That training turned out to be a wild ride. Within days of our arrival in Houston, we ASCANs (NASA-speak for astronaut candidates) headed to Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington state for land survival training. We practiced navigation skills and shelter building. Knots were tied. Food was scavenged. Worms were eaten. Tired, grubby people made hard decisions together. Rules were broken. Fun was had. And, importantly, we got to know one another. Water survival skills were next—we learned to disconnect from our parachutes, climb into a raft, and make the most of the supplies we had in case we had to eject from a jet or the space shuttle.
NASA
Back in Houston, we learned about each of the shuttle systems, studying the function of every switch and circuit breaker. (For perspective, the condensed manual for the space shuttle is five inches thick.) The rule of thumb was that if something was important, then we probably had three, so we’d still be okay if two of them broke. We worked together in simulators (sims) to practice the normal procedures and learn how to react when the systems malfunctioned. For launch sims, even those normal procedures were an adventure, because the sim would shake, pitch, and roll just as the real shuttle could be expected to on launch day. We learned the basics of robotics, spacewalking, and rendezvous (how to dock with another spacecraft without colliding), and we spent time at the gym, often after hours, so we’d be in shape to work in heavy space suits.
Our training spanned everything from clblockes in how to use—and fix—the toilet in space to collecting meteorites in Antarctica, living in an underwater habitat, and learning to fly the T-38, an amazing high-performance acrobatic jet used to train Air Force pilots. (On our first training flight, we got to fly faster than the speed of sound.) All of this helped us develop an operational mindset—one geared to making decisions and solving problems in high-speed, high-pressure, real-risk situations that can’t be simulated, like the ones we might encounter in space.
Mission: It’s not about you, but it depends on you
Each time a crew of astronauts goes to space, we call it a mission. It’s an honor to be selected for a mission, and an acknowledgment that you bring skills thatwillmake it successful. Being part of a mission means you are part of something that’s bigger than yourself, but at the same time, the role you play is essential. It’s a strange paradox: It’s not about you, but it depends on you. On each of my missions, that sense of purpose brought us together, bridging our personal differences and disagreements and allowing us to achieve things we might never have thought possible. A crew typically spends at least a year, if not a few years, training together before the actual launch, and that shared mission connects us throughout.
In 1993, I got word that I’d been blockigned to my first mission aboard the space shuttle. As a mission specialist on STS-73, I would put my background as a research scientist to use byperforming 30 experiments in microgravity. These experiments, which included growing potatoes inside a locker (just like Matt Damon in The Martian), using sound to manipulate large liquid droplets, and growing protein crystals, would advance our understanding of science, medicine, and engineering and help pave the way for the International Space Station laboratory.
While training for STS-73, I got a call from an astronaut I greatly admired: Colonel Eileen Collins. One of the first female test pilots, she would become the first woman to pilot the space shuttle in 1995, when the STS-63 mission launched. Collins had invited some of her heroes—the seven surviving members of the Mercury 13—to attend the launch, and she was calling to ask me to help host them. The Mercury 13 were a group of 13 women who in the early 1960s had received personal letters from the head of life sciences at NASA asking them to be part of a privately funded program to include women as astronauts. They had accepted the challenge and undergone the same grueling physical tests required of NASA’s first astronauts. Although the women performed as well as or better than the Mercury 7 astronauts on the selection tests, which many of them had made sacrifices even to pursue, the program was abruptly shut down just days before they were scheduled to start the next phase of testing. It would be almost two decades before NASA selected its first female astronauts.
Never had I felt more acutely aware of being part of that lineage of brave and boundary-breaking women than I did that day, standing among those pioneers, watching Eileen make history. I can’t know what the Mercury 13 were thinking as they watched Eileen’s launch, but I sensed that they knew how much it meant to Eileen to be carrying their legacy with her in the pilot seat of that space shuttle.
Missions and malfunctions
Acouple of years after I had added my name to the still-too-short list of women who had flown in space, Eileen called again. This time she told me that I would be joining her on her next mission, STS-93, scheduled to launch in July 1999. Our Mercury 13 heroes would attend that launch too, and Eileen would be making history once again, this time as NASA’s first female space shuttle commander. I would be the lead mission specialist for delivering the shuttle’s precious payload, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, to orbit. I’d also be one of the EVA (extravehicular activity) crew members, if any spacewalking repairs were needed.
