutan later announced that he was joining Sir Richard Branson’s Virginia-based Virgin Galactic Company to make a larger version for commercial suborbital flights by 2008, Ansari immediately reserved her seat. She and her family had ignited a new era for commercial spaceflight. Ansari was the fourth overall self-funded space traveler on the Soyuz spacecraft, after the American Dennis Tito (2001), the South-African Mark Shuttleworth (2002), and the American Greg Olsen (2005), under a deal arranged by Space Adventures with the Russian Federal Space Agency. She is the first self-funded woman to fly to the ISS. Originally, the world’s fourth space tourist was supposed to be the Japanese businessman Daisuke Enomoto, who was scheduled to fly on Soyuz TMA-9 along with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and US astronaut Miguel Lopez-Alegria. Since Ansari strongly wanted to fly into space, she accepted a backup role to Enomoto, but a few weeks before the flight, on August 21, 2006, Enomoto was disqualified for medical reasons and Ansari became a primary crewmember. She recalls: “I was actually going back to my room after finishing my day of training and I received a call from Space Adventures telling me that I’ve been moved up to become part of the primary crew. First I couldn’t believe it. I thought they were joking with me and then, as I started believing them, I was in complete shock and total excitement and you know, I would’ve screamed if I wasn’t so aware of the people around me”.

On September 18, 2006, Ansari blasted off aboard the Soyuz TMA-9 and reached the ISS. She wanted to wear both the American and the Iranian flags on her spacesuit, to honor her two countries: “I was born in Iran and lived there until the age of 16 and then moved to the United States. So I have a lot of roots in Iran and feel very close to the Iranian people and the culture of the country”.

At the insistence of the Russian and US governments, she was unable to wear the Iranian flag, but wore the Iranian colors instead and kept the Iranian flag on her flight patch. Ansari remembers an intense odor, like a burnt almond cookie, that she sensed when she entered the ISS from the Soyuz. Later, she found out that it was because the thrusters that are fired when a Soyuz approaches for docking use a fuel that contains cyanide, which has an almond smell. The enclosed

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environment of the ISS made a lasting impression on her. She said that it was “almost like a bachelor pad. Imagine if you were stuck in an aircraft and the door wasn’t opened for several years – it’s something like that.” But finally she had accomplished something that many had told her was not possible: “I was finally at the destination I always wanted to go to. I described it sometimes as being like when people go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. For me it was my pilgrimage and I was there, I finally made it, and I didn’t want to leave”.

During her eight-day stay on board the ISS, Ansari performed a series of scientific experiments on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA), including researching the mechanisms behind anemia, how changes in muscles influence lower-back pain, and the consequences of space radiation on ISS crewmembers and different species of microbes that have made a home for themselves on the station. She also became the first person to publish a weblog from space: “I felt it was important to share this experience. I felt that I was very privileged, that I was very lucky to be there. I know that there are lots of people like me who dream about this, so I wanted to share this experience and take them on the journey with me.”

Ansari does not like the term “space tourist” and calls it an “over simplistic label to a complicated process.” She prefers the title of “spaceflight participant:” “In a way I take offense when they call me a tourist because it brings that image of someone with a camera around their neck. I’ve been training for it for six months. I think if it is to be compared to an experience on Earth it probably is closer to expeditions like people who go to Antarctica or people who climb Mount Everest. So I would probably compare it more to an expedition than to a touristy trip to another city.”

Ansari is a strong promoter of the participation of the private industry in space exploration and fosters the “privatization of space.” Her family continues to contribute to the industry to make space travel more affordable and accessible to more people. She adds: “I hope to inspire everyone, especially young people, women, and young girls all over the world, and in Middle Eastern countries that do not provide women

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with the same opportunities as men, to not give up their dreams and to pursue them. It may seem impossible to them at times, but I believe they can realize their dreams if they keep it in their hearts, nurture it, and look for opportunities and make those opportunities happen.”

On her website, anoushehansari.com, she declares that she wants to be a “Space Ambassador” to promote peace and understanding amongst nations: “Looking at [Earth] from up there, you can’t see any borders or any differentiation between different races or anything like that, and all you see is one planet; one place that all of us have to take care of if we want to be able to live on it for a long time. Our current technologies and everything we have does not afford us the luxury of saying ‘ok if we blow up this planet and make it uninhabitable for ourselves we can pack up and live some place else.’ So on one hand you look at your safe haven on Earth and then you turn around and then you look at the blackness of the universe and see that there is not a lot of habitable planets or moons around you. You sort of feel like you need to take care of the precious gift you’ve been given. “I hope that more and more people will get to have this experience because it does give you a new perspective on life, and on everything else like how to live your life and interact with your environment. I’ve talked to different astronauts and cosmonauts and read their books, and think that it’s a common theme that you hear from all of them. It does make a big difference. I am hoping that more and more people will be able to have that experience first hand and I think it may make our world a better place to live if more people flew to space”.

Ansari lives in Dallas, Texas, and has two honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Utah Valley University and International Space University. She is currently working toward a master’s degree in Astronomy from Swinburne University. Apart from her native Persian, she is fluent in English and French and acquired a working knowledge of Russian for her spaceflight experience. She has published her memoirs, co-written with Homer Hickam, in the book My Dream of Stars: From Daughter of Iran to Space Pioneer, issued by St. Martin’s Press in 2010. In October 2018, Anousheh Ansari became the CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, the California-based nonprofit that organizes multimillion-­ dollar competitions to support scientific innovation and “radical breakthroughs” for the benefit of humanity. On accepting the position, she said:

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“As I take on the helm at XPRIZE, I feel the same exhilaration as I did the day I was sitting in my capsule atop my Russian Soyuz rocket – waiting impatiently to be launched into the infinity of the universe that I had dreamed about as a child, and in nervous anticipation of the enormous possibilities in front of me”.

The XPRIZE Foundation is the world’s leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s difficult grand challenges, in new areas such as Exploration (Space and Oceans), Life Sciences, Energy & Environment, Education and Global Development, Ansari also serves on the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Future Council and has received numerous honors, including the WEF Young Global Leader, Ellis Island Medal of Honor, and STEM Leadership Hall of Fame, among others. She is a UNESCO Good Will Ambassador and serves on the board of Jabil and Peace First, as well as other not-for-profit organizations focused on STEM education and youth empowerment.

Sources For This Section Biography in linkedin.com/in/anousheh-ansari-4a40929 Boyle A., “12 years after her trip to space, Anousheh Ansari takes over as the CEO of XPRIZE” in www.geekwire.com (October 18, 2018) Gibson, K.B. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions and Gravity-Breaking Adventures, pp. 167–168. Chicago Review Press, Inc., Chicago (2014). Goudarzi, S. “Anousheh Ansari: A Passion for Space Travel”, news.bbc.co.uk (September 15, 2006). Goudarzi, S. “Interview with Anousheh Ansari, the First Female Space Tourist”, space.com (September 15, 2006). Gupta, G. “The Dramatic Journey of Anousheh Ansari, the First Female Private Space Explorer”, dnaindia.com (January 31, 2016). Hollingham, R. “Space Tourist’s Sick Trip to ‘Bachelor Pad’ in Space”, bbc.com (November 18, 2014). Iran Chamber Society, “Anousheh Ansari: The first Iranian Astronaut and First Female Space Tourist”, iranchamber.com (February 26, 2016). Official biography of Anousheh Ansari, anoushehansari.com. Contacts by e-mail with the Author in April–June 2016.

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7.3 BETH MOSES: THE FIRST WOMAN TO FLY ON A PRIVATE SPACECRAFT Mission

Launch

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VSS Unity VF-01 VSS Unity #22

February 22, 2019 July 11, 2021

February 22, 2019 July 11, 2021

On February 22, 2019, Beth Moses became the 571st person to earn astronaut wings, and made history by becoming the first woman to fly into space on board a privately-funded commercial spacecraft. In the 50th anniversary year of Apollo 11, she officially opened the new era of the commercial spaceflight as a true tourist, since she is a Virgin Galactic employee but not a space pilot herself. She was also the first astronaut to unstrap and float out of her seat on a suborbital flight. Moses became the first female commercial astronaut, earning the Federal Aviation Agency’s (FAA) commercial astronaut wings # “007” On her return to Earth, Moses said: “Today was the fulfillment of a personal lifelong ambition. But more so, it was the start of something great for all of humanity: ourselves and other commercial companies, we are aiming to take people off the planet”.

As the Chief Astronaut Instructor and Interiors Program Manager for Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo program  – responsible for the cabin layout and developing the cabin procedures and training program for the astronauts who will fly on SpaceShipTwo – Moses was sent as the company’s first ever spaceflight test passenger to provide human validation of some of the cabin design elements, and to safely uncover any potential surprises associated with flying in the cabin, unstrapping, and strapping back in, in order to fine tune the preparation of the cabin for commercial service. She was therefore the first person on a suborbital mission known to have unbuckled and floated around the cabin, as part of her job analyzing the future space passenger experience. She recalled: “The first thing I did was a planned safety check. I ascertained the condition of the cabin and my own condition and confirmed that it was safe to unstrap and leave my seat… Then I got back into my seat to check it, unbuckled again a different way, leaned and floated to the top of the cabin, floated purposely about the cabin checking specific handling aids and ship motion, and finally arrived at the front where I celebrated with the pilots. The cabin felt just the right size, I was never out of reach for something to touch to help me move around”.

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Fig. 7.9.  Cover commemorating the Virgin Galactic mission VSS Unity VF-01. The cover is signed by Beth Moses, the SS2 astronaut co-pilots Dave Mackay and Michael “Sooch” Masucci, and by Kelly “Cosmic” Latimer, who piloted the WK2 carrier airplane and will become the first Virgin Galactic female pilot astronaut. From the Author’s collection.

The WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) carrier airplane took off soon after 8 a.m. local time (11 a.m. ET) from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. It lifted the SpaceShipTwo passenger craft VSS Unity (Virgin Space Ship Unity) high enough to fire its motors (Fig. 7.9). After the countdown – “3, 2, 1, release” and a short freefall, Unity lit its hybrid rocket motor and went supersonic. This was only its second flight to space. Copilots Dave Mackay, who is the company’s Chief Pilot, and Michael “Sooch” Masucci, the Lead Pilot Trainer – each of whom has logged more than 10,000 hours in the air – took the VSS Unity to a maximum altitude of 55.87 miles (89.9 km) above Earth, at a top speed of Mach 3.04. This flight was also the first time that either pilot had been into space. Moses, the first “tourist” in the passenger cabin, is an expert in extreme environment testing. On the virgingalactic.com website she said: “Before joining Virgin Galactic, I spent years at NASA working in parabolic aircraft, testing hardware in weightlessness and under high G.  I also planned, conducted and trained others to conduct neutral buoyancy tests and thermal vacuum tests which verified the hardware used on the International Space Station”. She had actually completed 400 parabolic zero-gravity flights, thousands of neutral buoyancy dives with hardware, and dozens of human vacuum chamber tests, but this flight represented a special experience for her.

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Moses spoke about her “indescribable ride” when SpaceShipTwo reached apogee and she could experience zero-g for few minutes, and “have a God’s eye view of the Earth:” “Apogee was the high point in more than one way. It was the most magical moment of my life and there are no words to adequately express the feeling it gave me. All five of us who have flown to space on SpaceShipTwo say that apogee feels timeless. You reach this moment where the spaceship completely stops and it feels like time stops with it”.

Moses was able to admire the blue ocean, green terrain and snowcapped mountains below, framed against the deep black of space: “I thought Earth was wearing her diamonds for us”, she would later say. The spacecraft had NASA payloads on board, to replicate the weight it will carry when there are six passengers aboard during commercial flights. Even with the extra weight, spacecraft Unity performed well. After a few minutes of weightlessness at the top of the ride, Unity started gliding back to the Mojave Air and Space Port for an airplane-like runway landing. Natalie Beth Moses (nee Stubbings) was born on May 29, 1969, and grew up in Northbrook, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, where she was an excellent student at the Glenbrook North High School. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from astronaut Neil Armstrong’s alma mater, Purdue University, in 1992. Two years later the University awarded her a master’s degree in the same field. While studying aerospace engineering, with the help of astronaut Don Thomas who was previously in NASA’s Materials Branch, Moses entered an experiment into a National Space Foundation (NFS) student contest and won a chance to test the experiment’s feasibility on the KC-135. She was then awarded the NFS Microgravity Research Award. While majoring at Purdue University, Moses was an intern at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Space Station Support Office coordinated by astronaut Mike Lounge, where she was involved in many assignments including the Weightless Environment Training Facility (WETF, the neutral buoyancy water tank), the Structures and Mechanics Division, and the Space Station Training Office. Finally, she was assigned to track STS-49’s Assembly of Space Station by EVA Methods (ASEM) payload. STS-49 was Shuttle Endeavour’s maiden flight, which tested various assembly techniques for Space Station. Interviewed by Space News Roundup in April 1991, during her internship, Moses said: “One of the primary purposes of ASEM is to demonstrate that the orbiter has the capability to do three back-to-back EVAs on

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three consecutive days”2. A number of management and integration issues were worked out for this ASEM project, simulating techniques required for the entire Space Station building process. Daily tasks for Moses included keeping the crew informed of these issues and ensuring that their concerns were incorporated into the ASEM design, adding in the interview: “This is the best possible education I could receive”. After graduating. Moses was hired by NASA’s JSC and started her career designing mockups for astronauts to test tools underwater. She eventually became the spacewalk system manager for the ISS, leading the global program of humanin-the-loop testing which designed, developed, and verified the hardware and spacewalk mechanisms used by astronauts to assemble and maintain the ISS in orbit: in other words, building the technology astronauts used to walk in space: “My team and I had to test the really crucial components underwater in neutral buoyancy, or in vacuum chambers, or in glove boxes, or in all these different test environments, to make sure that when the space walkers got to space and had part A in their right hand and part B in their left hand, they could pull them together and fasten them together without any issue”.

As a result of her contributions with the global team, ISS received the Robert J. Collier trophy honoring the “greatest achievement in aeronautics and astronautics in America” in 2009 for “successful design, development, and assembly of the world’s largest spacecraft, an orbiting laboratory, promising new discoveries for mankind and setting new standards for international co-­operation in space.” Referring to the big challenge of building the ISS, Moses said: “I’m super proud: It all fits together. Not everything fitted together originally. It all had to fit together in space even though we could never plug it all together on the ground”.

Working on these projects with an international, multi-corporate team, including competitors Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Rocketdyne, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Alenia Space, Moses further refined her idea of how global tools can help disparate parties coordinate across borders, and above them: “Italian hardware was going to literally bump into the Japanese hardware, which was literally going to stick into the hull of the American hardware, and in order  Barbara Schwartz, “An Eye Towards the Future  – Co-op Student is Engineering Liaison”, Space News Roundup, April 19, 1991, p.3, in historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/

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to put it all together you had to use the Canadian robotic arm. Many countries that have been at war with each other cooperated to build something for the good of all”.

Moses never applied to be a NASA astronaut, saying: “It’s extremely competitive, and the NASA program had [at that time] eyesight requirements that I didn’t meet”. She left NASA in 2014 after almost 20 years. Her current job is to help Virgin Galactic’s customers to fully enjoy what could be the experience of a lifetime: “My role is to prepare any astronaut that flies in our customer cabin for their space flight, and to make sure that they’re ready for it and enjoy it in whatever ways they most want to enjoy it”.

Everyone who signs up must pass a basic medical exam, but unlike NASA’s highly selective astronaut program, there is no “right stuff” that commercial fliers must possess, and no upper age limit, although FAA regulations require that anyone signed up at a younger age must wait until they are 18 to fly. Moses has said: “I am very proud to be an American. But first and foremost, I’m a citizen of Earth. Now that I’ve seen it in space, I feel even more so”. A journey above the atmosphere and into microgravity, where the sky is dark and Earth’s horizon is curved can change your life, and she said: “Space is a great unifier”. She believes that many of the world’s differences can be solved by getting people off it: “One of the things that I believe in is that if a greater slice of humanity can experience spaceflight, it will translate to untold benefits and changes on Earth. What if every world leader saw Earth from space? It might be a more gentle, kind planet”. After her historic first flight she was asked by a journalist what she was going to do with her spacesuit. Moses replied: “Well, gosh, I hope to fly again, so maybe I’ll just hang it up in my closet and use it again”! She did return to space for a second time, on July 11, 2021, as part of the first fully-crewed test flight to space. She was cabin lead and test director to help the crew of four, all of whom were Virgin Galactic’s employees, as were the two pilots. Moses said: “Our ship inverts and comes to a complete stop and there is a stillness, a timelessness, a peace at that crest that takes your soul away. It just takes your breath away. I had to remind people to slow down and look out the window because people were having so much fun with weightlessness”. The crew included Richard Branson, the first billionaire to fly to space with his own company, who also could have come close to becoming the first

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billionaire to crash during a spaceflight3. Moses was assigned to her third SpaceShipTwo mission in late September 2021, this time to accompany a crew of three from the Italian Air Force to suborbital space. In mission Unity 23, she would be serving as cabin lead in space, calling out key mission phases and cabin instructions, and overseeing the safe and efficient execution of the flight timeline, although not interacting directly with the Italian experiment onboard. Mission Unity 23 was however pushed back4.

