Joy is great motivator to do things to do. And that's actually some advice that I have is whatever you're doing in life, make sure that it brings you some joy. But there's a lot of reasons that people do things, and I think one of the really great things about being an astronaut is getting a chance to explore.
We get to do things that are absolutely amazing. And when we see the planet, we explore outer space, and we get to do all these things and we can come back and we can tell people about it. So I think it's the thrill of science. I think it's the lure of discovery. And then the opportunity to share that with the world is really amazing.
Other than joy, why do you do the things you do?
Yeah! So if you want to be an astronaut, my best piece of advice is definitely to study something in the science field. Basically every astronaut has some kind of background in science, technology, engineering. Everybody has--even the fighter pilots have studied something and done a Masters degree in some kind of STEM field. So if you start there, you're definitely headed in the right direction.
What is your advice to someone who wants to follow the same steps you take?
So one of the things I didn't know about being an astronaut was all of the different kinds of skills we need to learn. You come in and you're kind of a baby astronaut trainee, and they teach you things about like how to fix the electrical system and the plumbing on the space station. You need to learn how to train in dangerous environments. We learn how to fly airplanes. We learn how to do spacewalks underwater.
So one of the most surprising things was just the variety of skills we need in order to be successful expedition pioneers on board the space station.
What's something you didn't know about being an astronaut before you actually became one? Do you have any words of advice for young astronauts?
I thought, um, I actually thought The Martian was pretty good. They do a good job there of kind of showing the challenges of working in a space environment: some of the isolation, how do you troubleshoot problems, the kind of interactions that crews would have. I think that's a movie that captures somewhat the feel of space exploration.
What popular film is the closest to reality for you?
So floating is really interesting. You're actually very unstable when you float for the first time because your body's rotating on all these different axes, and anything you touch anything, you're inputting motion into that system. So one of the things we learn the first week or so we get on board is how to stabilize ourselves.
So we actually hook our feet underneath some hand rails and kind of use our toes [wiggles fingers] to keep ourselves steady. Then--only then--when we've mastered that, we start to learn how to float in a given direction. We learn how to push off and get to where we want to go. It's not always perfect at first, there's a lot of times when you bump your forehead into the hatches or you slam into the wall and knock the computer off. That's like every first time astronaut experience. But after a little while, you get pretty good at getting around the space station.
It's a whole 'nother concept when you come back to Earth and you have to remember how to walk again. So again, there you're kind of unsteady the first few days you're figuring out--your feet haven't touched the ground in a long time, so you have to figure out how to walk. And then you move on to how to jump, and then finally you get good enough and you can learn how to run again.
What does it feel like to float?? Do you have trouble adjusting to walking on the earth after that ??
When you first get into the capsule sitting on top of the rocket, it actually feels incredibly familiar. It looks like the simulator that we've trained in for years and years, and so you sit down and you strap in, and it feels like you're just gonna go for another three hour sim. And it might be really boring, and then there might be a fire, and then all of a sudden as you're thinking about those things the rocket starts to lift off and you realize it's not a simulation.
So there's a lot of g-forces, the rockets shake, and the whole time you're thinking, "this is the most amazing experience I've ever had." And really, the whole thing culminates at the end of it, after that nine-minute ride when you look out the window and you see the planet.
We never get to see that in the simulator.
How does it feel to into space for the first time? Like liftoff and leaving earth’s atmosphere? It seems like the world’s terrifying roller coaster, but what’s it really like?
Ah, that's a really good question! I think I would say, study as much as you did, but also try to have a little bit of fun.
Hey, Kate! What would you say/what advice would you give to your younger self? ✨
I think some of the greatest things that we can take a look at what we're currently doing in space and see that future generations are really going to appreciate is all of the science that we're doing on board the International Space Station. So I was lucky enough to participate in just a few of those science experiments. We did about a hundred different science experiments that I actively participated in on board, two hundred total.
And I think that's just adding to the knowledge about how the human body works in microgravity, and also how we're going to explore, both in lower orbit and then beyond deep space exploration. So all of these little bits of scientific inquiry add up to really a big body of knowledge, and I hope that's the legacy of the International Space Station and NASA's work in space.
Hii! I'm unsure if you've been asked this before, but I'd like to give it a shot anyway. What's the greatest legacy you hope to leave to the future generations? Whether it's one of the things you've accomplished already or are hoping to accomplish yet. Thank you very much!
Yeah, so the human body changes a lot when you're in space. There's things that happen like fluid shifts, since you don't have gravity drawing the fluid down into your legs, all that fluid shifts upwards. And the body can adjust to this, it does this by just getting rid of the excess fluid. When you come back to Earth, however, you're a little bit dehydrated. So one of the things we do is get fluid in right away.
Another thing that's concerning is things like bone loss aor muscle loss, so what we do to prevent most of that on board is actually just work out a lot. We have a device called ARED, which is a Resistive Exercise Device, and we have a whole gym's worth of weight-lifting exercises. We do that, we do running, and we do cycling. And that can counteract most of the muscle loss and the bone loss we see on board. We're really successful in returning astronauts in pretty good health these days.
Is your health affected from being in outer space?
So on the ISS we have a wake-up time. There's not really any predetermined time because we're orbiting the Earth every ninety minutes. But you have to pick a time scale, so we actually picked GMT, which is close to London time.
So we wake up, we have a normal conference call with the ground, we talk about things that are going on the space station, what we're going to do that day, and then we have a plan that tells us what we're going to do down to every five minutes on board. And so it depends on the day.
