So it was on the space shuttle that day. During the rendezvous, I remained hyper-focused.
We performed multiple firings of our orbital maneuvering engines and used smaller jets to change our orbit and close in on the space station. For navigation, we started with a rough idea of the position of the space shuttle relative to the space station. Over time, we updated this geometry by improving our “state vector”—a calculation of position, speed, direction, and time—with sensors we had on board Endeavour. To dock with another spacecraft, you must have a really good idea of where you are and where the target spacecraft is. So we used a “star tracker” that optically tracked the space station to improve our state vector. (A star tracker determines a spacecraft’s position by tracking stars. It’s similar to how seafarers would use a sextant.)
Later in the approach, we tracked the space station with our Ku-band radar, which illuminated the target with electromagnetic radiation to determine its position and relative velocity. As we got closer still, we used a laser trajectory control system to give us an accurate picture of our position and closure on the space station. This system is similar to the laser devices police officers use to detect the speed of cars on a highway.
Using these systems, we were able to precisely place the orbiter about two thousand feet below the space station. At that point, it fell to me to take over manually and fly the shuttle for the final hour or so, sometimes looking out the window through an optical sight, which is similar to the sight of a gun. It is positioned in the shuttle’s window.
The final few feet, as always, were stressful. We had practiced this many times in the simulator, but that can’t replicate the thrill, tension, and difficulty of closing in on one million pounds of International Space Station with the planet Earth hovering below. As my crew completed the final items on the checklist, I inched closer, closing in at just one-tenth of a foot per second. At just two inches away, I commanded additional thrusters to fire to give us one final push, and then, with a heavy metallic clunk, we were docked.
We were about two hundred miles above the planet, somewhere over Chile, but I didn’t know it at the time. I was just thankful that the rendezvous and docking went well. Our lead flight director, Gary Horlacher, called it “really silky smooth.” I took a second to think of Gabby and then I went over the approach in my mind. The goal, as always, was to accomplish the docking as efficiently as possible, without mistakes or too much energy expended. At first, I didn’t regret a single pulse of the jets I had made. (Looking back, maybe there’s one pulse I might have skipped, but I’m still thinking about it.)
As the shuttle commander, I was the first of my crew members to go aboard the space station. It was my fourth visit. “It’s good to be back,” I said, greeting the six current residents on the station: three Russians, an Italian, and two Americans, including Ron Garan, one of my crew members from my previous flight on Discovery. My crew followed behind me and there were handshakes and hugs all around. During the six hours it took to rendezvous and dock, I was way too busy to check e-mail. It was a moot point anyway, because we were using the Ku-band antenna as our rendezvous radar. That antenna is also how we get data, including e-mail, up from and down to the ground. There was no way to access e-mail until after we docked and the ground crew had time to sync our mailboxes.
Once we settled in at the space station and completed all the work for the day, I finally opened up one of our shuttle laptops. I knew there would be e-mails stacked up—from Gloria, Pia, my brother, Gabby’s doctors, the astronaut/family liaison Piers Sellers—with reports of the surgery. Floating on the flight deck of Endeavour, behind my pilot’s seat, I waited for them to load, hoping for good news.
Before each mission, NASA would send out a memo to astronauts’ loved ones, going over e-mail rules. Families were asked not to burden us with issues that could wait until we returned. They didn’t want us distracted by reports that our kids were bickering or that we forgot to pay the power bill. If it wasn’t urgent, NASA asked, hold the news.
At the same time, NASA would ask astronauts for a clear picture of how we’d want tragic events in our lives handled while we were in space. For STS-134, this was addressed in a short conversation with our flight surgeon, Joe Dervay. Each crew member had to decide what he wanted to know about the death, sickness, or injury of a loved one. What if one of our parents were to die? What if it was one of our children?
Dan Tani, my former crew member who’d given the presentation to astronauts’ families before STS-134’s launch, experienced just such a tragedy while aboard the International Space Station in 2007. His mother was killed by an oncoming train as she drove across a railroad track in a Chicago suburb. A NASA flight surgeon and Dan’s wife informed him of his mom’s death in a videoconference call. He had no choice but to remain in space for two more months.
In my case, before STS-134, Joe had asked me flat-out, “What do you want to be told if Gabby has a seizure, a bad fall, a blood clot, or if she dies? Do you want to know immediately? Do you want to know at all?”
On my three previous missions, I kept these conversations short and answered them in just three words: “Ask my brother.” I figured he’d know what would be a major distraction for me, what I should be told immediately, and what should wait. This time it was different. On STS-134, I wanted all of the unvarnished details from Earth as soon as possible, no matter what. It had been a roller coaster of a ride over the previous months and I had been the primary decision-maker for my wife. I wasn’t able to completely give that up.