 Weeks later, while the FAA was investigating the VSS Unity #22 mission’s deviation from its “Air Traffic Control clearance” it was revealed that as the space plane was accelerating toward peak altitude, a yellow caution light appeared on the ship’s console a few seconds before the end of the powered flight, followed by a red warning light alerting pilots that there was a trajectory problem known as the “entry glide-cone warning”. In regulating the private space industry, the FAA looks to prevent collisions with general air traffic, including commercial airliners, by designating airspace that each mission must stay within. Instead of aborting the rocket motor (which would have ended Branson’s hopes of beating his rival Jeff Bezos, whose flight into space was scheduled for a few days later), the pilots Mackay and Masucci, accelerated to Mach 3 and got the spaceship into space. Despite the red light, the skilled pilots managed to return to Earth and land safely, but had deviated from the pre-planned trajectory for 1 minute 41 seconds. A post-flight inspection discovered that a seal running along a stabilizer on the wing, designed to control the vehicle at supersonic speeds, had come undone, a potentially serious safety hazard. In a written statement, Virgin Galactic described the flight as “a safe and successful test flight that adhered to our flight procedures and training protocols. At no time were passengers and crew put in any danger”. The off-course descent was not the only potentially serious issue Virgin Galactic has faced in recent years. A week after this apparently successful flight, Virgin Galactic’s former lead test pilot and flight test director, Mark Stucky, was dismissed – after 12 years in the Company – after publication of the Nick Schmidle book Test Gods: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut, in which Stucky had expressed criticism of the company’s safety culture. The book also revealed that during Beth Moses’ first spaceflight in February 2019, on the same spaceship with the same pilots, the spacecraft had sustained significant damage when a bond holding the trailing edge of the horizontal stabilizer came unglued, compromising the structural integrity of the entire stabilizer. While celebrating the near-fatal flight with champagne in public, behind the scenes Virgin Galactic management had swept the incident under the rug, while ordering a new stabilizer made of metal, instead of composite materials. Reportedly, the pilots landed long on the runway to try to avoid photographers filming the ship’s return. Mark Stucky marked the second departure of a key senior safety-related VG employee. Two years before, and shortly after the 2019 test flight, Todd Ericson had stepped down as Virgin Galactic’s VP of safety and testing. A retired Air Force Colonel, he was disillusioned and worried when the management tried to treat the stabilizer issue as an isolated incident and keep the problem quiet. Four days after the mission, the company released a statement saying: “At Virgin Galactic, safety is our guiding principle and the North Star for all programmatic decisions. Our culture is one of prioritizing safety as the most important factor in every element of our work, and any suggestions to the contrary are untrue”. In contrast, Ericson said: “I don’t know how we didn’t lose the vehicle and kill three people”. 4  Soon after the official presentation of Mission Unity 23 on February 2 – the same day on which the FAA grounded the space travel company’s flights pending the investigation into the July 11 mishap, and just one day after the quoted New Yorker magazine report – Virgin Galactic announced a first unrelated postponement and stated that it expected “to open its flight window for Unity 23 in mid October,” because of “a potential manufacturing defect” in the spaceship. “We have a robust pre-flight readiness approach that is rooted in our thorough, proactive and safety-­ first culture”, Virgin Galactic’s new CEO Michael Colglazier said. The corrective actions proposed by Virgin Galactic were accepted by the FAA, and on September 29, 2021, following the conclusion of its inquiry, Virgin Galactic was cleared to fly again. However, Unity 23 was pushed back to 2022 and then further to 2023. A target date for the rescheduled mission has not yet been given. 3

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Beth Moses is married to Mike Moses, President of Space Missions and Safety for Virgin Galactic.

Sources For This Section Bartels M., “Virgin Galactic Reaches Space Again, Flies Test Passenger for 1st Time”, in www.space.com, February 22, 2019. Cavallaro U. Beth Moses: the 1st woman on a private spacecraft, AD*ASTRA #46 (October 2020), pp. 10–13. Chang R., “Meet the Female Astronauts Who Just Went to Space With Virgin Galactic” in travelandleisure.com (July 15, 2021) Davenport C., “Virgin Galactic ordered safety probe after wing of spacecraft was damaged during 2019 flight, book says”, in www.washingtonpost.com (February 1, 2021) Drake N., “Want to be a space tourist? Here’s what to expect.” in nationalgeographic. com, February 27, 2019 Messier, D., “As Virgin Galactic Crew Celebrated Second Suborbital Flight, Problems Loomed Behind the Scenes” in www.parabolicarc.com (February 2, 2021) Messier, D., “Virgin Galactic’s Second Suborbital Flight Nearly Destroyed Ship and Killed Crew”, in www.parabolicarc.com (February 11, 2021) Moses B., “Reflections from an Astronaut” in www.virgingalactic.com, February 12, 2020 O’Neil K., “Virgin Galactic Postpones Italian Air Force Test Flight”, in www.thestreet.com (September 12, 2021) Schmidle, N. “For Richard Branson, the romance of space tourism meets reality” in www.nytimes.com (May 1, 2021) Schmidle, N. “The Red Warning Light on Richard Branson’s Space Flight”, in www. newyorker.com (September 1, 2021)

7.4 SIRISHA BANDLA: FROM GUNTER TO THE EDGE OF SPACE Mission

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VSS Unity #22

July 11, 2021

July 11, 2021

Sirisha Bandla became an instant celebrity among the wider public on July 11, 2021, when she was one of the company employees who flew to the edge of space on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Unity #22. She accompanied British billionaire Sir Richard Branson together with VG’s Lead Flight Operations Engineer Colin Bennett, VG’s Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses, and

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Fig. 7.10.  Commemorative cover issued for the launch of VSS Unity #22. From the Author’s collection.

pilots Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci. The carrier ship, VMS Eve, was piloted by C.J. Sturckow and Kelly Latimer. This was the 22nd flight test for Virgin Galactic and the fourth crewed suborbital spaceflight of VSS Unity, as well as the first fully-crewed suborbital test flight. On its official account, the US Embassy in India tweeted, with the hashtag #WomeninSTEM (Fig. 7.10): “Congratulations to Indian-American astronaut Sirisha Bandla on becoming the third Indian-origin woman after Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams to fly into space5. You are an inspiration to all, Sirisha”!

India’s Vice President Venkaiah Naidu added, “[Bandla’s] achievement will motivate many more young girls in India and abroad to take up challenging careers”. On Twitter, the Indian Minister of Education, Dharmendra Pradhan, referred to the aeronautical engineer’s Indian roots: “From Guntur to the edge of space, Sirisha Bandla’s feat will inspire young girls across the globe to break the glass ceiling and define new possibilities”. Sirisha Bandla was born in India on January 22, 1988 – in Tenali, Andhra Pradesh, a southern state in Guntur district – into a Telugu-speaking Hindu family. At the age of four she moved to Houston in the United States, where her father Dr. Muralidhar Bandla, a scientist in agriculture, had migrated in  The first Indian ever to go into space was the former Air Force pilot Rakesh Sharma who flew aboard Soyuz T-11 on April 3, 1984, part of the Soviet Interkosmos program. Entries for Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams can be found in Chapters 1 and 5, respectively. 5

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search of better opportunities. He is currently working in India with the US Embassy. Although Bandla has lived in the United States since then, she is still deeply connected to her Indian roots and regularly makes trips to meet her relatives and friends there. She visited NASA on a school field trip, and from childhood wanted to know about people related to space: “I grew up in Houston, Texas, so we had Johnson Space Center right down the street. I started seeing how people become astronauts. After that I decided to make my career in this field”.

After completing her basic education in a local high school in Texas, Bandla planned to enroll in the U.S. Air Force and eventually become a NASA astronaut, but she could not fulfill pilot qualifications due to her eyesight. However, the Ansari X-Prize winning entry by SpaceShipOne, the first private vehicle to travel into space multiple times, showed her that NASA was not the only way to follow her passion. From then on she decided to become an aerospace engineer, with an eye on the growing commercial space sector. In 2006 Bandla was admitted to Purdue University, where she graduated in 2011 with a bachelor of science (BSc) degree in Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering. After attending school for one full year, she participated in the co-op program, and every semester from August 2007 to August 2010 she interned at ATA Engineering, headquartered in San Diego, California, providing test- and analysis-driven design for aerospace and defense. After graduating, she joined L-3 Communications Integrated Systems in Greenville, Texas, as an aerospace engineer, specializing in aircraft modernization and maintenance services. She worked there for two years designing components for advanced aircraft: “As I started working, I realized that the one thing I didn’t get from my education at Purdue was a business aspect. I had the opportunity to continue my education while I was working”.

In 2012, Bandla was admitted to George Washington University’s Business Administration program from which she obtained a master’s degree (MBA) in 2015. During this period, from January 2012 to June 2015, she served as Associate Director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), an industry association of commercial spaceflight companies. There, she worked on various policies with the aim of promoting the commercial space industry and making commercial spaceflight a reality.

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Bandla’s talents were recognized quite early by the USA Telugu community. At its 2014 convention, they honored her with the TANA Youth Star Award6 for achieving great milestones in space. The following year, in July 2015, Bandla joined Virgin Galactic, starting her career in the Government Affairs department. She progressed through the company’s ranks, becoming Business Development and Government Affairs Manager in October 2017, and then the Director of Washington Operations at Virgin Orbit from January 2020 to January 2021. She was then promoted to Vice President of Government Affairs and Business Development of the Virgin Group, supporting both Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne and Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo programs. Bandla also serves on the Board of Directors for the American Astronautical Society and the Future Space Leaders Foundation, and is a member of the Young Professional Advisory Council at Purdue University, in addition to helping to coordinate the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Programs (MIFP)7. The news that Bandla would fly into space broke on July 1, 2021, when the crew of VSS Unity #22 was announced. This was the same day Jeff Bezos disclosed that the first crewed flight of his company Blue Origin would include aviation pioneer Wally Funk, his brother Mark and the yet-to-be-­ named winner of an on-line auction for the fourth seat. Sharing the news on Twitter, Bandla said: “I am so incredibly honored to be a part of the amazing crew of Unity #22, and to be a part of a company whose mission is to make space available to all”.

Ten days later, on July 11, SpaceShipTwo, the winged plane with a single rocket motor that is carried aloft by the VMS Eve mothership (named after Sir Richard Branson’s mother), was drop-launched from an altitude of more than eight miles.

 TANA (Telugu Association of North America) is the oldest and largest Indian-American organization in the States. 7  The Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship is a program that helps college students enter the commercial spaceflight industry. It was created in memory of Matthew Isakowitz, “whose passion for commercial space exploration inspired all who knew him,” Bandla said. Isakowitz had helped her to understand space policy, at a crucial time in her career when she joined the CSF. He was her predecessor, and she said that before he left: “He basically gave me a crash course on what space policy is. Matthew was the first person to really bring me into the space policy community. Prior to that, I didn’t have a real appreciation for the role policy plays in a lot of our decisions and program… He always had a rare, great understanding of policy, business, and engineering”. Unfortunately, Matthew Isakowitz passed away in 2017. Bandla has been part of the MIFP’s leadership team since the program was founded after his death, to help inspire the next generation of commercial spaceflight leaders. 6

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After separation, the vehicle roared into space over the New Mexico desert, reaching an apogee of 282,773 ft (around 53.5 miles, or 86 kilometers). This is beyond the official boundary of space set by the FAA, allowing all six passengers to admire the Earth’s curvature and experience a few minutes of weightlessness, and thereby qualifying them all as FAA commercial astronauts. During the flight, Bandla conducted a NASA-supported experiment from the University of Florida and evaluated the human-tended research experiment by activating several handheld fixation tubes aboard Unity at critical data-collection stages and different phases of the flight. This included at standard Earth’s gravitational force (at 1 g) before the rocket boost, just before entering microgravity, and after the conclusion of microgravity. University research investigators Robert Ferl and Anna-Lisa Paul had flown similar experiments on suborbital flights in the past. They began studying how plants respond to microgravity on the molecular level with Space Shuttle experiments in the late 1990s and found that plants behave quite differently in space compared to on the ground. They applied their findings to longer-term observations, with nine experiments on the International Space Station (ISS). The data collected during the Unity 22 flight provided a “first look at human-­ tended payloads on SpaceShipTwo” to complement the previous data. After four minutes, the flight began its descent back to Earth, and about 14 minutes after launch, Unity#22 glided back to the same Spaceport America runway (Runway 34) in New Mexico where takeoff had occurred 90 minutes earlier. During a postflight interview, Bandla said: “I was trying to think about a better word than incredible but that is the only word that can come to my mind... Seeing the view of Earth is so life-changing but also the boost of the rocket motor kicking in. The whole trip to space and back is just amazing”.

As mentioned earlier8, while celebrating the historic flight in public with champagne, behind the scenes Virgin Galactic’s management tried to sweep under the rug the possibility that the first billionaire to fly to space with his own company also came close to becoming the first billionaire to crash during a spaceflight, and that another woman of Indian origin to go to space could have gone the same way as Kalpana Chawla if there had been a disaster.

 See previous entry for Beth Moses.

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Sources For This Section Anon. “MIFP Team Member Sirisha Bandla Earns Astronaut Wings on Virgin Galactic Spaceflight” in www.matthewisakowitzfellowship.org (July 11, 2021) Anon. “Alumna Bandla becomes 26th member of Purdue’s Cradle of Astronauts”, in engineering.purdue.edu (Jul 12, 2021) Anon. “Virgin Galactic Unity 22 Spaceflight with Sir Richard Branson and Crew”, in www.arlingtoncardinal.com (Jul 11, 2021) Cavallaro U. Sirisha Bandla – From Guntur to the edge of space, AD*ASTRA #50 (October 2021), pp. 3–5. Kearns, M., “Inside the Mind of a Young Professional: A Conversation with Sirisha Bandla”, in astronautical.org (January 23, 2020) twitter.com/sirishabandla Weitering, H., “Pilots saw ‘red light’ warning during Virgin Galactic’s historic spaceflight with Richard Branson: report” in space.com (September 02, 2021)

7.5 WALLY FUNK: NO ONE HAS WAITED LONGER Mission

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Blue Origin NS-16

July 20, 2021

July 20, 2021

Those who saw the live landing of Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-16 first crewed flight will never forget Wally Funk’s tireless energy and boundless enthusiasm, as she emerged from the capsule with a broad grin on her face, extending both arms wide. In the postflight press conference, she exulted: “I’ve been waiting a long time to finally get up there”. Wally Funk (Fig. 7.11) could have gone into space 60 years earlier, in 1961, when she was the youngest of the “Mercury 13” group9, the 13 volunteer women who, at the height of the space race, participated in a project independently led by William Randolph Lovelace. In the hope of becoming an astronaut, those women passed the same rigorous physical and psychological screening tests as the Mercury 7, NASA’s original male astronauts. Since no one knew yet what effect spaceflight would have on a human body, the screenings were meant to push participants to exhaustion. Funk recalled: “I was twenty-one and I was too young, so they had to get extra permission for me to take the same test as the Mercury 7 astronauts took”. The program was abruptly terminated, however, and none of the 13 women flew.  See Preface.

