Tecnología e innovación

Astronaut Jessica Meir reflects on jolting return to Earth – Harvard Gazette

GAZETTE:  What was your mission out there? Were you nervous at all about that?

MEIR: Your muscle memory kicks in because you’ve trained for so many hours and you know exactly how to operate the suit and how to use the tools. We have to be focused on what we’re doing, because spacewalks are the riskiest thing that we do and are the most challenging thing that we do mentally and physically. So you really have to just focus on your job. You’re not up there philosophizing. You go through the actions you’ve trained for on the ground. I tried to remind myself to steal a few moments to look at the Earth and appreciate that, to look down to Christina and see the Earth behind her and just try to sear this into my memory because it’s so extraordinary. We had to replace this box that had failed, the battery charge-discharge unit, which is an essential element of the power channel on the space station. We needed to replace that unit to bring this power channel back to life, and there’s only two other spares out there. If we damaged it or didn’t install it correctly, it would be quite a bad thing for the space station. So most the time you’re just thinking, “OK, don’t make a mistake. Don’t damage this hardware.” It’s all-consuming for sure.

GAZETTE: What about its significance as the first all-women spacewalk?

MEIR: Even though it was also historic, I had to be focused on the job. You need to make sure that you’re operating safely and that you can react to an emergent situation with your crew member, if necessary. I had also only been in space for two weeks so I was still figuring out how to float around and getting used to everything. The historical component of the spacewalk meant more to me after it was conducted, after we were back in the hatch safely, and we looked at each other and hugged, and we were really happy with how it went. But that’s not to take away from the significance. We felt so privileged to be a part of it, but it was more of a tribute to the generation of women and other minorities who didn’t have a seat at the table, who had to break those glass ceilings, and that pushed to get us where we are today. We are the result of their work and the fact that we had this opportunity is a result of all of that work. We were really representing those generations, and that’s most important to me. Obviously, we have a way to go in terms of social equity in this country, but I hope that this did show that we’re moving in the right direction.

GAZETTE: Other than the walk itself, what was the main work there like? Was it conducting experiments the whole time? Were there maintenance tasks?

MEIR: A blend of all those things. Our primary purpose is science but from a realistic point of view we’re not up there doing science all day long. The space station is over 20 years old, so things break, and we have to fix them. We have to maintain things to keep them functioning. So, one day we might be fixing the toilet all day — the toilet happens to break a lot while you’re up there. It was very rewarding for me as a scientist to be conducting the scientific experiments. They ranged from physiology and medicine to combustion science — even flames burn differently in space without convection. We do protein crystal growth experiments — you can grow larger and more pure proteins, which has had a lot of implications for the pharmaceutical world. There are even drugs in clinical trials right now based on those space station experiments. There’s one for Duchenne muscular dystrophy in clinical trials.

GAZETTE: Was there an experiment thought particularly interesting?

MEIR: We were working with what are called “mighty mice.” Myostatin is the inhibitor to muscle growth, part of our normal physiology, but in certain bone and muscle degenerative states, this pathway plays a really important role. We had mice that were myostatin knockouts and others that we were giving therapeutic doses that were disrupting that pathway. These mighty mice had much larger muscle mass, and they were able to maintain that muscle mass in space, despite the microgravity, and also maintain their bone density. That is interesting in its implications for long-duration space travel for humans. We exercise for 2½ hours a day, and we have to lift weights. We need that resistance, that loading to keep our bones and muscles healthy. But on long duration missions to Mars, for example, the machines that we’ve built in the space station are too big to have their equivalent in a small spacecraft. So we need to come up with either some small piece of equipment that still accomplishes all of that or some other therapeutic strategy. There’s also a possible benefit back on Earth. There are a lot of disease states — osteoporosis and other bone and muscle degenerative states — that could benefit from some kind of therapeutic. So it’s really exciting work.

GAZETTE: Are you definitely going to go back into space?

MEIR: I hope so, but we never know for sure. Assuming everything goes well during your mission, which it did for me, and you’re still medically qualified, then you get back in line for another mission. You’re not even medically certified again until six months after you land and for me, that’ll be in October. I would love to be part of those Artemis missions and go to the moon, but I’ll have to wait and see how that plays out. Right now, we’re in an incredibly exciting time because we’re developing new vehicles. We have SpaceX with their successful test flight so we’re launching from the U.S. again — and hopefully with Boeing too down the line. Then, with Artemis, we’re getting ready to send the first woman and the next man to the moon. We have the Orion spacecraft being built to make these missions beyond low Earth orbit, to go back to the moon, to go on to Mars. And the Space Launch System, the rocket that will enable that, is currently being built by NASA. So we’re at this precipice where lots of different things are happening.

Interview was lightly edited for clarity and length.

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