I had authorized Gloria to have medical power of attorney in my absence, overseeing decisions regarding Gabby’s care if I was unable to be contacted in space. I’m not a big hugger, but when I had said goodbye to Gloria at Cape Canaveral, I hugged her and kissed her on the cheek, thanking her for being the go-to person for Gabby while I was gone. “You don’t have to thank someone for loving someone else,” she said.
I knew I’d left Gabby in good hands, and as I imagined, Gloria’s e-mails were direct. She told me whatever she knew when she knew it, and she didn’t hold back on details when Gabby was in pain during recovery.
“Gabby seemed subdued while Dr. Kim shaved her head,” Gloria wrote in one early e-mail to me. She was at Gabby’s side for the shaving, along with Pia, Gabby’s operations director, Jen Cox, and family friend Suzy Gershman. “We all applauded when her head was finished being shaved,” Gloria wrote, “and though we all offered to get our heads shaved in solidarity, Gabby nixed the idea.”
I had thought I would be with Gabby for this cranioplasty surgery. But given the repeated delays in the launch of the shuttle, the procedure needed to go on without me. It was important that Gabby have the piece of skull replaced at the optimal time for her recovery. Doctors advised against waiting for me to return from space. She was ready.
The surgery, led by Dr. Dong Kim at Memorial Hermann Hospital, was not terribly complicated for brain surgeons, and they assured us it was low-risk. Gabby was actually pretty upbeat about it because once her missing pieces of skull were replaced, she’d no longer have to wear that dreaded helmet. (Gabby’s nurse, Kristy Poteet, wrote “5-17-11” on top of the helmet, so Gabby could be reminded of the last day she’d have to wear it.)
Pieces of Gabby’s skull had been removed on January 8 to reduce the impact of her brain swelling. Those pieces were frozen and preserved, but the passing bullet had shattered much of the removed skull and contaminated the bone with germs. The doctors could have attempted to piece together the bigger parts like a jigsaw puzzle, but it wouldn’t have been as smooth, strong, or clean as the ceramic implant they ended up using. The implant’s structure and dimensions were computer-generated to exactly match the missing section of Gabby’s skull, which was about the size of a person’s hand with his fingers spread apart. (After her implant was in place, Gabby’s Tucson neurosurgeon, Michael Lemole, successfully screwed together some of the larger pieces of Gabby’s taupe-colored real skull, which
showed the bullet’s entry and exit holes. It now sits in a Tupperware container in our freezer.)
Gabby suffered from excessive buildup of cerebral spinal fluid after the shooting, and the doctors decided that it would require a permanent drain. So during the three-and-a-half-hour surgery to replace her skull with the implant, they added a tiny tube about the diameter and thickness of the cords used to charge cell phones. The tube snaked its way from Gabby’s brain, down her neck, and through her chest to her abdomen. This cerebral shunt would permit drainage of the excess fluid. The doctors inserted the tube so it was barely noticeable, running it down the left side of her neck just under her skin.
I talked to my brother and Gloria after the surgery, and also got reports from a press conference in which Dr. Kim said that everything had come together nicely—bone, plate, and skin. He explained that Gabby had developed mild hydrocephalus, which means “water in the head” in Latin. “It’s a condition that develops in many patients who have a brain injury,” he said. Every day, all of us produce about six ounces of clear cerebral spinal fluid that bathes our brain. That fluid is continually reabsorbed in our bodies. “When there is an injury,” Dr. Kim said, “that reabsorption can become partially clogged, just like having a partially clogged drain. When that happens, the fluid can build up, and that’s something that can be treated with a shunt. You can have it for the rest of your life and it doesn’t impede anything.”
The reattached skull and the shunt would allow Gabby to have a more vigorous rehabilitation. Without the fluid pressure, it was possible she’d concentrate better and think more clearly. Without the helmet, she’d feel more confident that she was getting closer to her previous life.
Dr. Kim said he viewed skull restoration as “the end of a journey,” with the next eventual step being outpatient therapy. He expected that Gabby, like other patients, would soon feel a renewed “sense of wholeness” and improved morale. The side of her head had been swollen after the shooting, and then it was sunken in. Now she’d look more like herself. “I started calling her ‘Gorgeous Gabby’ today,” Dr. Kim said at the press conference.
It was reassuring to me, being so far away, to hear Dr. Kim’s new nickname for Gabby, and to get an e-mail from him. “Everything is going well,” he wrote. “Hope you are enjoying your ride. I will take good care of Gabby.”
I thought back to the days before I went into space, when I got into several discussions with Dr. Kim about the possibility of doing the surgery without shaving Gabby’s head. Occasionally, neurosurgeons will do this at the request of patients or their families. Gabby had just spent four months regrowing her hair, and I wanted her to have the opportunity to keep it if she wanted.
After Dr. Kim and I talked, I presented Gabby with the data. “Gabby,” I said, “if we leave your hair as is during this surgery, you’ll have about a three percent increased risk of infection.”