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Fig. 7.11.  Wally Funk emerges from the crew capsule on July 20, 2021 after her flight aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket near Van Horn, Texas. Figure Credit: © Wally Funk. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

At 82, Funk finally got the chance to fulfill her dreams of going into space, and became the oldest person ever to earn astronaut wings. She broke a 23-year record held until then by the late John Glenn, one of NASA’s Mercury 7, who returned to space in 1998 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-95 at the age of 77, some 37 years after becoming the first American to orbit the world10. Together with Gene Nora Jessen, Funk is one of the last two remaining members of the legendary Mercury 13 group. She is also the only one of the 13 to have traveled to space. When Jeff Bezos (the billionaire founder of Amazon, and owner of The Washington Post) disclosed in a surprise Instagram announcement three weeks before the launch that Funk would be joining him, his brother Mark, and an  Funk’s record was broken much sooner than that of Glenn, when the Blue Origin New Shepard NS-18 mission carried Canadian actor William Shatner (Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek) to the edge of space three months later on October 13, 2021. At 90, Shatner became the oldest person ever to fly in space. Funk remains the oldest woman to do so. 10

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unnamed winner of the fourth seat11 – as “honored guest” on the first crewed Blue Origin spaceflight12, he said of her: “No one has waited longer”. Their spaceflight was scheduled for launch on July 20, 2021, the 52nd anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s Apollo 11 Moon landing. Jeff Bezos was the second person to ride his own rocket into space, just nine days after Virgin Galactic’s founder Richard Branson and five crewmates (including two pilots) had beaten him to the punch by taking a suborbital space flight on Branson’s VG rocket plane to an altitude just beyond 50 miles, the NASA and FAA qualification for a spaceflight. Mary Wallace “Wally” Funk was born in Las Vegas, New Mexico, on February 1, 1939. A pioneer in aviation, she had been fascinated by planes since she was a child and, aged nine, was thrilled to sit in the co-pilot seat of a four-seat airplane where she was allowed to put her hands on the yoke while the pilot controlled the plane. At age 17 she entered Stephen’s College in Columbia, Missouri, where, as well as obtaining an associate of arts degree, she earned her pilot’s license in 1958, at 19, rating first in her class of 24 flyers. She said: “I had great parental enthusiasm helping me to continue my education that I wanted in aviation”. After Stephens, Funk entered Oklahoma State University and graduated in 1960. Her first job, at age 20, was at Fort Sill, her training school in Oklahoma, where the barrier-breaking woman aviator became the first female Civilian Flight Instructor of noncommissioned and commissioned officers of the United States Army (Fig. 7.12). But in 1971 she soared still higher with pioneering jobs, becoming the first female inspector in the US at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Three years later, she became the first female air safety and accident investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Los Angeles, a  The fourth passenger was announced on July 15, five days before the launch, as Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old student and son of another bidder who had placed the second-highest bid, Joes Daemen, the founder and CEO of private investment firm Somerset Capital Partners in the Netherlands. Oliver Daemen, who entered the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands in September 2021 to study physics and innovation management, became the youngest person to go into space. The student replaced the actual winner of the auction, an unidentified businessman who had offered $28 million for the seat. Blue Origin said the winner had stepped aside – officially because of scheduling conflicts – and would instead go on a future flight. (There may be more to the story than that: many have asked why the bidder could not rearrange his schedule to make history flying together with the world’s richest person.) Nearly 7,600 bidders from 159 countries participated in the charity auction on June 12, 2021 on behalf of the Bezos’ educational nonprofit foundation, Club for the Future, which works with young people to introduce them to STEM fields. Of the sum raised, $19 million was distributed to 19 space-­ focused nonprofit organizations. 12  The automated Blue Origin reusable suborbital capsule – named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space in 1961 – had already previously launched to the edge of space and successfully landed 15 times. 11

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Fig. 7.12.  In 1960, aged 21, Wally Funk became the first female flight instructor at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Figure Credit: © AFP Archive. Reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 license.

position she held until 1985 when she retired and went back to teaching. Funk says: “Private, commercial, instrument, flight engineer, airline transport, gliding  – everything the FAA has, I’ve got the license”.

Across her career, Funk has logged 19,600 hours of flight time as a pilot in command, and taught more than 3,000 people to fly, as she recalled in Bezos’s Instagram video. When Sally Ride launched into orbit in 1983, Funk was in her 40s and still eager to fly to space. She wanted to apply to NASA’s astronaut corps but, despite her impressive credentials, she did not fully comply with the NASA requirements because, as she recalled: “I did not have an engineering degree, and they gave me nine months to obtain such a degree, which was impossible”. Showing her unwavering tenacity she said in an interview a few years ago: “I’m still pedaling! I never lost the faith. I don’t have any doubt. Not a lick. I’m just as sure that I’ll go into space as I am that my car will start in the morning. I’ve lived in a man’s world all these wonderful years. I’ve been the only girl in the cockpit, in the conference room, wherever. I have learned how

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to kick in a lot of doors, and I have dealt with a lot of disappointments. But I will go into space one day, when God thinks it’s right or I make it right. Whether we make it with Interorbital or not, I’m going to make it. I don’t know how, but I know it’s going to happen”. In 2001, after Los Angeles millionaire Dennis Tito had paid $20 million to the Russians for his vacation at the ISS, thus becoming the first space tourist, Funk said: “If I had $20 million, I’d be there right now”. The tenacious Funk actually thought she would make her dream true through another private company: Virgin Galactic. When invited at the runway dedication ceremony at Spaceport America in October 2010, she spent $200,000 on a ticket to fly on SpaceShipTwo, financing the adventure with movie and book royalties and money left to her by her mother. At that time, Virgin Galactic planned to begin flying commercial passengers on suborbital flights in the next 18 months. Having lived through the early era of space race between rival nations, and crossing all the human spaceflight history, Funk finally had the chance to go into space on an historic spaceflight, on an historic date – the 52nd anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s Apollo 11 Moon landing – at the beginning of a new era in which private companies and billionaires are increasing access to space in the long run (Fig. 7.13).

Fig. 7.13.  Figure Credit: © Wally Funk. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

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On July 20, 2021, after a smooth countdown, the New Shepard booster with its hydrogen-fueled BE-3 engine launched at 8:11 a.m., (13:11 GMT), slightly behind schedule, from the secretive facility located about 30 miles north of the small town of Van Horn, Texas. The flight carried the passengers to a height beyond the Kármán line, the widely used international standard defining the boundary of space (100 kilometers or 62 miles), which was passed at 8:15 a.m.. At that altitude, they experienced a few minutes of weightless and were able to marvel at the planet’s curvature through viewing windows. The New Shepard capsule has large, tourism-friendly windows  – the largest in spaceflight history. According to the company’s website: “These windows make up a third of the capsule, immersing you in the vastness of space and life-changing views of our blue planet” (Fig. 7.14). Capsule separation followed and, with a loud boom, the booster returned to the launch site autonomously at 8:19 a.m. The crewed pressurized capsule floated down slowly, returning to Earth under parachutes and touching land at 8:22 a.m. for a total flight time of 11 minutes. Wally Funk received her astronaut wings during the postflight press conference on July 20, 2021, from Blue Origin’s Jeff Ashby, a former Space Shuttle commander. She said: “I loved every minute, I just wish it had been longer. It was the thrill of a lifetime to fulfill my dream. The flight was exciting and so comfortable”!

Fig. 7.14.  Cover commemorating the launch of mission Blue Origin NS-16, signed by Wally Funk. From the collection of Umberto Cavallaro.

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Sources For This Section Anon., Blue Origin flight: Wally Funk, 82, to join Jeff Bezos space flight in www.bbc. com (1 Jul 2021) Betancourt S., ‘No one has waited longer’: trailblazing female pilot Wally Funk will go to space with Bezos, in www.theguardian.com (July 1, 2021) Blue Origin, Wally Funk will fly to space on New Shepard’s first human flight in www. blueorigin.com (Jul 1, 2021) Butler C, Wally Funk Interview, NASA Headquarters Oral History Project, in historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov (18 July 1999) Cavallaro, U. “Wally Funk – No one has waited longer!” in AD*ASTRA #50 (October 2021) p. 6–8 Howell E., Aviation pioneer Wally Funk, the oldest person to fly in space, can’t wait to go back after Blue Origin launch in www.space.com (21 July 2021) Koren M., Guess Who’s Going to Space With Jeff Bezos? in www.theatlantic.com (July 1, 2021) Kowal M.R., Wally Funk Is Defying Gravity and 60 Years of Exclusion From Space in www.nytimes.com (July 19, 2021) Lerner P, The Unlaunchable Wally Funk, in www.latimes.com (Jan. 18, 2004) Telford T., Wally Funk was supposed to go to space 60 years ago. Now she’s going with Jeff Bezos. In www.washingtonpost.com (July 2, 2021)

7.6 HAYLEY ARCENEAUX: THE HOPE ON INSPIRATI④N Mission

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Inspirati④n

September 16, 2021

September 18, 2021

Hayley Arceneaux is a female American civilian who suddenly became a private astronaut when she was chosen as a crew member of the history-making mission “Inspirati④n”, the world’s first all-civilian space flight in Earth orbit, in which no one on board was a professional astronaut13. During this  The entire crew of the history-making Inspirati④n mission consisted of private citizens: In addition to Hayley Arceneaux, 29, who served as the medical officer, were commander Jared Isaacman, 38, pilot Dr. Sian Proctor, 51, and mission specialist Chris Sembroski, 42. This was the fourth crew to ride in a Dragon capsule, the SpaceX vehicle built as an astronaut taxi service to ferry humans to and from the ISS and other destinations in space. The vehicle is designed to be fully autonomous and is controlled by SpaceX on the ground, although the crew is trained on how to “fly” the Dragon in case of an anomaly. For the first time, with this mission, three different Dragon spacecraft were in orbit at the same time. (The other two, Crew Dragon Endeavour and the Cargo Dragon CRS-23, were docked with the ISS.) 13

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mission, arranged and commanded by billionaire Jared Isaacman14, Arceneaux established many records in one go: as the youngest American ever to go into orbit, the first cancer survivor astronaut, and the first person with a prosthesis to launch into space. Most of her femur had been removed and replaced with an artificial joint when she was ten years old. Hayley Arceneaux was born on December 4, 1991 in St. Francisville, outside Baton Rouge, Louisiana. At the age of nine, she and her seven-year-old brother Hayden traveled to Houston and visited NASA on a family vacation. She recalled: “I got to see where the astronauts trained and of course I wanted to be an astronaut after that – who doesn’t”?

But any thoughts of a career in space were abruptly shelved a few months later. Arceneaux had just turned ten when she started complaining about pain in her left leg. At first her doctor thought it was just a sprain, but a few months later, tests revealed she was suffering from osteosarcoma in her left femur just above the knee. She recalled: “I remember just being so scared because everyone I had known with cancer had died”. Arceneaux spent a year as a patient at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, undergoing chemotherapy and a then-breakthrough surgery in which most of her femur was removed and replaced with an innovative prosthetic device that could expand without more surgery as she grew up. The treatment was followed by long sessions of physical therapy. Despite the immense challenge of cancer, Arceneaux sees this as the most important year of her life, a formative experience: “I think having cancer made me what I am. It taught me to kind of expect the unexpected. It made me tough”. She remembers the hospital as a “magical place” for creating an environment that celebrates life and lets kids be kids, despite their struggles.  Jared Isaacman, the founder and CEO of the payments processing company Shift4 Payments (which sells credit-card-processing terminals and point-of-sale systems to restaurants and other businesses) is an experienced commercial- and military-rated jet pilot who flew Speed-Around-The-World flights in 2008 and 2009 to raise money and awareness for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. For Inspiration4, he purchased the flight from SpaceX to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (SJCRH), in Memphis, Tennessee, an institution that performs cancer research and develops cures for childhood cancers and other diseases, offering medical services and treatment to children at no charge. The Inspiration4 mission was focused on charity, as it was the largest fundraising effort in the history of SJCRH. The campaign was launched by Isaacman himself, who chartered the spaceflight for undisclosed sum and donated the first $100 million of the $200 million fundraising target to the pediatric care center. With the help of a $50 million donation from SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the fundraising target was surpassed and raised more than $243 million. The mission also included a variety of items to be auctioned off to raise money for St. Jude. Among these were some Inspiration4 mission jackets featuring unique artwork by St. Jude, a ukulele from Martin Guitar that Sembroski played in space, and 66 pounds of hops used upon their return by the brewers of Samuel Adams to brew an out-of-this-world beer, the “official beer of Inspiration4”. 14

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She recalled: “I really felt like the staff was my family. When the doctor told me that my scans were clear and that I could go home at the end of treatment, I’d cry because I didn’t want to leave. I think that feeling of not wanting to leave has just stayed with me my whole life”. The experience inspired her to want to work with other pediatric cancer patients. After graduating from St. Joseph’s Academy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and obtaining an undergraduate degree in Spanish in 2014, Arceneaux obtained her Physician Assistant (PA) degree in 2016 from Louisiana State University (LSU) Health in Shreveport, Louisiana. While studying at LSU Health, she applied to work at St. Jude but did not get an interview, being told she needed more experience. Arceneaux therefore specialized in emergency medicine for three and a half years. In April 2020, she finally found her “dream job” at St. Jude as a frontline physician assistant, working with children fighting leukemia and lymphoma. But she is more than a health caregiver: “I especially tell the new patients that I had cancer as well, almost two decades ago. I kind of know what they’re feeling. I know it’s scary, and overwhelming, especially at first”.

On January 5, 2021, Arceneaux was at home in Tennessee when she received a mysterious email from the hospital, vaguely presenting her with an extraordinary opportunity they wanted to talk to her about. She thought at first that perhaps it would be a commercial, or maybe giving a speech somewhere. When she learned that it was an opportunity to be an astronaut, her first reply was “What? Yes. Yes, please, that would be amazing” (Fig. 7.15). Then

Fig. 7.15.  Biberpost private stamp celebrating the Inspirati④n mission. Figure Credit: © Ralf Schulz/Biberpost. Reproduced with permissions. All rights reserved.

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Fig. 7.16.  Cover commemorating the official announcement of the Inspirati④n mission. From the collection of Umberto Cavallaro.

she added “Let me talk to my mom”. Her mom did not object and, after checking with her brother and sister-in-law – both aerospace engineers who reassured her how safe space travel is – she agreed to join the crew. But she was asked to say nothing about the spaceflight: “I’ve held onto the biggest secret of my life for a month and a half ”. Finally, on February 22, 2021 she was able to announce: “The secret is finally out! Later this year I will be part of the first all-civilian mission to space! I am so grateful for this incredible, once in a lifetime opportunity and honor, and I cannot WAIT to show the world what cancer survivors can do”. Arceneaux was chosen to represent “Hope”, one of the four pillars on which the Inspiration4 mission was based15. She said (Fig. 7.16): “It’s an incredible honor to join the Inspiration4 crew. This seat represents the hope that St. Jude gave me. and continues to give families from around the world who, like me, find hope when they walk through the doors of St. Jude”.  The mission was conceived as a charity mission to send a humanitarian message of possibility and to inspire support for St. Jude. Each passenger represented a different virtue: “Leadership” (Commander Jared Isaacman), “Hope” (Hayley Arceneaux), “Generosity” (Chris Sembroski) and “Prosperity” (educator, scientist, pilot and artist Sian Proctor) that are the qualities that helped St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital lead the world in the research and treatment of some of the most devastating diseases. In a Netflix documentary about the mission, Isaacman said: “We chose this name ‘Inspiration4’ because the principal mission objective is to inspire. The number four is symbolic for several reasons. There will be four crew members on the spacecraft. And it will the 4th manned mission from the US since the Space Shuttle was retired almost a decade ago”. 15

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The mission crew underwent a very intense six-month astronaut training program, with 90 different exercises. These included: spending time in space suits and getting acquainted with the simulator and the centrifuge; preparing for any in-space emergencies that could arise; experiencing brief moments of low oxygen and high carbon dioxide levels in altitude chamber training; microgravity environment in zero-gravity flight; centrifuge training; water survival training; and a hike for almost ten hours through the snow up Mount Rainier, Washington state’s highest mountain. This experience served as crew bonding and “getting comfortable being uncomfortable,” as commander Isaacman said. Arceneaux recalled: “When I was climbing Mt. Rainer I thought about how I could share the experience with [the kids]. Climbing a mountain is a lot like battling cancer. You have to keep in mind the end goal, but also take one – sometimes hard, painful, difficult – step at a time to reach your destination. In addition to learning all that I have learnt about space, rockets and astronauts, I have also learnt a lot about myself. This experience has made me realize that I am stronger than I thought I was”.