A lot of time we're doing science experiments, sometimes we're doing maintenance on the space station, sometimes we're even getting ready to do a space walk. Those are the best days. But every day is something new and different up there.
What does a normal day for you consist of?
We train a lot for space walks, so hundreds of hours underwater in the pool, and we spend a lot of time going over every detail of the space walk. But one of the things you really can't train for is the feeling you're in an absolute vacuum. So we do a few tests in the vacuum chamber, but when you first go outside the hatch and you see the total darkness or the brightness of the Earth, and you realize that there's no air molecules anywhere else around you - that's the biggest surprise.
And then I think the second surprise is after an hour or two, getting comfortable working in an absolute vacuum, knowing that the suits are going to protect and you have a whole team of people on the ground taking care of every aspect of that spacewalk. I think that was the thing that was the most surprising, was how alone and distant from the planet you can feel, yet totally supported by all the people working down in Mission Control.
I’m sure you’re trained so that nothing in space is really a surprise, but: was there anything about spacewalking that surprised you when you did it for the first time?
Yeah, we had to troubleshoot problems pretty much every day. So, we have our tasks that we’re doing every day: a science experiment or some maintenance, but things don’t always go as planned. So that’s one of the really interesting things about science experiments is that sometimes you observe things that are different and that’s how science gets done.
One of the experiments I worked on was actually doing a chemical reaction with some small little pockets of–they’re plastic kind of tubes that contain pockets of water. And we heated the reaction and we noticed that there were bubbles being formed. When we did this reaction on Earth we didn’t have the same thing, so we had no idea was to expect when we did this on board. So we documented this and actually found it to be a really interesting phenomenon. The scientists took that back and that ended up being part of our analysis of the experiment.
Sometimes you’re just troubleshooting equipment because things aren’t working. So I was working on one of the vacuum furnaces one day, and it has these quick disconnects that you can use to supply power or water to the vacuum furnace. And I tried to do one of the quick disconnects and all of a sudden the connection–the valve–stayed full open and there was water spreading everywhere.
So that was some really quick troubleshooting, I had water going in my face and I wasn’t really sure what to do so I closed the thing as quickly as possible, backed off, got the water out of my eyes, and then I called the ground and we did a lot of troubleshooting that day.
Have you ever had to troubleshoot a problem in space?
So when I was inside the space station, one of my favorite things to do was go in the Cupola, which is an area that has a whole bunch of windows. You can actually get your whole body into the Cupola and just see the Milky Way and the universe from the Cupola. And that was amazing.
It was, um–you know terrifying is almost a good word because it was so awe-inspiring to just be in the universe and see the stars–but it was one of the most interesting things to do because it was always changing. Your view was changing as you go around the planet; even at nighttime you can see different aspects of the planet at night as well.
And so whenever I could, I would spend a few minutes when we were in a dark orbit and just try to poke my head into the Cupola and see the stars. It never got old.
What is like to be surrounded by the stars and darkness? Is it terrifying or calming?
So this was a really neat project. This was a partnership with hospitals all around the world, and there are kids that are in the cancer units in these hospitals. And as part of their care they do art therapy. So they paint, they draw, and they get to express themselves.
So part of the project was that each kid got a little patch, and they got to paint or draw or color whatever they wanted. They then sewed all of these patches together to make this space suit, and we got to fly it to the space station. So it was really neat--all these children got to see their work flown in space.
But it's so colorful because each individual patch represents a little artist's contribution. And so I got a chance to meet some of these kids and hang out and do some art with them and it was so incredible. It was just really a joy to see.
Why's your suit so colorful?
The first time I saw Earth from space I couldn't even talk; I was absolutely speechless, as were my crewmates. The three of us were just silent it seemed like for thirty seconds, it was such a beautiful sight. And one of the things that was really interesting to me was how different it was seeing it out the window with your own eyes versus seeing the picture.
I think I had this idea in my head that I knew what Earth looked like because you've seen so many videos, but they're all photographic images, so the dynamic color spectrum is a little bit dulled. When you see it with your own eyes, it's so much brighter. It's so much more vivid than I could have imagined. It's just this beautiful blue planet.
What was your first thought when you first saw earth from space? And what realizations did you have?
I think it's actually just an incredible thing that we have picked a line-up of space-walkers--we've taken the most qualified people--and we happen to have enough female astronauts that we have two women doing a spacewalk now. I think it really is a testament to NASA's inclusivity in their selection process.
The last several classes we've seen a lot more women applying in these classes and also being selected. And so I think everybody can look at that and say, "You know, that could be me someday!"
As an astronaut who has been on a spacewalk before, what does the all-woman spacewalk mean to you?
So a lot of the research that we do on board the International Space Station has a relationship to an Earth-based disease. For example, we worry about bone loss; that's got a relationship to things like osteoporosis on the ground. All of the things we need to do to keep the human body healthy in a confined environment in the long term we're learning about on the International Space Station.
The things that we do on our six-month missions would build into year-long missions, would build into even longer term missions, for example going to Mars. So we need to know about things like radiation and the effect on the human body, bone loss, how people are going to be able to work and live together in a confined isolated system for so long. How we're going to get enough nutrition and getting the right balance of nutrients in a really long duration mission. And then also, how are we going to keep people healthy? What kinds of medicines can survive that long in space and how do you treat any illness or injury that occurs?
So all of these things are actively being researched on board the International Space Station and a lot of them have a component to human health on Earth as well.
How could your research in diseases help missions to the Moon, Mars and other places in our solar system?