STS-123 ENDEAVOUR
My first flight to space was aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2008. In official NASA terminology, this was mission STS-123. We launched in the early morning hours of March 11, 2008 – a night launch made even more spectacular by the presence of an overcast cloud layer that was lit up by Endeavour’s engines, turning night into day. It was the first flight into space for me, my classmates Mike Foreman and Greg Johnson and my old friend Bob Behnken. Bob and I were graduate school classmates at Caltech and many years later we would work together on the Commercial Crew Program – he for NASA and me for SpaceX.
Rick Linnehan and I would conduct the first spacewalk of this mission before my STS-123 crewmates would climb back aboard Endeavour for the voyage home, leaving me onboard the International Space Station (ISS) for my long-duration flight. We delivered the first piece of the Japanese Laboratory Module, ‘Kibo’, to the ISS and delivered and assembled the Canadian DEXTRE Robot, but the primary mission objective was the ISS crew rotation. When the mission priorities were presented in a large NASA mission planning meeting, I jumped up and said, “I’m #1! I’m #1!”
EXPEDITION 16/17 ISS
After STS-123 departed I became part of ISS Expedition 16, commanded by Peggy Whitson, along with Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko. I think Peggy was grateful to have me as comic relief for the end of her 6 months in space, although I’m not sure she appreciated it when Yuri and I staged a mutiny on April 1st. Yuri was a pleasure to fly with too and I’ll never forget the rare off-duty time together hanging out in the Russian Segment of the ISS sipping tea and talking about life.
About a month later, my Expedition 17 crewmates, Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko showed up in a Soyuz along with the first South Korean Astronaut, Yi So-yeon. Sergei was our commander and he was the first 2nd generation spaceflier – his father was a cosmonaut.
Expedition 17 was a great success, except that our toilet broke and when you have three dudes on a space station with a broken toilet…it’s not good.
Fortunately, the Space Shuttle Discovery showed up soon thereafter during the STS-124 mission and the first thing that Commander Mark Kelly said when he floated across the open hatch was, “Hey, you guys need a plumber?” We were happy to see him, but we were happier to see the spare parts he brought with him to fix the ISS toilet. Oh yeah, they also brought up the rest of the Japanese Laboratory pressurized module, which was also important.
I would return to Earth with Mark and the rest of the crew of STS-124, completing my 95 days in space. Which was a bummer – because if you stay for 100 days, you get a patch.
STS-132 ATLANTIS
Sometimes the universe tends to unfold as it should. I’ve found that it is more important who you do things with than what you do, and the crew of STS-132 was a very special group of guys. Tomfoolery, shenanigans and running on the pool deck were guaranteed to occur. The day after we were assigned to the mission, I ran into the Chief of the Astronaut Office and asked him, “What were you thinking?” He had no good answer.
Our Commander, Ken “Hock” Ham, was the closest thing I’ve found to a real-life Captain Kirk. The Pilot, Tony “Guido” Antonelli was an MIT graduate who somehow pulled off a good ‘ole boy NASCAR-loving southern boy persona. Steve Bowen was the closest thing we had to adult supervision, but in this capacity he was a complete failure, fortunately. Mike “Bueno” Good was the epitome of quiet competence, when he wasn’t busting my balls. And Piers Sellers with his hilarious dry British humor was one of the most patient and gracious people I’ve ever met.
At a party for the launch team at the Cape, an old-timer called us “One of the Last Great Crews” and that might be the highest compliment we ever received.
But when we stood on the launch pad gazing up at Atlantis on May 14, 2010, Tony turned to me and said, “You know all that fun we’ve been having? Well, it’s gonna look real bad if we mess* this up.”
Fortunately, as fun as my crewmates were they were also very good at their jobs and despite having to overcome some unexpected challenges the mission was a huge success.
We added a new module to the Space Station, changed out the solar panel batteries and installed a huge antenna. That’s me in the spacesuit holding the antenna. If my crewmates were here right now, they would say actually that antenna isn’t so huge, it just looks big next to that tiny astronaut.
*actually he didn’t say ‘mess’
NEEMO V AQUARIUS
20,000 Millimeters Under the Sea
In addition to being an astronaut, I’m also an aquanaut.
There is an underwater laboratory located a few miles off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. This habitat is run by NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, and is called Aquarius. It is like a small submarine that stays anchored to the sea floor at a depth of 60 feet, or about 20,000 millimeters under the sea.
NASA uses Aquarius to train astronauts for life aboard the International Space Station (ISS) since there are a lot of similarities. Psychologically we were nearly as cooped-up on Aquarius as we would be in a module of the space station. The time it would take in an emergency to get out of the Aquarius with a full decompression and back to dry land is about a full day, about the same as it would take to evacuate the space station in the Soyuz capsule. We went out on SCUBA dives as if we were doing spacewalks. We ate the same food on Aquarius that we would have in space and used the same laptops and software to schedule our activities. We also performed many of the same scientific experiments we would later do on the ISS.
In June 2003 I was assigned to NEEMO 5, the fifth crew to participate in the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations. Our commander was Peggy Whitson who would also be my commander on the ISS. My other crewmates were my astronaut classmate Clay Anderson and Dr. Emma Hwang from NASA’s life sciences group. We also had two NOAA aquanauts who accompanied us to operate the Aquarius, they were the very capable duo of Ryan Snow and James Talacek.
While the view of the fish out the window was amazing, it wasn’t as good as the view of the Earth out of the ISS. But my encounter with a huge Goliath Grouper during an evening bathroom run was definitely scarier than any creature I saw in space!