Arceneaux was launched on September 15, 2021, from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) – the same launch pad that once hosted the Apollo Moon missions and NASA’s storied Space Shuttle program – aboard the same human-­ rated SpaceX Dragon Resilience Spacecraft that had been used by the Crew-1 mission launched in November 2020. SpaceX says that each Crew Dragon is rated for at least five missions. The refurbished Falcon 9 rocket on which they launched had previously launched twice, carrying two different GPS satellites for the US Space Force into orbit (Fig. 7.17). Unlike SpaceX crew missions under contract to NASA, the Inspiration4 flight did not travel to the space station, but reached an unusually higher-­than-­normal trajectory at an altitude of approximately 364 miles (585 km), higher than astronauts have flown since the last Space Shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009, and surpassing the ISS by 100 miles (160 km). The passengers enjoyed spectacular views of planet Earth through a large bubbleshaped cupola window fitted to the front top of the Crew Dragon capsule, replacing the docking adapter used for missions to the ISS. The mission orbited at its high altitude for two days and then lowered its altitude to about 227 miles (365 km) for the final day of the mission, in preparation for the re-entry. On the second night of the flight, Arceneaux chatted with her child patients when the crew video-called St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, to share her experience on orbit with them. While passing over Europe, they held a ten-­minute video chat, showing some of their high-tech equipment, including a portable

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Fig. 7.17.  Cover commemorating the launch of Inspirati④n. From the collection of Umberto Cavallaro.

ultrasound for medical tests. While Isaacman, Proctor and Sembroski faced the camera in an upright position, Arceneaux floated upside down in the zero-gravity environment. The questions they received showed the children’s fascination with life in space: What kind of sleeping bags do they use? Are there cows on the Moon? What is your favorite space food? Are there such things as aliens in space? As SpaceX CEO Elon Musk mentioned in a tweet on September 21, the Inspiration4 crew had “some challenges” with the toilet, which was located in the nose of the Crew Dragon spacecraft within the glass dome roof. The SpaceX team had to instruct the Inspiration4 crew on how to fix the problem, but frequent communications blackouts interrupted the process. The astronauts were able to take some personal items into orbit. Arceneaux carried a garish St. Jude tie that her father used to wear, grateful for the medical care that had saved her life when she was an osteosarcoma patient in 2002. She also brought with her the book Goodnight Moon that she plans to keep for her future children, and a plush toy dog that served as a zero-gravity indicator shortly after liftoff. During the mission, data were collected on the effects of the environment of space on complete novices; ordinary citizens who had never previously been carefully screened and exhaustively trained, unlike the professional astronauts. The study was done in collaboration with SpaceX, the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, and the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. The tests

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included ultrasound experiments, the collection of microbe samples and a variety of in-flight health experiments: measuring and monitoring cardiac rhythms, sleep and blood oxygen levels, heart rates of the crew, and radiation exposure. Their cognitive functions were tested before the flight and examined again after their return. After three days in space, Inspiration4 returned to Earth on September 18, 2021, at 7:06 p.m., just before sunset. Slowed down by four large parachutes, the capsule gently splashed down into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, not far from where the flight had begun three days earlier. Within a few minutes of splashdown, a SpaceX ship arrived to recover the capsule. When the hatch was opened on the deck of the recovery ship, Arceneaux was the first one out, with an ecstatic smile in her face. Hayley Arceneaux has always been adventurous and describes travel as her favorite hobby. She has studied in Spain, worked mission trips in Nicaragua and Peru, and visited 21countries in five continents. She had hoped this would be the year that she would complete her aim of visiting all seven continents before she turned 30, but while she did not have time to do that, she could instead add “space” to her passport. Since there was no passport stamp for going to space, Arceneaux said she would draw a star and the Moon in one of her passports. Arceneaux has recounted her memoirs and the experience of her journey into space in her upcoming book Wild Ride, the first in a set of three books that will include an edition for young readers and a children’s picture book.

Sources For This Section Bleam P., Reaching New Heights: From Cancer Survivor to Becoming the First PA in Space, in www.aapa.org (September 16, 2021) Cavallaro U., Hayley Arceneaux, the hope on Inspirati④n, in AD*ASTRA #51 (December 2021) p. 2–5 Chang K., She Beat Cancer at 10. Now She’s Set to Be the Youngest American in Space. in nytimes.com (Feb. 22, 2021) Charlier T., Hayley Arceneaux: Mission of a Lifetime, in stjude.org (February 22, 2021) Nevett J., Hayley Arceneaux: Cancer survivor joins first all-civilian space mission in www.bbb.com (22 February 2021) Puhak J., Cancer Survivor Hayley Arceneaux Flies to Space! Read the Civilian Astronaut’s Personal Diary, in people.com (September 15, 2021)

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7.7 SIAN PROCTOR: ASTRONAUT BY LOTTERY Mission

Launch

Return

Inspirati④n

September 16, 2021

September 18, 2021

A geoscientist, explorer, space artist and science communication expert with a passion for space exploration, Sian Proctor was the fourth African American woman to travel to space when she was unexpectedly offered the chance to join a mission through a lottery and to fly as the “pilot”16 on the historic Inspirati④n spaceflight, so fulfilling at 51 the dream to become an astronaut she had been chasing her entire life. Proctor had come close to becoming a NASA astronaut in 2009, when she participated in the selection process for Astronaut Group 20. Among 3,500 applicants, she was chosen as one of the 47 finalists, but was not one of the nine new astronaut candidates selected during the final round. She recalled: “It was literally a year-long process to get to that yes/no phone call. And that ‘no’ was kind of crushing because I got so close to my childhood dream”!

After applying twice more for NASA selection without even being among the finalists, Proctor eventually decided to “go back to living her life” and pursue her space interests in other ways. She became an analog astronaut, completing four analog missions. As her website explains, an analog astronaut is a person who conducts activities in simulated space conditions, and engages in research such as human physiology, psychology, crew cohesion, nutritional studies and more, in facilities and research centers around the world. Analog missions are recognized by Space Agencies and are seen as an important part of space exploration. From mid-April to November 13, 2013, Proctor was the education outreach officer for the first-ever HI-SEAS mission, the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, financed by NASA, aimed at studying the isolation and stresses of a long trip to Mars. In a crew of six, she lived for four months in a small building located in an isolated habitat on the side of a Hawaiian Mauna Loa volcano, at an altitude of approximately 8,200 feet (2,500 m) above sea level, where they recreated conditions in space. Although each of the six had their own research projects to conduct, the main aim of the mission was to investigate food strategies for long-duration space flight. They  The automated Crew Dragon capsule normally operates under onboard guidance systems and by ground-based flight controllers who can solve problems and issue commands to the spacecraft from the Mission Control Center based in Hawthorne, California. Nonetheless, the Inspiration4 crew underwent much of the same training as NASA astronauts, to handle situations if something went wrong. 16

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Fig. 7.18.  Cover commemorating the start of the HI-SEAS Mars “SENSORIA 1” mission. From the collection of Umberto Cavallaro.

documented their cooking activities and, after this experience, Proctor published her Meal for Mars Cookbook. She then spent two weeks in a Mars mission at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), built near Hanksville, Utah, in the western United States, and two weeks in a Moon mission at the LunAres Research Station, an analog research station built in 2017 in Poland in a fully isolated remote area near the Pila post-military airport. At the beginning of 2020, Proctor participated in the first all-female SENSORIA mission, at the HI-SEAS Habitat (Fig. 7.18). The program, partnered with Sally Ride Science, grouped six researchers with a variety of backgrounds who brought a wide range of different research projects and investigations to the lab and worked together on each other’s studies, helping each other to test out “Martian foods”, explore new technologies, develop new non-verbal methods of communication, and more. Proctor also created the Analog Astronaut conference17. Dr. Sian Hayley Proctor was born on March 28, 1970 in Hagåtña, in the United States territory of Guam, an island in the Western Pacific where her father was a Sperry Univac engineer working at the NASA Guam Tracking Station during the Apollo era. She remembers her dad keeping an autograph from Neil Armstrong on his office wall, thanking him for his help on Apollo 11.  http://www.analogastronaut.com/

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Having grown up in a space-themed home, the love of space and pursuit of a space-related career have long influenced her life. After the Moon landings, Proctor’s family relocated to Hamilton, New Jersey, where she attended Shaner School. They later moved to various northeastern states, including Saint Paul, Minnesota and Fairport, New York, where she graduated from Fairport High School. Both of her parents encouraged her to study science and engineering in college, explaining that education was a way to advance in the world, especially for minorities. Proctor enrolled in the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a BSc in Environmental Science in 1992. In 1994 she joined the Arizona State University, earning an MSc degree in Geology in 1998 and a PhD in Science Education in 2006. In that year she also obtained her pilot’s license, and has since served as a major in the Civil Air Patrol as the aerospace education officer for its Arizona wing. In 1999, Proctor began teaching at South Mountain Community College, a Minority Serving Institution located in South Phoenix, Arizona, where she became Geoscience and Sustainability Professor responsible for designing, developing, evaluating and maintaining all the course curricula for Physical Geology, Environmental Geology, and Historical Geology. Proctor often appears as a featured scientist on public television, and on networks such as the Discovery Channel and PBS, in a number of educational and STEM-­ based shows. She is an international speaker who enjoys engaging in educational outreach, and an excellent motivational speaker specializing in leadership. She has been a NASA Solar System Ambassador since 2018 and serves on the Board of Directors of many organizations, including Explore Mars, JustSpace Alliance, Science in the Wild, SEDS USA, and the National Science Teaching Association’s Aerospace. She is currently Vice President, Education, of Star Harbor Space Academy, the world’s first privately operated astronaut training school, which offers parabolic flights on a Boeing 757, a centrifuge, a hyperbaric chamber, and a neutral buoyancy tank, to name a few of the capabilities. After decades of chasing space, Proctor finally got the “golden ticket” for her once-in-a-lifetime space adventure, selected for the “Prosperity” seat; one of the “four mission pillars” on which Inspiration4 was based (Fig. 7.19). Despite her life-long interest in space, and her scientific background, Proctor won her seat as an artist, after participating in the online competition launched by Jacob Isaacman that would give a seat to a customer of Shift4 Payment Inc., his credit card payment-processing company based in Pennsylvania.

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Fig. 7.19.  Biberpost private stamp celebrating the Inspirati④n mission. Figure Credit: © Ralf Schulz/Biberpost. Reproduced with permissions. All rights reserved.

Entrants were asked to open up a shop that used its technology, and one of them would be chosen to get a seat. When the coronavirus pandemic struck, Proctor had begun creating space-themed artwork, and turned to Isaacman’s Shift4 company to sell her paintings and “Afrofuturism” artwork, in the form of clothing, patches and home goods. She designed her online store called Space2inspire18. Launching her shop, Proctor also wrote a poem, and introduced herself through an inspiring video message describing her entrepreneurial and space dreams, and promoting STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) and what she called JEDI space – a just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive space exploration for humanity. In an interview with National Geographic, Proctor said: “When I applied to go to space on Inspiration4, I said, ‘Look, you need to send an artist and a poet’, because it’s such an important part of humanity going out into space. The human part of us is the art, the music, the dancing, the expression, the culture that we bring along with us. It’s not just about the science, the technology, the engineering, and the math that gets us there”.

Her artistry and her vision impressed a panel of independent judges, who chose her space art website from among 200 competitors. And suddenly Proctor became part of Inspirati④n, the world’s first all-private citizen space mission into Earth orbit, where the four crew members were not professional astronauts, but fairly ordinary, down-to-Earth persons who did not know each other at all, brought together by chance in a matter of weeks at the end of 2020 and early 2021. The four crewmates were the billionaire Jared  Space2inspire is a web shop offering low cost art prints, “Prosperity” t-shirts, and baubles like embroidered patches, space flip flops, embroidered backpacks and laptop sleeves. 18

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Isaacman (who conceived, sponsored and funded the mission), Hayley Arceneaux (the St. Jude physician assistant and childhood cancer survivor), Chris Sembroski (the data engineer, former Air Force pilot and Iraq war veteran), and Proctor. In the six months before launch, the four crewmates endured intensive training and practiced the scientific experiments that they had to conduct during the flight. Their training program included fighter jet training, exposure to low oxygen and high carbon dioxide environments, centrifuge rides to give the crew an idea of what the G forces would feel like at various points of the flight, and survival training, like climbing to Camp Muir on the snowy Mount Rainier, where they stayed for three days and two nights. Mount Rainier, also known as Tahoma or Tacoma, is the highest mountain in the state of Washington, with a summit elevation of 14,411 ft (4,392 m). Proctor described this adventure as one of the hardest tasks she had ever accomplished, despite her extensive experience as a geologist. This hard field trip was intended as a challenging team-building exercise, an opportunity for the crew to grow as a team in a difficult environment, facing cold temperatures, limited visibility, and minimal accommodations at the camp, and learning mountaineering skills such as safely roping into a crevasse – “getting comfortable being uncomfortable,” as Commander Jared Isaacman said before the climb. Proctor said: “That human aspect of us becoming a crew and a family has been the most rewarding, because everybody in my crew is amazing”. As the “pilot” of the spacecraft, Proctor, who is a licensed pilot, also spent many hours in the SpaceX Dragon simulator: “I essentially had to become a systems engineer in six months”. The day before launch, she received an unforgettable call: former First Lady Michelle Obama personally rang to acknowledge her achievement and wish the crew well on their mission. Former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison also congratulated Proctor on the Inspiration4 mission. Proctor said: “To have her [Jemison], the first black female astronaut, tell me she was proud of my accomplishment was amazing”.

Proctor was launched on September 15, 2021, from the Kennedy Space Center, from the same launch pad that once hosted the Apollo Moon missions and the Space Shuttle (Fig. 7.20). The SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience had previously been used successfully on the Crew-1 mission launched in November 2020, while the refurbished Falcon 9 rocket was on its third launch, having previously carried two different GPS satellites into orbit for the US Space Force.

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Fig. 7.20.  Cover commemorating the launch of the Inspirati④n mission. From the collection of Umberto Cavallaro.

As the Inspiration4 flight was not intended to go to the ISS, the mission was able to reach an unusually high trajectory of approximately 585 km (364 miles), the highest altitude attained since the final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission by the Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-125 flight in 2009. The bubble-shaped cupola, fitted to the top of the Dragon capsule in place of the docking adapter used for ISS flights, enabled the passengers to enjoy spectacular views of planet Earth. Their space menu was also not typical: cold pizza and sandwiches, but also pasta Bolognese and Mediterranean lamb. Proctor added some jalapeno to the pizza because, like most space travelers, she wanted something spicy to jazz it up. But her favorite meal turned out to be a BLT sandwich (bacon, lettuce and tomato) on gluten-free bread. She said: “Whoever made that sandwich, it was fantastic. I kind of enjoyed that more than the pizza”. Proctor also took with her materials to create her own poetry and art, including watercolor paints she used while on orbit: “I’ve been a geoscientist my entire career. So climate change, all of that stuff, I already had that in me. But as an artist and a poet, all I kept thinking when I looked at our planet swirling and moving below us was that it was a portrait in motion. It was this amazing portrait that we get to paint. And influence. And how delicate, fragile, and beautiful it is”.

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The mission remained at its high altitude for the first two days before coming back down to a lower altitude of about 227 miles (365 km) for the third day, ready for the re-entry. After circumnavigating Earth 47 times, Resilience returned to Earth on September 18, 2021, at 7:06 p.m. EDT, just before sunset, splashing down under its four parachutes into the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, not far from where the flight had launched three days earlier. Proctor was the second to emerge from the capsule’s side hatch, after Hayley Arceneaux. A few hours after splashdown, she tweeted: “Best ride of my life! This makes me happy, and excited for the new space that’s opening up, and the people who are going to follow in our footsteps”. Through her experience, Proctor wants her mission to inspire women of color to take up space, in this world and in space. She said: “When I was kid, there weren’t a lot of role models in the space industry, When you look at the history of black women in space, there’s only been three African American females who have gone to space in the United States. Out of those three, only one has gone multiple times. I feel like we have been ignored to some extent in the space sector. I think a big part of that is because representation matters. We need to see more women of color in space, doing science, technology and mathematics, but in a very visible way. I am hoping with the Inspiration4 mission, I will be able to inspire women of color around the world to think of pursuing a career in space exploration”.

