That coaching turned out to be a wild journey. Inside days of our arrival in Houston, we ASCANs (NASA-speak for astronaut candidates) headed to Fairchild Air Pressure Base in Washington state for land survival coaching. We practiced navigation expertise and shelter constructing. Knots have been tied. Meals was scavenged. Worms have been eaten. Drained, grubby folks made onerous selections collectively. Guidelines have been damaged. Enjoyable was had. And, importantly, we acquired to know each other. Water survival expertise have been subsequent—we realized to disconnect from our parachutes, climb right into a raft, and take advantage of the provides we had in case we needed to eject from a jet or the house shuttle.
Coleman and the remainder of the STS-93 crew head to Launch Pad 39-B for his or her second try at liftoff on the house shuttle Columbia. With this mission, Eileen M. Collins (entrance row, proper) would grow to be the primary girl to function commander of a shuttle mission.
NASA
Again in Houston, we realized about every of the shuttle techniques, learning the operate of each change and circuit breaker. (For perspective, the condensed handbook for the house shuttle is 5 inches thick.) The rule of thumb was that if one thing was essential, then we in all probability had three, so we’d nonetheless be okay if two of them broke. We labored collectively in simulators (sims) to apply the conventional procedures and learn to react when the techniques malfunctioned. For launch sims, even these regular procedures have been an journey, as a result of the sim would shake, pitch, and roll simply as the actual shuttle might be anticipated to on launch day. We realized the fundamentals of robotics, spacewalking, and rendezvous (the right way to dock with one other spacecraft with out colliding), and we frolicked on the health club, typically after hours, so we’d be in form to work in heavy house fits.
Our coaching spanned every thing from courses in the right way to use—and repair—the bathroom in house to amassing meteorites in Antarctica, dwelling in an underwater habitat, and studying to fly the T-38, an incredible high-performance acrobatic jet used to coach Air Pressure pilots. (On our first coaching flight, we acquired to fly quicker than the pace of sound.) All of this helped us develop an operational mindset—one geared to creating selections and fixing issues in high-speed, high-pressure, real-risk conditions that may’t be simulated, like those we’d encounter in house.
Mission: It’s not about you, nevertheless it will depend on you
Every time a crew of astronauts goes to house, we name it a mission. It’s an honor to be chosen for a mission, and an acknowledgment that you just carry expertise thatwillmake it profitable. Being a part of a mission means you might be a part of one thing that’s greater than your self, however on the similar time, the position you play is important. It’s a wierd paradox: It’s not about you, nevertheless it will depend on you. On every of my missions, that sense of objective introduced us collectively, bridging our private variations and disagreements and permitting us to realize issues we’d by no means have thought attainable. A crew usually spends at the least a 12 months, if not a number of years, coaching collectively earlier than the precise launch, and that shared mission connects us all through.
In 1993, I acquired phrase that I’d been assigned to my first mission aboard the house shuttle. As a mission specialist on STS-73, I might put my background as a analysis scientist to make use of byperforming 30 experiments in microgravity. These experiments, which included rising potatoes inside a locker (similar to Matt Damon in The Martian), utilizing sound to control massive liquid droplets, and rising protein crystals, would advance our understanding of science, drugs, and engineering and assist pave the way in which for the Worldwide House Station laboratory.
Whereas coaching for STS-73, I acquired a name from an astronaut I significantly admired: Colonel Eileen Collins. One of many first feminine check pilots, she would grow to be the primary girl to pilot the house shuttle in 1995, when the STS-63 mission launched. Collins had invited a few of her heroes—the seven surviving members of the Mercury 13—to attend the launch, and he or she was calling to ask me to assist host them. The Mercury 13 have been a bunch of 13 ladies who within the early Sixties had acquired private letters from the top of life sciences at NASA asking them to be a part of a privately funded program to incorporate ladies as astronauts. That they had accepted the problem and undergone the identical grueling bodily exams required of NASA’s first astronauts. Though the ladies carried out in addition to or higher than the Mercury 7 astronauts on the choice exams, which a lot of them had made sacrifices even to pursue, this system was abruptly shut down simply days earlier than they have been scheduled to begin the following part of testing. It will be nearly twenty years earlier than NASA chosen its first feminine astronauts.
By no means had I felt extra aware of being a part of that lineage of courageous and boundary-breaking ladies than I did that day, standing amongst these pioneers, watching Eileen make historical past. I can’t know what the Mercury 13 have been considering as they watched Eileen’s launch, however I sensed that they knew how a lot it meant to Eileen to be carrying their legacy along with her within the pilot seat of that house shuttle.
Missions and malfunctions
Acouple of years after I had added my title to the still-too-short checklist of girls who had flown in house, Eileen referred to as once more. This time she advised me that I might be becoming a member of her on her subsequent mission, STS-93, scheduled to launch in July 1999. Our Mercury 13 heroes would attend that launch too, and Eileen could be making historical past as soon as once more, this time as NASA’s first feminine house shuttle commander. I might be the lead mission specialist for delivering the shuttle’s valuable payload, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, to orbit. I’d even be one of many EVA (extravehicular exercise) crew members, if any spacewalking repairs have been wanted.