Sources For This Section Connor, H.J.. Dr. Sian Proctor, the First Black Woman to Pilot a Spacecraft, Makes History: “A Phoenix Rising” in www.msmagazine.com (October 12, 2021) Cross, T., Profiles of Inspiration4: Sian Proctor to fulfil her dream to fly into space in www.spaceflightinsider.com/ (September 11, 2021) Gohd, G., Sian Proctor to take Afrofuturism art, science and a lifelong passion for exploration to space on private Inspiration4 mission in www.space.com (September 13, 2021) Bynadia Drake, Sian Proctor, first Black woman to pilot a spacecraft, opens up about her journey, in www.nationalgeographic.com (October 7, 2021) Ottesen, KK, “Sian Proctor, the first African American woman to pilot a spacecraft: ‘The reality is that solving for space solves for Earth’”in www.washingtonpost.com (November 2, 2021) Proctor, S., A little something about me! in www.drsianproctor.com Proctor, S., Inspiration4contest video in myspace2inspire.com

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7.8 YULIA PERESILD: THE FIRST ACTRESS IN SPACE Launch Soyuz MS-19

Return October 5, 2021

Soyuz MS-18

October 17, 2021

Yulia Peresild (Fig. 7.21) is one of the most celebrated Russian TV and film actresses, who flew to the ISS with film director Klim Shipenko19 on a Soyuz mission to shoot the first movie in orbit20. The opportunity “to fulfill the most romantic dreams and go to the stars, at the same time as becoming a big international star” suddenly popped up in September 2020 when it was announced that the largest Russian TV channel, the state-owned Pervyy Kanal (Channel One), together with the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos, and production company Yellow, Black and White (one of the largest independent production studios of movies and TV programs in Russia) had agreed to cast a leading actor for the first feature film in history to be shot in space, aboard the ISS21. According to the Roscosmos statement, the aim of the movie was to “popularize Russia’s space activities, as well as glorify the cosmonaut profession.” This came in an atmosphere of renewed competition, a sort of modern equivalent of the space race of the Cold-War Era between America and the Soviet Union. Ignited by the launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon, which has left a substantial hole in the Roskosmos cashflow, this unexpected Russian move was seen by the media as a “me-too project”, clearly conceived to upstage  Klim Shipenko is the director of the Russian drama The Text (2019) and Kholop (2019), the highest-­ grossing Russian movie of all time. 20  Actually, several films have already been shot in orbit, before The Challenge. In 1984, Soviet-era cosmonauts filmed for the Russian narrative film Return from Orbit aboard Soyuz T-9 and inside the Salyut 7 space station. The movie tells the story of an accident on an orbital space station, as a result of which the ship’s commander is seriously injured and must be urgently delivered to Earth. In early 2002, the IMAX Space Station 3D documentary was produced by Lockheed Martin and IMAX corporations. The 45-minute 3-D movie – filmed by 25 astronauts and cosmonauts and narrated by Tom Cruise – “takes viewers to the futuristic laboratory where future technologies are perfected and existing problems solved by a combination of dedication, bravery, and innovation.” In 2012, Apogee of Fear was produced, the first narrative science fiction film made completely in space. The eight-minute short was filmed by entrepreneur and space tourist Richard Garriott, son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, who had been on the ISS in October 2008 as a spaceflight participant for ten days. He was able to use the script and the production elements from the work of fantasy novelist Tracy Hickman. Garriott used crew members on board the ISS as actors for the movie. 21  “Channel One will select candidates who will go into space to shoot a film” www.1tv.ru/ news/2020-09-23/393819-­pervyy_kanal_provedet_otbor_kandidatov_kotorye_otpravyatsya_v_kosmos_dlya_s_emok_v_filme (Press Release in Russian) 19

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Fig. 7.21.  Yulia Peresild. From the Author’s collection.

the plans of US actor Tom Cruise. Four months earlier (on May 4, 2020), NASA had announced that the agency was teaming up with SpaceX to make the “first feature film in Earth Orbit” on the ISS. The film was going to bring the Mission Impossible Hollywood superstar Cruise and director Doug Liman to the ISS, “to inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists”, as NASA Administrator James Bridenstine tweeted on May 5, 202022. To begin with, the Russian producers of the project planned to hold casting sessions among both male and female actors. In early November, TASS announced the decision that “a female character would certainly be more suitable”23 and that a Russia-wide open contest would shortly be launched to  As the US team was originally scheduled to arrive at the ISS in October 2021 aboard Elon Musk’s Crew Dragon, the Russian crew had planned to shoot The Challenge at the same time as Hollywood would attempt to make its first blockbuster in space. Director Klim Shipenko stated in a press release on 1tv.ru that he was ready to help Cruise during the filming process. He said: “I think the American group will consist not of 25 people, but two. And they will need our support, both physically to help with the filming, as well as morally and emotionally. I have no doubt that Tom Cruise will need it, and we are ready to provide it”. 23  TASS Russian News Agency, Russian actress to head to ISS in 2021 to star in first feature film in space, in tass.com (Nov 2, 2020). The press release ambiguously reported: “Film director Doug Liman and actor Tom Cruise also plan to go into space in October 2021 on board Crew Dragon for the filming”. 22

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select the female protagonist for the leading role in the new film, as well as her stunt double. Alexey Trotsyuk, General Producer of Yellow, Black and White, said: “In the shortest possible time, we need to find more than just an actress: we need a real superhero. We are looking for a woman who can play her role on Earth, and then endure the most difficult training, fly into space and there, in a state of weightlessness, also solve the most difficult shooting tasks”. Casting a female lead was an astute move if the goal was to restore the finances of the once-mighty Roscosmos. An attractive female lead would be likely to have more audience appeal than some unknown Russian male to audiences outside Russia, since there are no Russian actors readily recognizable to Western or Asian audiences. The two American and Russian squads would have to contend with filming their separate stories in the same “space” at the same time. At the beginning, this Russian shooting in space was itself regarded by many spaceflight observers as a “mission impossible”, and there was strong internal opposition in Russia. Until a month before the launch, the website of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center listed cosmonauts Sergei Korsakov and Dmitry Petelin as “reserve” crew for Soyuz MS-19, suggesting that the cinematographic flight was not absolutely certain to take place as planned, In the end, the Russians won the race for the first movie in space. This was not the first time in history that the Russians had been keen to beat NASA to the punch, sometimes taking incredible risks in doing so. The list included: the first artificial satellite, first animal in space, first man in space, first woman in space, first EVA, first spacecraft with three men on board24, and first EVA by a woman25. An open casting call was launched on the Channel One website on November 3, 2020, with the tag line ‘Becoming a star, by flying to the stars!’, inviting both actresses and other women with a passion for space to apply. Candidates were required to be aged 25 to 45, to have Russian citizenship and basic knowledge of English, to possess acting skills and a university degree, and to be healthy and physically fit. They also had to meet specific anthropological requirements to ensure they could fit comfortably in a Soyuz: stand between 150 and 180 cm, 50–75 kg in weight, with a chest girth of up to 112 cm. Additionally, the chosen candidate had to be able to run 1 km in 3 minutes 30 seconds or less, swim 800 m freestyle in 20 minutes, and dive from a three-meter springboard “with an impressive technique.” Candidates also had to have a “clean criminal record,” and possess the psychological capabilities typically required for any potential  Umberto Cavallaro, “Voskhod 1: the most absurd adventure in space ever”, in The Race to the Moon, Springer 2018, pp. 163–168. 25  See entry for Svetlana Savitskaya in Chapter 3. 24

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cosmonaut candidate. Finally, they had to record a video test of themselves, reciting Tatiana’s monologue from the novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin, and upload it to the official casting website. Candidates were encouraged to signify their participation on social media by using the hashtag #хочувкосмос (I want to go into space). The window for women to submit their applications lasted until December 31. The original plan was that 30 or so finalists would be selected, and would then participate in a sort of Reality TV-style contest between January and March 2021, showing them going through the cosmonaut selection tests at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, with the number of contenders being progressively reduced in line with the usual reality show model. However, these plans were scrapped and for many weeks little information emerged, other than a statement that around 3,000 applications had been received for the starring role (around six times the number of applications received for the last conventional call for professional cosmonauts in 2019!). Among the candidates for the role were famous professional actresses, ballerinas and fitness trainers, but also women from different backgrounds including parachutists, civil aviation pilots, and even a psychologist, a scientific researcher and an aerospace doctor. In early March 2021, Channel One and Roscosmos jointly announced that the project was proceeding, and the candidates for the leading actress role had been reduced to 20 through medical, physical and psychological assessments at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. The names of the shortlist of 20 selected candidates were only announced on March 7. It was also announced that Klim Shipenko would be the director and would also travel to ISS to oversee the filming process. On April 23, Dmitri Rogozin  – the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos – revealed that Shipenko had completed his medical checks and had been confirmed fit to fly to the ISS.  It was also announced that four women finalists had been chosen, aged between 27 and 36. These were the three experienced professional actresses Alena Mordovina (b 1987), Yulia Peresild (b 1984), and Sofya Arzhakovskaya (aka Sofya Skya, b 1987), while the fourth was Galina Kairova (b 1994), an amateur actress who held a private pilot’s license. Shipenko would select the actress who would accompany him onboard Soyuz MS-19, as would be the case with any other movie. Dmitri Rogozin stated: “It is always the Director who decides who he will work with. It is important for us now to show him which of these girls is ready to handle the challenge of the spaceflight”. The first of the 20 actresses to pass all the medical and psychological tests, and be confirmed as qualified for cosmonaut training, was Alena Mordovina.

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For several weeks, she was the only candidate eligible to make the flight, until the other three were added at the last moment. The four were finally reduced to two on May 13, when the identities of the Prime and Backup crews were announced. The Prime crew was Yulia Peresild, Anton Shkaplerov, and Klim Shipenko and their backups would be Alena Mordovina, Oleg Artemyev, and Aleksey Dudin (Figs. 7.22 and 7.23). Aleksey Dudin  – Shipenko’s back-up whose name, confirmed by the Medical Commission, had never been publicly mentioned before – is an experienced and skilled camera operator, who has been involved in the production of several movies and TV series. On May 24, the four Spaceflight Participants reported to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC) to start their training period of only four months, under the program of ISS Expedition-66. The mission would be launching on Soyuz MS-19. In addition to classroom study and tuition, the intensive preparation process included: working on Soyuz and ISS (Russian Segment) simulators; simulating Zero-G and short-term weightlessness conditions by flying on an IL-76 aircraft; water recovery and survival training – in preparation for a potential Soyuz emergency landing on water or in different climatic and geographical zones; visiting the “Zvezda” company for measuring and assessment for the production of “Sokol” spacesuits and Soyuz seats;

Fig. 7.22.  Prime Crew (from left): Yulia Peresild, Anton Shkaplerov, Klim Shipenko. From the Author’s collection.

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Fig. 7.23.  Backup Crew (from left): Alena Mordovina, Oleg Artemyev, Aleksey Dudin. From the Author’s collection.

and visiting the Baikonur Cosmodrome to witness the preparations and launch of the unmanned Progress MS-17. The Russian movie proposal did not meet with universal approval and caused controversy in the Russian political, scientific and aerospace community. Some Russian scientists suggested that diverting Russian State assets and valuable ISS resources for a purpose not connected to scientific research could actually be illegal, and called for transparency with regard to the underlying financial arrangements. There was some tough political opposition to a project that appeared to be putting entertainment before science, with inappropriate use of Federal funds. During a long interview with RIA Novosti, released on December 12, 2020, Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov spoke out, making it clear that he would not support the notion that Roscosmos might be bank-rolling a commercial project: “It is probably necessary to publicize the achievements of Russian cosmonautics… If they find sponsors who will pay for the actors’ stay in orbit and this does not interfere with the main scientific program of the ISS, then by all means, let them film… but, I can tell you for sure that as long as I am in this position, I will ignore any proposal for funding a feature film at public expense”.

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Some spaceflight observers also wondered how professional cosmonauts – some of whom had spent more than a decade training before their first mission  – would feel being deprived of their flights, especially seeing that any actress could apparently now learn in months all that was necessary to fly in space and work on the ISS. Others simply wondered why Roscosmos was so committed to this production and wanted to highlight the role of women in space when, in reality, very few had been selected as cosmonauts. In the 20+ years of ISS, the agency had sent only one woman to the station. In fact, Peresild would be only the fifth Russian woman to go into space in over 60 years of human spaceflight. Roscosmos claimed that not enough qualified women had applied for the program until now, and that a project like this could help change that, both directly through candidates to be in the film, and indirectly by inspiring young Russian girls and attracting them to spaceflight. Sergei Krikalev, the head of the GCTC in Star City, and a six-time space flyer who had accrued more than 800 days in space26, was removed from his senior management position in June 2021 after questioning, during a Roscosmos Management Board meeting, whether sending entertainers into space was the best use of funds when the budget had just been cut by 20 percent. He was reinstated a few days later, after many public protests both from prominent former and current cosmonauts and from the Russian media. It was rumored that, to overcome such resistance, the project was taken for endorsement to Vladimir Putin, who gave it the green light. Putin’s Press Secretary, Dmitry Peskov stated: “The movie will shine a light on Russia’s success in space”. At the end of August the medical commission of the GCTC concluded that Peresild, Shipenko and Shkaplerov were fit to fly into space. In September, three weeks before the launch, the two crews participated in the critical final examinations, involving each crew performing a simulated Soyuz launch, docking, and landing, while dealing with various unexpected situations created by their instructors and examiners. They then performed a similar exercise in the simulated ISS Russian Segment, carrying out routine  In 1991–92 Sergei Krikalev made history, during his second space mission, as “the Last Soviet Citizen”, abandoned on board the Mir during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As the country that had sent him into space no longer existed, he had to stay in space for 311 consecutive days, twice as long as originally planned, and returned as a Russian citizen. He then flew in 1994 on STS-60, the first joint US/ Russian Space Shuttle mission. In December 1998 he participated in the STS-88 mission and became, with Robert Cabana, one of the first people to enter the ISS during the first assembly mission, when they turned on the lights in the US module Unity. 26

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duties and actions, interspersed with further problems and challenges to resolve. The combination of emergencies and challenges was determined by the crew choosing one of several sealed envelopes with different alternatives. Both crews achieved the required ‘pass’ in both exams, with the backup crew outperforming and achieving slightly better scores than the main crew. After a period of rest and relaxation, the Interdepartmental Commission announced which crew would fly on September 16, and authorized the start of the pre-launch phase and the departure to Baikonur. While the four Spaceflight Participants were not allowed to give formal interviews, each of them used social media to convey information about their experiences and thoughts. From the several photographs, texts and videos shared by Peresild with her audience, it was clear that she found it very challenging adapting to the rigorous demands of training, especially the vast amount of technical information she was required to absorb rapidly, in particular learning about the design and handling of the spacecraft: “thousands of unknown words… and one night to digest it all… re-reading the manuals… analyzing mistakes in order not to repeat them.” On several occasions Peresild also mentioned she was “scared” about what she was about to do. On August 27, she had written: “The word ‘hard’, does not come close to describing how it is. For the first two weeks I was learning it until four in the morning every night. There are so many acronyms, and if you don’t learn them all you won’t understand anything else further on”. At a pre-launch press conference she said: “It was psychologically, physically and morally hard. But I think that once we reach the goal, it will not seem as difficult as it truly was and we will remember it all with a smile”. Yulia Sergeevna Peresild (Юлия Сергеевна Пересильд) was born in 1984  in Pskov, a small city in the north-west of Russia, about 20  km (12 miles) east of the border with Estonia and Latvia. Her father was an icon painter and her mother a kindergarten worker. Unlike many other Soviet children who grew up following in the footsteps of Gagarin and Tereshkova, Peresild never dreamed of going into space. Since she was a child, her dream was to become an actress, and she pursued it early. Starting from third grade, she studied acting and singing, and also starred in school theatre plays. When she was 11, Peresild participated in The Morning Star, a TV contest for young talent. In 2002 she enrolled in the Faculty of Russian Philology of the Pskov State Pedagogical Institute. A year later, she left for Moscow and entered the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts, where she graduated in 2006. Peresild soon began appearing in TV series, in the supporting casts. She also quickly discovered her preferred movie director  – Aleksey Uchitel (who filmed the

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controversial Matilda, dealing with the mistress of Nicholas II), with whom she had her two daughters, as she revealed only in 2017 – Anna, born in 2009 and Maria, born in 2012. Her quick ascent to fame began with Prisoner (2008), followed by the drama The Edge (2010), which won her several awards. In recent years her popularity has grown, starring in over 30 films and taking on more than 70 roles in popular TV series. Peresild has also been one of the leading actresses at Moscow’s State Theatre of Nations and is considered to belong to the actor pool of the state-owned ‘Channel One’. She is a founding member of the charity foundation Galchonok (Russian: Галчонок) which works to provide treatment for children with organic central nervous system disorders. Very little was originally known about the plot of this “space drama” – a pet project of Dmitry Rogozin initially kept under wraps. In many ways the plot seemed secondary to the spectacle. Details about it were sketchy, and only emerged progressively. When announcing the film, Konstantin Ernst, the general director of Channel One said cryptically: “This is not science fiction, but a highly realistic version of what could happen in the not-too-distant future. It’s a movie about how a person in no way connected with space exploration, due to various reasons, ends up a month later in orbit. That’s all I can tell you”. In July 2021, during a fundraising campaign, Shipenko revealed that the script was still being fine-tuned, but the story involved a cosmonaut who suffers a cardiac arrest during a spacewalk and, although he survives, he is too ill and requires surgery to ensure he can handle the return to Earth in a Soyuz. A female cardiac surgeon, named Zhenya, has to be sent to the ISS to perform the operation in zero gravity, with only a few weeks to prepare for the trip. Rogozin said he edited the script himself to correctly represent the realities of space travel: “We describe some real emergencies that may happen out there”. In an interview he added, “In this project, it is important for us not only to demonstrate the heroism and high professionalism of cosmonauts and industry specialists who ensure the safety of manned flights in outer space, but also to develop the methodology of accelerated preparation for spaceflight or a mission to the ISS by a specialist (engineer, doctor, astrophysicist), in case of emergency. This is a kind of space experiment”. Rogozin and his colleagues in Glavkosmos, the commercial arm of Roscosmos, want to sell more seats to wealthy tourists on future Soyuz missions, and they know that streamlining the time for training and preparation is key to competing with American players in the market.

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Fig. 7.24.  Commemorative cover shipped from the ISS, cancelled in space on the day of undocking of Soyuz MS-19 from the Space Station, signed by the crew (Shkaplerov, Peresild and Shipenko). From the Author’s collection.

Peresild and her colleagues launched into space on October 5, 2021, at 4:55 a.m. EDT, on a Soyuz 2.1a rocket that was specially decorated for the movie (Fig. 7.24). This was the first all-Russian crew to go into space for over 20 years27. Since Russia had only six seats to the ISS available before October 2021 for routine crew exchange missions (on Soyuz MS-18 and MS-19), and needed to find a way to accommodate this unplanned ‘project’ within those available resources, Peresild and Shipenko had to fly on the Soyuz MS-19 mission, replacing two of the three professional cosmonauts previously assigned to that mission. This, in turn, meant that two of the crew on the preceding mission, Soyuz MS-18, needed to extend their stay on the ISS until the Spring of 2022 in order to allow the unusual movie troupe to return to Earth with Oleg Novitisky aboard the MS-18 spacecraft. With two non-professional Spaceflight Participants onboard – being literally passengers, during the active phases of the flight, despite their accelerated flight training – new techniques with modified Soyuz control interfaces had to be developed in order to enable the craft to be flown by the commander  The last all-Russian crew flew into space in 2000 on-board Soyuz TM-30, which was the last crewed flight to the Russian Mir space station. 27

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alone. The Soyuz docked with the ISS a little later than planned because its Kurs automated rendezvous system failed, and the commander had to switch to manual control for the final approach to docking. Shkaplerov would normally have had the assistance of a flight engineer, but his two colleagues were unable to help him. After the successful docking, the bombastic Dmitry Rogozin radioed Shkaplerov and said: “The finale was a little dramatic, in order for your movie to be even more dramatic”. Peresild and Shipenko used their cameras to film the approach of their Soyuz to the space station, while Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov filmed the approach of the Soyuz capsule from aboard the space station. The small troupe arrived ‘on set’ at the space station after around three hours of “leak checks” between the Soyuz and ISS, when the hatches between the two vehicles could be opened and the three joined the seven members already onboard as the crew of Expedition-65. The entry scenes and the welcoming ceremony were also filmed, to be incorporated in the movie When she set foot aboard the ISS, Peresild said: “I keep thinking that I’m dreaming. It’s almost impossible to believe that it’s all a reality”. During his 12-day stay, Shipenko acquired almost 40 minutes of screen time onboard the ISS, filling several of the behind-the-scenes roles, including director, makeup artist, camera operator, and sound editor, with the ISS proving to be an audio nightmare. Most of filming took place in Russia’s Nauka multi-purpose laboratory module, with some scenes filmed in the Earth-viewing Cupola that is attached to the Tranquility Node of the US segment. The two Spaceflight Participants were escorted while outside the Russian segment of the station. Yulia Peresild obviously played the role of Zhenya, the cardiac surgeon sent into orbit to save a cosmonaut. The experienced Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky – who had been aboard the ISS since the previous April – played the character with the heart problem in the movie. Cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov and astronaut Mark Vande Hei – already on the space station – and Soyuz MS-19 Commander Anton Shkaplerov also had parts in the movie. Shkaplerov confessed that it was not easy for cosmonauts to get into their characters for the movie, with director Shipenko altering the script now and then which made the job still more difficult. During an online news conference at TASS organized jointly by Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos, TV Channel One, and the Cosmonaut Training Center, Shkaplerov said: “It is somewhat difficult for us, as unprofessional actors. But we are doing our best. I hope we will do it”. On October 17, 2021, Novitsky returned to the commander’s seat of the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft and brought actress and director back to Earth,

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parachuting down at about lunchtime in a remote area of western Kazakhstan. They were then transferred to Zvezdny Gorodok (Star City) to undergo rehabilitation after the spaceflight. Channel One and Russian state media provided patriotic coverage of the entire mission, including the re-entry of the capsule descending under its parachute above the vast Kazakh steppe, followed by ground personnel assisting the smiling crew as they emerged from the capsule. Once on the ground, filming continued until May 2022, with release of the film planned no earlier than late 2022. On October 5, 2021, the day of the launch of the Soyuz MS-19, at the request of the Austrian astrophilately society Gmünder Weltraumfreunde, Austria issued a set of three stamps featuring Yulia Peresild, Alina Mordovina and the Film The Challenge. A special pictorial postmark, designed by Adriana Bruna, was used in Vienna on October 9, 2021 during an official ceremony held at the Federation of Austrian Philatelic Societies VÖPh (Fig. 7.25).

Fig. 7.25.  Commemorative cover with the Austrian stamp featuring Yulia Perseild, signed by the Prime and Backup crews and cancelled in Vienna with the special pictorial postmark. From the Author’s collection.

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Sources For This Section Anon. “Roscosmos, Channel One Russia and Yellow, Black and White studio to shoot first movie” in en.roscosmos.ru (September 22, 2020) Arora, S., “Russian team back on Earth after filming first movie in space” in www.bbc.com (October 17, 2021) Cavallaro, U., “Yulia Peresild – the first actress in space” in Ad*Astra #51 (December 2021) p. 6–13 Dvorsky, g., “What We’re Learning About That Upcoming Russian ‘Movie in Space’”, in gizmodo.com (May 8, 2021) Le Nguyen, D., “Meet Yulia Peresild, the first actor to film in space for The Challenge – the Russian film that beat Tom Cruise’s bid to shoot in orbit with Nasa and Elon Musk’s SpaceX”, in scmp.com (October 11, 2021) Quine, T., “Russian Movie in Space” in spacesleuth2.blogspot.com (November 2020–December 2021) Quine, T., “New details of Russian ‘movie in space’ emerge as producers seek funding” in spacenews.com (August 4, 2021) Sinelschikova, Y., “Who is Yuliya Peresild – the FIRST actress to shoot a movie IN SPACE?” in www.rbth.com (October 08, 2021)

7.9 AUDREY POWERS: THE FIRST ATTOURNEY TURNED ASTRONAUT Mission

Launch

Return

Blue Origin NS-18

October 13, 2021

October 13, 2021

Audrey Powers, the vice president of Mission and Flight Operations at Blue Origin, flew to the edge of space on October 13, 2021, as part of the Blue Origin NS-18 mission – New Shepard’s second manned spaceflight – becoming the company’s first employee to launch into space on its rocket. She accompanied Canadian actor William Shatner (who played the original Captain Kirk in Star Trek and, at 90, became the oldest person ever flown in space) along with two other commercial astronauts: Australian entrepreneur Chris Boshuizen, co-founder of Planet Labs, and a former NASA engineer; and American entrepreneur Glen de Vries, co-founder of clinical research software platform Medidata Solutions, who was killed in a Cessna plane crash just one month after the flight. Powers grew up near Washington, D.C., and started to dream of space at the time of the Space Shuttle. Curiosity fed her education and career path

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throughout her life, and she recalls watching Shuttle launches in her elementary school classroom: “My elementary school was so great about us all watching the Shuttle launches together in class. They would roll the TV into the classroom on one of those metal carts and we would watch the launches. I wondered what it would be like to try to find where I lived floating up there in a spacesuit. Her parents supported their daughter’s inquisitiveness, and as she lived near Washington, D.C., she pursued her interest through childhood visits to the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum. Powers graduated valedictorian in 1994 from Mount de Sales Academy, Catonsville, in Baltimore County, Maryland  – a private all-girls secondary school – where she also played soccer and lacrosse and was captain of both teams. She was class treasurer in her sophomore and junior years, and belonged to the science and astronomy clubs. After graduating from her all-girls high school, she moved to a male-dominated engineering program at Purdue University, earning her BSc degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, specializing in Spacecraft Attitude and Dynamics and Orbital Mechanics, in 1999. Powers worked as an engineer for almost ten years prior to becoming a lawyer. A guidance and controls engineer for United Space Alliance, in June 1999 she started her career as Flight Controller at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, supporting International Space Station (ISS) orbital operations in Mission Control as an Attitude Determination and Control specialist. In June 2003 she joined Lockheed Martin as Senior Systems Engineer, and worked on a classified government satellite program as an expert on satellite guidance and navigation systems for three years until April 2007. In 2005 Powers entered Santa Clara University School of Law. While pursuing her law degree, she was also a judicial intern at the US district court for the Northern District of California and assisted in legal research, drafting Judge Jeremy Fogel’s civil decisions. After receiving a Juris Doctor (JD) degree in 2008, Powers worked as a summer associate at Fish & Richardson P.C., performing research and drafting memoranda and client letters on numerous regulatory issues, including FCC spectrum licensing, FDA medical device regulations, and Department of State/Department of Treasury export control regulations. In May 2009 she started providing legal counseling as Attorney to the Director of Applied Social Research Institute of Cambodia, the nationwide point of contact for survivors in the US of atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime. In May 2010 Powers joined Fish & Richardson P.C. as an associate, advising the space, high technology, and defense industries. She left the firm in November 2013 to join Blue Origin as a lawyer, in the position of Deputy General Counsel. Powers was promoted to the position of Vice President of Legal & Compliance in March 2019, overseeing a wide

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variety of legal, regulatory and policy matters. In May 2021, she was appointed Vice President, New Shepard Mission & Flight Operations, overseeing all New Shepard flight operations, vehicle maintenance, and the launch, landing and ground support infrastructure. She says: “I learned how to frame and decompose complex problems into solvable elements, independent of domain – engineering, finance, marketing, law, etc. The approach is fundamentally transferable and has applied to every role in every company I’ve ever worked, at every level.”

Powers also serves as the Chair of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an organization dedicated to promoting the development of commercial human spaceflight and the commercial space industry. Blending her lawyer education and space engineering experience, she played a lead role in the multi-year process to certify New Shepard for human flight, in collaboration with New Shepard’s Safety & Mission Assurance team, Test & Flight Operations, Chief Engineers, and external partners. She said: “I was part of the amazing effort we assembled for New Shepard’s Human Flight Certification Review, a yearslong initiative completed in July 2021. As an engineer and lawyer with more than two decades of experience in the aerospace industry, I have great confidence in our New Shepard team and the vehicle we’ve developed”. Powers got to fulfill her lifelong dream by flying to space on October 13, 2021 (Fig. 7.26). Mission NS-18 was originally scheduled to be launched the previous day, but was delayed due to windy weather. The crew was taken to the launch tower in a Rivian electric pickup truck, which was driven by Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest chauffeur! NS-18 took off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in Van Horn, west Texas, at 10:49 a.m. ET, and was back on the ground after just 10 minutes and 17 seconds. The crew spent three minutes in weightlessness. The rocket booster segment separated from the crew capsule two minutes and 45 seconds into the flight and returned to Earth in one piece, landing at the designated landing area around two miles from the launch site. Of the flight, Powers said: “It was a very generous offer to me to represent all of my colleagues at Blue Origin that have been working on this program for a very long time”. Jeff Bezos opened the capsule hatch and welcomed the crew after their safe flight. Also on board NS-18 were thousands of postcards from Blue Origin’s foundation, “Club for the Future”, a nonprofit founded by Blue Origin in 2019 to help students access space and check out new learning activities, “to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM and to help invent the future of life in space.” One of the initiatives of the Club is the Send a Postcard to Space

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Fig. 7.26.  Commemorative cover of the launch of NS-18, the second crewed suborbital mission by Blue Origin, where Audrey Powers traveled into space with William Shatner, the famous Star Trek actor, and two commercial passengers. From the collection of Umberto Cavallaro.

program that flies postcards from around the world on the New Shepard rocket. Students are invited to write or draw their vision on a postcard for what they think the future of life in space will look like, or any other message they might like to send to space. Club4Future launches them to space and back, and returns them to the sender, stamped “Flown to Space.” During a visit to her alma mater, Powers said: “It is an overwhelming feeling of being miniscule next to this huge planet, and the eternity of the blackness of space has been a really, really difficult thing for me to try to describe”. Recalling that it was difficult to utter a word during her spaceflight, she added: “The view was just so unlike anything I had ever experienced. I absolutely want everyone I know to be able to see what I did and experience what I did. It will change people’s perspective, I am certain of it”. “I think my career is real proof that you can take many, many different types of paths to reach a goal.”

Sources For This Section Anon. “Audrey Powers – Vice President of New Shepard Mission & Flight Operations Blue Origin” in engineering.purdue.edu Anon. “Blue Origin’s Audrey Powers to fulfill lifelong dream to go to space” in www. clubforfuture.org (October 11, 2021)

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Howell, E., “Blue Origin’s Audrey Powers is ‘proud and humbled to fly’ in space” in space.com (October 13, 2021) Tilghman, M.K., “Sailor in Space: Mount de Sales graduate completes rocket mission” in catholicreview.org (October 13, 2021) Tilghman, M.K., “Mount de Sales graduate Audrey Powers opens new paths by rocketing into space” in catholicreview.org (February 15, 2022) Vukotich, C,. “Blue Origins keeps busy flying postcards into space”, on Linn’s Stamp News. 28 March 2022, p 31–34

7.10 LAURA SHEPARD CHURCHLEY – THE FIRST DAUGHTER OF AN ASTRONAUT TO FLY IN SPACE Mission

Launch

Return

Blue Origin NS-19

December 9, 2021

December 9, 2021

Laura Shepard Churchley, 74, blasted into space on December 9, 2021, 60 years after her late father’s famous suborbital NASA flight28, when she took a joyride onboard the Blue Origin’s New Shepard commercial spacecraft NS-19. The spacecraft is named after her father who made history in 1961 as the first American astronaut in space, and again a decade later as the only one to play golf on the Moon when he was commander of the Apollo 14 mission and the fifth moonwalker. A few days before the launch, @blueorigin tweeted: “An original Shepard will fly on the New Shepard”. In the Twitter video released by Blue Origin, Shepard Churchley said: “I’m very proud of my father’s legacy. I believe he would say the same thing as my children: ‘Go for it, Laura’”. She recounted standing outside with her father watching the Soviet Union’s Sputnik satellite, the first human-made object made in space, fly overhead on October 4, 1957 when she was a schoolgirl. She then recalled the moment just a couple of years later when her father announced: “I’m going to be working for NASA. I’m going to be an astronaut”. NS-19 was Blue Origin’s third flight with passengers on board and the first with a full crew of six. Shepard Churchley was one of two honorary, nonpaying guest passengers chosen by Jeff Bezos for the flight. The other, Michael Strahan, was a retired National Football League star and co-anchor of ABC television’s Good Morning America show. They were joined by four other  Alan Shepard became the first American to fly in space on May 5, 1961, when he blasted off onboard the suborbital Mercury-Redstone 3. 28

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lesser-known, wealthy customers, who paid undisclosed sums for their New Shepard seats: space industry executive Dylan Taylor, engineer-investor Evan Dick, venture capitalist Lane Bess and his 23-year-old son Cameron Bess. The Besses made history as the first parent-child pair to fly in space together. Very little is known about the private life of the eldest daughter of Rear Admiral Alan B. Shepard Jr. Laura Shepard Churchley was born in 1946 or 1947 in Wilmington, Delaware and lives in Evergreen, Colorado. She is married to Frederic William Churchley III. They also have children, but she never revealed her children’s names. Little is known about her education or her profession. Shepard Churchley is active in the space and astronaut community to promote what her father started. She currently serves as the Chair of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation Board of Trustees that raises funds and provides mentoring for college students and scholars who are pursuing STEM careers. She is an honorary consultant to the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium, and a lifetime member of the Society of Sponsors for the United States Navy. She served six years as a Board member of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center Foundation in Hutchinson, Kansas, and she served on the Astronaut Memorial Foundation Board at Kennedy Space Center. The spaceflight finally blasted off from the company’s launch facility Launch Site One near the rural town of Van Horn, west Texas, on December 9, after being delayed for two days by fierce winds (Fig. 7.27). Soaring to an

Fig. 7.27.  Cover commemorating the liftoff of Blue Origin NS-19 from the launch facility at Van Horn. From the Author’s collection.

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altitude of around 106 km before travelling back to Earth, the passengers were briefly able to experience zero gravity on the suborbital flight. Shepard Churchley not only followed in her father’s footsteps, but his trajectory as well, although her journey was five minutes and 116 miles shorter than that of Alan Shepard 60 years earlier. One major difference was the room available inside the spacecraft. The Mercury capsule Freedom 7 was so tightly packed that Alan Shepard only had one piece of memorabilia with him on his history-making flight: a 23-by-36-inch (58-by-91 cm) rolled up American flag. His daughter carried a small pouch of mementos with her from her father’s trip to the lunar surface aboard Apollo 14 in 1971, including a silver dollar of his that he took to the Moon for his mother, the original patch that he wore on Apollo 14, his Naval Academy ring, the opal pendant that he took to the Moon for Shepard Churchley in 1971, and an American flag. There was also a small piece of his Mercury capsule that was removed from his spacecraft postflight. The Blue Origin NS-19 joyride followed a similar path to previous rockets launched by the company. The capsule landed under a canopy of parachutes in the Texas desert after a trip lasting a little over 10 minutes. Jeff Bezos arrived with members of his recovery team to greet the new astronauts as they emerged from the capsule, pinning astronaut wings to each of their collars with applause from spectators. The involvement of Laura Shepard Churchley in following her father’s footsteps generated widespread interest among space enthusiasts, and was another smart move by Blue Origin in seeking to capture the space tourism market. Shepard Churchley became the first daughter of an astronaut to fly into space. She said: “I like becoming the first father and daughter to fly, just because I like my father”. Laura Shepard Churchley was one of 14 private citizens sent into space by Blue Origin in 2021. During the year, another ten non-professional astronauts flew with Virgin Galactic, SpaceX and Roscosmos, making it the highest number of non-career astronauts ever. Shepard Churchley and her crewmates were the last non-professional astronauts to be awarded with FAA commercial astronaut wings.

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Sources For This Section Anon. “Laura Shepard-Churchley, Chairman” in astronautscholarship.org Howell, E., “Astronaut Alan Shepard’s daughter says she’s excited to follow him to space” in www.space.com (December 10, 2021) Harwood, W., Lynch Baldwin S., “The daughter of the man who played golf on the moon is going to space: “It’s just going to be thrilling”” in www.cbsnews.com (December 10, 2021) Pearlman, R., “Astronaut’s daughter packs dad’s mementos for Blue Origin launch” in www.collectspace.com (December 5, 2021)

 Appendix I: Women Spacefarers in Order of First Mission

1 2

Valentina Tereshkova Svetlana Savitskaya

3

Sally Ride

4

Judith Resnik

5 6

Christa McAuliffe Kathryn D. Sullivan

7 8

Anna Lee Fisher Margaret Rhea Seddon

9

Shannon Lucid

10

Bonnie J. Dunbar

11

Mary L. Cleave

12

Ellen S. Baker

Mission

Launch

Vostok 6 Soyuz T-7 Soyuz T-12 STS-7 STS-41G STS-41D STS-51L STS-51L STS-41G STS-31 STS-45 STS-51A STS-51D STS-40 STS-58 STS-51G STS-34 STS-43 STS-58 STS-76 STS-61A STS-32 STS-50 STS-71 STS-89 STS-61B STS-30 STS-34 STS-50 STS-71

June 16, 1963 August 19, 1982 July 17, 1984 June 18, 1983 October 5, 1984 August 30, 1984 January 28, 1986 January 28, 1986 October 5, 1984 April 24, 1990 March 24, 1992 November 8, 1984 April 12, 1985 June 5, 1991 October 18, 1993 June 17, 1985 October 18, 1989 August 2, 1991 October 18, 1993 March 22, 1996 October 30, 1985 January 9, 1990 June 25, 1992 June 27, 1995 January 22, 1998 November 26, 1985 May 4, 1989 October 18, 1989 June 25, 1992 June 27, 1995

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Cavallaro, To The Stars, Springer Praxis Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19860-1

575

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13

Kathryn C. Thornton

14

Marsha Ivins

15

Linda M. Godwin

16 17

Helen Sharman Tamara E. Jernigan

18 19 20

Millie Hughes-Fulford Roberta Bondar Jan Davis

21 22

Mae Jemison Susan J. Helms

23

Ellen Ochoa

24

Janice E. Voss

25

Nancy Currie-Gregg

26

Chiaki Mukai

27

Elena Kondakova

Mission

Launch

STS-33 STS-49 STS-61 STS-73 STS-32 STS-46 STS-62 STS-81 STS-98 STS-37 STS-59 STS-76 STS-108 Soyuz TM-12 STS-40 STS-52 STS-67 STS-80 STS-96 STS-40 STS-42 STS-47 STS-60 STS-85 STS-47 STS-54 STS-64 STS-78 STS-101 STS-102 STS-56 STS-66 STS-96 STS-110 STS-57 STS-63 STS-83 STS-94 STS-99 STS-57 STS-70 STS-88 STS-109 STS-65 STS-95 Soyuz TM-20 STS-84

November 22, 1989 May 7, 1992 December 2, 1993 October 20, 1995 January 9, 1990 July 31, 1992 March 4, 1994 January 12, 1997 February 7, 2001 April 5, 1991 April 9, 1994 March 22, 1996 December 5, 2001 May 18, 1991 June 5, 1991 October 22, 1992 March 2, 1995 November 19, 1996 May 27, 1999 June 5, 1991 January 22, 1992 September 12, 1992 February 3, 1994 August 7, 1997 September 12, 1992 January 13, 1993 September 9, 1994 June 20, 1996 May 19, 2000 March 8, 2001 April 8, 1993 November 3, 1994 May 27, 1999 April 8, 2002 June 21, 1993 February 3, 1995 April 4, 1997 July 1, 1997 February 11, 2000 June 21, 1993 July 13, 1995 December 4, 1998 March 1, 2002 July 8, 1994 October 29, 1998 October 3, 1994 May 15, 1997

  Appendix I: Women Spacefarers in Order of First Mission 

28

Eileen Collins

29

Wendy Lawrence

30

Mary E. Weber

31

Catherine Coleman

32

Claudie André-Deshays Haigneré

33

Susan Still Kilrain

34

Kalpana Chawla

35

Kathryn P. Hire

36

Janet L. Kavandi

37

Julie Payette

38

Pamela Melroy

39

Peggy Whitson

40

Sandra Magnus

41 42

Laurel B. Clark Stephanie Wilson

43 44

Lisa Nowak Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper

45 46

Anousheh Ansari Sunita Williams

47 48

Joan Higginbotham Tracy Caldwell Dyson

49

Barbara Morgan

577

Mission

Launch

STS-63 STS-84 STS-93 STS-114 STS-67 STS-86 STS-91 STS-114 STS-70 STS-101 STS-73 STS-93 Soyuz TMA-20 Soyuz TM-24 Soyuz TM-33 STS-83 STS-94 STS-87 STS-107 STS-90 STS-130 STS-91 STS-99 STS-104 STS-96 STS-127 STS-92 STS-112 STS-120 STS-111 Soyuz TMA-11 Soyuz MS-03 STS-112 STS-126 STS-135 STS-107 STS-121 STS-120 STS-131 STS-121 STS-115 STS-126 Soyuz TMA-9 STS-116 Soyuz TMA-05M STS-116 STS-118 Soyuz TMA-18 STS-118

February 3, 1995 May 15, 1997 July 23, 1999 July 26, 2005 March 2, 1995 September 25, 1997 June 2, 1998 July 26, 2005 July 13, 1995 May 19, 2000 October 20, 1995 July 23, 1999 December 15, 2010 August 17, 1996 October 21, 2001 April 4, 1997 July 1, 1997 November 19, 1997 January 16, 2003 April 17, 1998 February 8, 2010 June 2, 1998 February 11, 2000 July 12, 2001 May 27, 1999 July 15, 2009 October 11, 2000 October 7, 2002 October 23, 2007 June 5, 2001 October 10, 2007 November 17, 2016 October 7, 2002 November 14, 2008 July 8, 2011 January 16, 2003 July 4, 2006 October 23, 2007 April 5, 2010 July 4, 2006 September 9, 2006 November 14, 2008 September 18, 2006 December 9, 2006 July 15, 2012 December 9, 2006 August 8, 2007 April 2, 2010 August 8, 2007

578 

Appendix I: Women Spacefarers in Order of First Mission

50 51

Yi So-yeon Karen L. Nyberg

52

K. Megan McArthur

53

Nicole P. Stott

54 55 56

Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger Naoko Yamazaki Shannon Walker

57 58

Liu Yang Wang Yaping

59 60

Yelena Serova Samantha Cristoforetti

61

Kathleen Rubins

62 63 64 65

Serena Auñón-Chancellor Anne McClain Christina Koch Beth Moses

66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Jessica Meir Sirisha Bandla Wally Funk Hayley Arceneaux Sian Proctor Yulia Peresild Kayla Barron Audrey Powers Laura Shepard Churchley Jessica Watkins

Mission

Launch

Soyuz TMA-12 STS-124 Soyuz TMA-09M STS-125 Crew Dragon-2 STS-128 STS-133 STS-131 STS-131 Soyuz TMA-19 Crew Dragon-1 Shenzhou 9 Shenzhou 10 Shenzhou-13 Soyuz TMA-14M Soyuz TMA-15M Crew Dragon-4 Soyuz MS-01 Soyuz MS-17 Soyuz MS-09 Soyuz MS-11 Soyuz MS-12 VSS Unity VF-01 VSS Unity #22 Soyuz MS-15 VSS Unity #22 Blue Origin NS-16 Inspirati④n Inspirati④n Soyuz MS-19 Crew Dragon-3 Blue Origin NS-18 Blue Origin NS-19 Crew Dragon-4

April 8, 2008 May 31, 2008 May 28, 2013 May 11, 2009 April 23, 2021 August 28, 2009 February 24, 2011 April 5, 2010 April 5, 2010 June 15, 2010 November 16, 2020 June 16, 2012 June 11, 2013 October 15, 2021 September 25, 2014 November 23, 2014 April 27, 2022 July 7, 2016 October 14, 2020 June 6, 2018 December 3, 2018 March 14, 2019 February 22, 2019 July 11, 2021 September 25, 2019 July 11, 2021 July 20, 2021 September 16, 2021 September 16, 2021 October 5, 2021 November 11, 2021 October 13, 2021 December 9, 2021 April 27, 2022



Appendix II: Extravehicular Activities

Svetlana Savitskaya Kathryn D. Sullivan Kathryn C. Thornton Linda M. Godwin Tamara E. Jernigan Susan J. Helms Peggy Whitson Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper Sunita Williams Nicole P. Stott Tracy Caldwell Dyson Kate Rubins Anne McClain Christina Koch Jessica Meir Wang Yaping Kayla Barron Samantha Cristoforetti Liu Yang

Number of EVAs*

Total time spent in outer space (hh:mm)

1 1 3 2 2 1 10 5

03:34 03:27 21:11 10:14 08:41 08:56 60:21 33:42

7 1 3 4 2 6 3 1 2 1 1

50:40 06:35 22.49 26:46 13:08 42:15 21:44 06:25 13:26 07:05 06:07

*In order of first EVA Susan Helms holds the record (together with James Voss) for the longest space walk in history (8 hours 56 minutes, STS-102 – March 11, 2001). Peggy Whitson holds the record for most EVAs and most cumulative duration spent on EVA by a woman. The first all-female space walk in history was conducted by Christina Koch and Jessica Meir on October 18, 2019. List updated September 2022

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579



Appendix III: Military Astronauts

Svetlana Savitskaya Kathryn C. Thornton Millie Hughes-Fulford Susan J. Helms Nancy Currie-Gregg Eileen Collins Wendy Lawrence Catherine Coleman Susan Still Kilrain Kathryn P. Hire Pamela Melroy Laurel B. Clark Lisa Nowak Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper Sunita Williams Liu Yang Wang Yaping Samantha Cristoforetti Anne McClain Kayla Barron

Corps

Year of selection

Russian Air Force US Army US Army US Air Force US Army US Air Force US Navy US Air Force US Navy US Navy US Air Force US Navy US Navy US Navy

1980 1984 1983 1990 1990 1990 1992 1992 1995 1995 1995 1996 1996 1996

US Navy People’s Liberation Army Air Force People’s Liberation Army Air Force Italian Air Force US Army US Navy

1998 2010 2010 2009 2013 2017

In order of first flight. List updated May 2022

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581

 Appendix IV: Women Spacefarers Married to Astronauts

(Country and year of selection in brackets) • Valentina Tereshkova (USSR – 1962) and Andriyan Nikolayev (USSR – 1960): married in 1963 during a solemn ceremony headed by Nikita Khrushchev; divorced in 1982. • Sally K. Ride (USA – 1978) and Steven Hawley (USA – 1978): married in 1982; divorced in 1987. • Anna L. Fisher (USA – 1978) and William F. Fisher (USA – 1980): already married before joining NASA; now divorced. • M. Rhea Seddon (USA – 1978) and Robert L. Gibson (USA – 1978): married in 1981; the first to wed among NASA astronauts. • Bonnie J. Dunbar (USA – 1980) and Ronald M. Sega (USA – 1990): married in 1988; now divorced. The news that her husband Ron Sega had been selected for the Astronaut Corps was released while Dunbar was in space (STS-32). • Linda M. Godwin (USA – 1985) and Steven R. Nagel (USA – 1978): married in 1995, after Nagel had left the Astronaut Office. He passed away aged 67 in August 2014. • Tamara E. Jernigan (USA  – 1985) and Peter Jeffrey K.  Wisoff (USA  – 1990): married in 1999. • Claudie André-Deshays Haigneré (France – 1985) and Jean-Pierre Haigneré (France – 1985): married in 1999.

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583

584 

Appendix IV: Women Spacefarers Married to Astronauts

• Nancy Jan Davis (USA – 1987) and Mark C. Lee (USA – 1984): married in 1992; they flew together that year on mission Endeavour STS-47; now divorced. • Heike Walpot (Germany  – 1987  – unflown) and Hans Schlegel (Germany – 1998). • Elena Kondakova (Russia  – 1989) and Valeri Ryumin (USSR  – 1973): married in 1985. • Nancy Sherlock-Currie (USA – 1990) and David W. Currie (USA – 1990): married in 1995. David passed away aged 55 in 2011. • Marianne Merchez (Belgium  – 1992  – unflown) and Maurizio Cheli (Italy – 1992). • Karen L. Nyberg (USA – 2000) and Douglas G. Hurley (USA – 2000): married in 2009. • K. Megan McArthur (USA – 2000) and Robert L. Behnken (USA – 2000): married in 2008. • Shannon Walker (USA – 2004) and Andrew S.W. Thomas (USA – 1992): married in 2005. • Elena Serova (Russia – 2006) and Mark Serov (Russia – 2003): married in 1985. Serov retired from the Cosmonaut Corps without flying in space.

Glossary

Airlock 

A chamber that allows people and objects to pass between a pressurized vessel and its surroundings while maintaining the pressure difference and minimizing loss of air from the vessel. It is used in space to permit astronauts to exit and enter for extravehicular activities (EVA or spacewalks), or underwater (e.g. NEEMO expeditions) to allow passage between an air environment in a pressure vessel and the water environment outside. Astronaut  A person who travels into space. Capcom  Or Capsule Communicator in the Mission Control Center (MCC) is the individual responsible for communicating directly with the crew of a manned spaceflight during a mission. During much of the US manned space program, NASA felt it important for all communication with the astronauts in space to pass through a single individual in the MCC. NASA believes that an astronaut is most able to understand the situation in the spacecraft and pass information in the clearest way. Until 2011 (the end of the Shuttle program), the role was filled by another astronaut, often one of the backup or support crewmembers. Since 2011, for long-duration expeditions on the ISS, instructors or trainers may also act as Capcoms. Cape Crusaders  The team of between five and eight American Astronaut Support Personnel (ASP) who served during the Shuttle program as the crew’s point of contact between NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, and NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC), in Cape Kennedy, Florida. They were “the eyes and ears to the Shuttle vehicle.” Their duties included: setting the Shuttle orbiter’s cockpit switches to the appropriate settings to make sure that they were properly configured for lift-off; loading the vehicle with the crew equipment; participating in communication checks between the orbiter and the ground; strapping in the flight crew for launch; assisting with landing operations; helping the © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 U. Cavallaro, To The Stars, Springer Praxis Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19860-1

585

586 Glossary

crew exit after landing; and carrying some of their equipment out of the orbiter. According to astronaut Jerry Ross, “the only assignment that beats being a Cape Crusader is to do the flight yourself.”Similarly, at NASA, the term Russian Crusader was used to refer to the team of American astronauts in charge of supporting activities to be performed in Russia for joint Russian-American operations, like the Shuttle-Mir program, or participating in the testing and integration of Russian hardware and software products developed for the International Space Station (ISS) to ensure mutual compatibility of the US and Russian equipment. Cosmonaut  A Soviet or Russian spacefarer. Docking and Rendezvous  A space rendezvous is an orbital maneuver during which two separate free-flying spacecraft, one of which is often a space station, arrive at the same orbit and approach at a very close distance (e.g. within visual contact). Rendezvous requires a precise match of the orbital speed and position vectors of the two spacecraft. The ISS orbits Earth at 27,000 kilometers per hour.Rendezvous may or may not be followed by docking or berthing – procedures that bring the spacecraft into physical contact and create a link between the two. IUS  Inertial Upper Stage: a large Boeing-built booster rocket used to lift satellites into their final orbit or to accelerate space probes out of Earth orbit. Kármán line  According to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), this defines a boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. Space begins at 100 kilometers (54 nautical miles; 62 miles; 330,000 feet) above Earth’s mean sea level. This boundary is most widely – but not universally – accepted.In the late 1950s the USAF decided to award astronaut wings to pilots flying above 50 statute miles (approx. 80 kilometers), which is the point at which gravity becomes more important than the atmosphere, according to McDowell. NASA does the same. While the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) does not have an official definition, it awards astronaut badges to those who have gone above 50 miles. Mission Specialists  Career astronauts who train for a specific mission. NEEMO  (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) is the program run by NASA in the Aquarius underwater laboratory – the world’s only undersea research station, located 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) off Key Largo, Florida, in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, 62 feet (19 meters) below the surface.NASA sends groups of astronauts, engineers, and scientists (called aquanauts) to live in Aquarius for space exploration simulation missions in preparation for future space exploration, since the underwater lab is a convincing analog for space exploration: much like space, the undersea world is a hostile, alien place for humans to live. Payload  In our context, payload is the carrying capacity of a spacecraft or launch vehicle and can be cargo or equipment sent or carried into space to reach the mission goals. It can be a scientific satellite launched atop a rocket that will put it in Earth orbit or a space probe carried to the target inside or outside the Solar System, or a set of equipment carried during a manned flight to perform an experiment in microgravity, or structures to be mounted or left in outer space for different purposes.

Glossary  587 Payload Commander 

The astronaut responsible for the overall success of the experiments during a mission. Payload Specialist  Scientists who know the topic and are experts on a particular mission’s experiments or “payload.” Although they undergo rigorous training, Payload Specialists are not career astronauts who expect to make space travel their life’s work. Instead, their goal is to carry out a group of experiments for other scientists who remain on Earth. RMS  (Remote Manipulator System) or robotic arm. The first robotic arm was built for the Shuttle (SRMS or Shuttle Remote Manipulator System, also known as Canadarm). A second robotic arm was installed on the ISS (SSRMS or Space Station Remote Manipulator System, also known as Canadarm-2). The Japanese Experiment Module Remote Manipulator System (JEM-RMS) is primarily used on the ISS to service the JEM Exposed Facility. An additional robotic arm, the European Robotic Arm (ERA), launched to the ISS in July 2021 to work on the Russian part of the space station. SAIL  (Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory). This was a facility at Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, that supported the entire Space Shuttle program and performed integrated verification tests and the testing and integration of orbiter hardware and flight software in a simulated flight environment. Taikonaut  A Chinese spacefarer.

Index

A

Airlock, 29, 188, 202, 221, 317, 358, 415 Ansari, A., 2, 24, 58, 505, 516–522, 531, 575–578 Arceneaux, H., 540–546, 551, 553, 575–578 ASI, 75–78, 405 Astronaut, xvii–xxx, xxxii–xxxv, 27, 29, 31–33, 35, 36, 38, 40, 42–47, 52–54, 58–61, 64–69, 71, 73–76, 78, 85, 88–90, 92–97, 102, 104, 105, 108, 109, 114, 115, 117, 119, 120, 122, 127, 128, 132, 135–139, 141, 145–147, 150, 152, 153, 155, 156, 159, 161, 163, 192, 194, 199–201, 203, 206–216, 218–220, 222–226, 228, 231, 233–235, 237, 241, 243–245, 274, 276, 278, 281, 284–286, 288, 289, 291, 292, 296–300, 302, 304, 306, 308, 309, 312, 314, 315, 317–319, 321, 322, 327, 330, 331, 336–338, 342,

343, 346, 350–353, 356–362, 364, 365, 368–372, 374, 375, 380–384, 386, 387, 389, 391, 392, 395, 396, 400, 402, 404–408, 411, 413, 415–418, 420, 422, 430–433, 444, 445, 447, 449, 451–453, 455, 456, 458, 469–471, 474, 475, 477, 478, 480, 482, 483, 510, 511, 514, 516, 519, 521, 583 Auñón-Chancellor, S., 173–180, 490, 575–578 B

Baker, E., 112, 131–134, 259n8, 575–578 Bandla, S., 529–533, 575–578 Barron, K., 496–503, 575–579, 581 Behnken, R.L., 584 Beregovoij, G., xviii Berezovoi, A., 192, 193 Bondar, R., xxxiii, 1, 34, 38–42, 83, 322, 575–578

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U. Cavallaro, To The Stars, Springer Praxis Books, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19860-1

589

590 Index C

Caldwell Dyson, T., 157, 188, 223–229, 338, 352, 374, 575–579 Canadian Space Agency (CSA), xxxix, 40, 220, 299, 322, 324, 325, 330 Capcom, 11, 15, 15n5, 88, 89, 94, 95, 97, 99, 113, 128, 176, 201, 208, 214, 219, 226, 229, 234, 285, 292, 299, 316, 324, 330, 336, 339, 350, 364, 384, 392, 397, 422, 440, 441, 453, 465, 475 Cape Crusader, xxxix, 157, 285, 311, 384, 396, 397, 464 Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), xxxix, 43, 45, 263 Challenger accident, STS-51L, xxxiii, 278, 391 Chawla, K., xxxiii, 2, 50–57, 271, 417, 530, 530n5, 533, 575–578 China National Space Administration (CNSA), xxxix, 113, 243, 250 Clark, L., xxxiii, 467–472, 478, 575–578, 581 Cleave, M.L., xxviii, 124–130, 271, 575–578 Cobb, J., xx, xxi Coleman, C. “Cady”, xxn15, 271, 386, 388, 450–459, 575–578, 581 Collins, E., xx, xxxiv, 123, 151, 152, 305, 345, 380–388, 392, 397, 429, 448, 455, 459, 575–578, 581 Columbia accident, STS-107, xxxiii, 36, 50, 54, 317, 350, 417, 434, 478 Cosmonaut, xvii–xix, xxvi, xxvii, xxx, xxxi, 46, 61, 63, 75, 92, 105–107, 110, 121, 148–152, 159, 161–163, 191, 192, 194–197, 215, 220, 292, 359, 405, 408, 434, 448, 519, 521

Cristoforetti, S., xxxiv, xxxv, 2, 71–81, 163, 183, 417, 429, 575–579, 581 Cunningham, W., xxviin31, xxixn33, 56, 56n10, 279n5 Currie-Gregg, N., 437–443, 575–578, 581 Currie, S.N., 304 D

Davis, N.J., 289–293, 575–578, 584 Dobrokvashina, E., xix, 196 Docking, 69, 121, 122, 134, 151, 193, 214, 215, 221, 227, 245, 247, 287, 302, 305, 310, 315, 323, 342, 385, 407, 434, 519 Dunbar, B., xiii, xiiin3, xxxi, xxxii, xxxiin37, 99, 115–123, 133, 134, 453, 575–578, 583 Dyson, T., see Caldwell Dyson, T. E

Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle-­ school students (EarthKAM), 19, 316 European Space Agency (ESA), ix, xii, xxvi, xxxv, xxxix, 1, 2, 24, 25, 30, 43–50, 70–72, 75, 76, 79–81, 112, 139, 140, 168, 177, 183, 184, 214, 258, 259n7, 287, 298, 330, 366, 398, 456, 500, 520 Extravehicular Activity (EVA), xviii, xxxix, 47, 54, 81, 97, 187–189, 194, 195, 200–202, 209, 210, 214–216, 219, 221, 227, 249, 256–258, 267, 269, 310, 317, 337, 400, 406, 407, 409, 415, 417, 435, 447, 476, 483, 484, 493, 494, 502, 525, 556, 579

 Index  F

Fisher, A.L., xxix, xxxiv, 83–91, 94, 96, 271, 575–578, 583 Funk, W., 532, 534–539, 575–578

591

Ivins, M., xiv, xxiv, xxv, xxxii, 132, 188, 257, 259n8, 272, 282–288, 396, 397, 453, 575–578 J

G

Gagarin, Y., 2, 4, 6, 27, 62, 92, 107, 111, 372, 456, 556–558, 561 Gibson, R.L. “Hoot”, xxx, 95, 101, 105, 583 Glenn, J., xx, xxiv, 35, 114, 277, 281, 313, 509, 535 Glushko, V., xviii, xxx, 191, 192, 196 Godwin, L., 187, 211–217, 575–579, 583 Gorbachev, M., 26, 28 Guidoni, U., 47

Jan Davis, N., 289 Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), xl, 31, 36, 168, 330, 366, 370, 372, 373, 375, 376, 425 Jemison, M., 1, 141–147, 292, 333, 339, 494n2, 551, 575–578 Jernigan, T. “Tammy”, xxxii, 99, 138, 187, 217–222, 292, 323, 575–579, 583 K

Haigneré, Claudie André-Deshays, xxxiii, 1, 43–49, 112, 575–578, 583 Hawley, S., 15, 19, 583 Helms, S., xxxii, 310, 430–436, 575–579, 581 Higginbotham, J., 339–345, 414, 575–578 Hire, K. “Kay”, xxxiv, 461–467, 575–578, 581 Hughes-Fulford, M., 40, 84, 99, 135–141, 219, 575–578, 581 Hurley, D.G., 360, 417, 584

Kavandi, J., 56, 305, 313–319, 575–578 Khrushchev, N.S., xxxiv, 1, 4n3, 6, 7, 9, 583 Kilrain, S.S., xxxiv, 389–393, 429, 575–578, 581 Koch, C., xxxiii, 188, 239, 251–258, 267, 339, 417, 425, 493, 494n2, 575–579 Kondakova, E., xix, xxxi, 43, 102, 106, 112, 148–152, 159, 195, 196, 385, 575–578, 584 Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), xl, 59, 61, 63 Korolyov, S.P., 4n3, 6, 150, 423, 452, 491

I

L

H

Isaacman, J., 540n13, 541, 543n15, 544, 545, 549, 551 Italian Space Agency (ASI), xxxix, 78, 434

Lawrence, W., 188, 315, 444–449, 575–578, 581 Liu Yang, xxxin35, 2, 63, 65, 68, 69, 242, 244, 429, 575–578, 581

592 Index

Lovelace, R., xxi Lucid, S., xxix, xxxii, 43, 46, 47, 102, 104, 112, 114, 133, 214, 276n3, 404, 434, 446, 575–578 M

Mace, T., 27, 28 Magnus, S., 327–333, 484, 575–578 Malerba, F., 286 McArthur, K.M., 265n11, 272, 361–367, 575–578, 584 McAuliffe, C., xxxiii, xxxiiin39, 224, 226, 246, 278, 280, 346, 348–352, 369, 370, 505–515, 571, 575–578 McClain, A., xivn7, 177, 188, 256, 257, 257n6, 268, 486–495, 575–579, 581 Meir, J., 188, 239, 256, 258–269, 339, 494, 494n2, 575–579 Melroy, P., xxxiv, 271, 330, 337, 394–401, 407, 429, 452, 575–578, 581 Mercury-13, xx–xxiii, 4, 385, 534, 535 Metcalf-Lindenburger, D., 153–158, 228, 338, 374, 575–578 Mission Specialist (MS), vii, xxvii, xxxii, xl, 1, 2, 15, 17, 54, 83, 88, 91, 94, 95, 119, 120, 127, 128, 133, 135, 146, 152, 156, 183, 192, 200–202, 208, 209, 213, 214, 219–221, 224, 227, 234, 236, 272, 273, 276–278, 278n4, 292, 297, 298, 304, 310, 315, 322, 324, 330, 331, 336, 350–352, 357, 364, 371, 372, 384–386, 393, 402, 406, 422, 427, 434, 445, 455, 465, 471, 475, 483, 540n13 Morgan, B., 226, 245–248, 271, 346–353, 512, 575–578 Moses, B., 523–529, 533n8, 575–578 Mukai, C., viii, 1, 31–37, 58, 372, 575–578

N

NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO), xl, 79, 157, 168, 176, 183, 231, 234, 263, 330, 357, 406, 414, 424, 455, 484 Nespoli, P., 335, 427, 455, 458, 497 Nikolayev, A., xxxiv, 7, 9, 583 Nowak, L., 271, 337, 474–478, 575–578, 581 Nyberg, K., 245, 271, 272, 354–360, 416, 575–578, 584 O

Obama, B., 20, 89, 101, 204, 435, 436 Ochoa, E., 1, 21, 83, 173, 221, 222, 294–300, 304, 323, 575–578 Onufriyenko, Y., 47, 107, 110, 111 P

Payette, J., 221, 222, 272, 299, 319–326, 399, 575–578 Payload Commander, 95, 99, 120, 122, 203, 210, 214, 220, 292, 293, 298, 305, 433, 455 Payload Specialist (PS), xxxii, xl, 34, 40, 83, 84, 91, 97, 135–141, 511 Peresild, Y., xviii, 554–565, 575–578 Powers, A., 566–569, 575–578 Proctor, S., 540n13, 543n15, 545, 547–553, 575–578 R

Remote Manipulator System (RMS), xl, 14–17, 15n5, 87, 128, 214, 215, 220, 271, 272, 277, 278, 288, 292, 297, 358, 373, 433, 434, 453, 465 Rendezvous, xi, 7, 69, 88, 128, 151, 170, 215, 221, 227, 287, 305, 323, 385, 387, 407, 434, 564

 Index 

Resnik, J., xxxiii, 15n5, 17, 95, 259n8, 271, 273–281, 505, 508, 515, 575–578 Rhea Seddon, M., 91, 138, 219 Ride, S., xi, xvii, xviii, xxix, 1, 11–22, 58, 65, 94, 95, 97, 114, 123, 128, 145, 192, 194, 198, 201, 214, 253, 255, 271, 273, 316, 432, 451, 452, 507, 510, 537, 548, 575–578, 583 Rogozin, D., 81, 177n3, 179, 557, 562, 564 Roscosmos, xl, 63, 75, 81, 162, 171, 177–179, 177n3, 256n5, 409, 452, 497, 497n4, 554, 556, 557, 559, 560, 562, 564, 572 Rubins, K. “Kate”, 84, 165–172, 188, 265n11, 426, 575–579 Ryumin, V., xix, 149, 151, 195, 446, 447, 584 S

Savitskaya, S., xvii–xix, xxxi, 17, 106, 121, 148–150, 159, 187, 189–197, 202, 556n25, 575–579, 581 Seddon, M.R., xxix, xxx, xxxn34, 15n5, 83, 90–101, 277, 575–578, 583 Serova, E., xxxi, 75, 152, 159–164, 197, 575–578, 584 Sharman, H., viii, xxxv, 1, 24–30, 43, 58, 106, 505, 575–578 Shepard Churchley, L., 575–578 Shepard, C.L., 570–572 Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL), xl, 54, 86, 88, 94, 119, 128, 208, 213, 219, 226, 285, 342, 364, 445, 453, 465 Space debris, 37, 177n3, 367, 502 STARSHINE, 216, 222, 324

593

Stefanyshyn-Piper, H., xiv, xivn6, 188, 479–485, 575–579, 581 Stott, N., 188, 230–240, 456, 575–579 Sullivan, K. “Kathy”, xviii, xxix, 11, 16, 17, 187, 194, 198–204, 209, 575–579 T

Taikonaut, xxvi, xxxv, 65, 66, 68, 243, 247 Tereshkova, V., xi, xvii, xviii, xxiii, xxiv, xxx, xxxiv, 1–10, 17, 65, 68, 106, 121, 142, 150, 159, 189, 191, 193, 245, 255, 356, 359, 385, 474, 561, 575–578, 583 Thagard, N. “Norm”, 99, 102, 115, 121, 150 Thales Alenia Space (former name: Alenia Spazio), 57, 76, 303, 359, 398, 405, 407, 462, 465 Thatcher, M., 27, 194 Thornton, K. “Kathy”, 132, 187, 205–210, 455, 575–579, 581 U

Usachev, Y., 107, 108, 111, 434 V

Voss, J.E., xxxii, 271, 302–306, 385, 393, 575–578 W

Walker, S., 271, 420–427, 575–578, 584 Wang Yaping, 69, 189, 241–250, 359, 429, 575–579, 581 Watkins, J., 181–185, 575–578 Weber, M.E., 272, 307–312, 575–578

594 Index

Whitson, P., xxxiii, 61, 62, 188, 257, 379, 398, 399, 402–410, 415, 417, 427, 575–579 Williams, S., xii, xxxiii, xxxiv, 52, 78, 103, 188, 209, 271, 343, 356, 379, 406, 407, 411–419, 427, 429, 530, 530n5, 575–579, 581 Wilson, S., 156, 228, 229, 271, 333–339, 374, 400, 575–578

Y

Yamazaki, N., 156, 157, 228, 229, 338, 368–376, 575–578 Yi So-Yeon, 2, 24, 58–64, 408, 505, 575–578 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 39, 510