I didn’t need to go any further. “Shave it off!” she said.
That was the end of the discussion. It was nice to see that Gabby was taking charge of her own recovery.
The hours and days after surgery were not easy for Gabby, who left the operating room with her head wrapped in bandages. “She’s back in her room with a yellow turban on her head, asleep,” Gloria wrote in an e-mail. “They may give her blood. Her color is a bit sallow.”
Gloria continued to give me news without sugarcoating it. “Gabby is in a lot of pain and became nauseous when they did a CAT scan,” she wrote in one e-mail. In another, she explained three attempts to insert an IV line. “It was extremely painful for Gabby, even with some painkillers first.” In a third e-mail, Gloria wrote: “She has a headache and some swelling on the left side. Perfectly normal, say her doctors. I have the NASA channel on so Gabby can hear your voice while she sleeps.” (While I was in space, Gabby asked that NASA TV be left on in her room twenty-four hours a day.)
On Thursday, May 19, as e-mails updating me on Gabby’s condition continued arriving in my inbox, my crew undertook the most crucial part of our mission: the installation of the seven-ton Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. We began at 12:56 a.m. Houston time, when Drew and Roberto used the shuttle’s robotic arm to extract this giant cosmic ray detector from Endeavour’s cargo hold. Then it was handed off to the space station’s robotic arm, controlled by Box and Greg, who began the process of attaching it to the space station’s exterior metal truss. By 5 a.m., the job was done, and a couple hours after that, the machine began sending data about the high-energy particles in cosmic rays back to a team of scientists on Earth. The scientists planned to monitor the particles passing through the device—via data collected twenty-five thousand times a second—twenty-four hours a day for at least ten years.
“We’re seeing an enormous amount of data coming down,” Dr. Ting, the lead scientist, said. “We’re very pleased.”
I was incredibly relieved as the Spectrometer was latched into place. Six hundred physicists, engineers, and technicians built this machine at a cost of $2 billion, and it was up to us to get it attached to the space station. “Whew, that’s a relief!” I said to my crew when they were done. “You guys did a really great job!”
Before launching, I had visions of us dropping the thing and it floating off into space. Or we’d get it installed and it wouldn’t work, making it a very expensive hood ornament for the space station. All bad outcomes. At the end of flight day four, we had completed our primary mission objective. There would be dozens of others, including four dangerous spacewalks by three of my crew members to maintain and upgrade the space station. During one eight-hour spacewalk, they connected hoses to transfer ammonia to the station’s cooling system. During another, they inspected and lubricated a joint for the station solar arrays, which generate the station’s electricity.
Every day was full and challenging. But so far, so good.
Gabby kept improving after her surgery. The shunt was working well, and the fluid between her skull and brain had started to get back to normal. “Stop the presses!” Gloria e-mailed me, two days after the surgery. “Gabby just said, ‘I am optimistic!’”
Gloria was always reading books aloud to Gabby, and the latest was Learning to Breathe by photojournalist Alison Wright. The book traces the author’s spiritual and physical recovery after almost dying in a bus crash in Laos in 2000. Gabby and Gloria found it very inspirational.
Gloria told me that as she read, Gabby liked to close her eyes. “Are you still awake?” Gloria would ask. “Do you want me to keep reading?”
“Yes, yes,” Gabby whispered, still weak from the surgery.
A week after the cranioplasty, Gloria sent me an e-mail: “Tonight, Gabby was wide awake through the reading, and she nodded when the text told of the author’s determination to heal and never give up. She’s getting there, Mark.”
Those were tough days for Gloria. Spencer had to have surgery on his back, so Gloria found herself shuttling back and forth between wings of Memorial Hermann Hospital, visiting her daughter and then her husband. Sometimes she’d take Gabby in a wheelchair to see Spencer.
I tried to phone Gabby every day when she was awake, I wasn’t working, and we had a phone link to the ground. I got through on most days. Then one day, Gloria sent me an e-mail: “When I told Gabby you were trying to call her, her heart rate went up three points.” She said it reminded her of the popular Valentine line: “My heart beats for you.” She also e-mailed me a photo of Gabby, still wearing my wedding ring on her necklace.
When I could, I tried to send Gabby short updates on how the mission was going. One problem early on was a “wardrobe malfunction.” Before the launch, when I was so busy with Gabby’s care and my mission training, there were things that I just didn’t have time for: inconsequential stuff, like trying on the pants I’d wear in flight. On the second day of the flight, I put on my first pair of pants and realized that there had been a mistake. All of my pants were made for someone who was way taller than six feet. The pants weren’t even close t
o my size. Fortunately, my brother had left pants on the space station, which I found and used for the rest of the flight. It was only one pair, but it was better than freakishly long, giant pants.
As the sixteen-day mission continued, my crew and I were given some time in our schedule for special appearances, what the media sometimes refers to as a “cosmic call.” One highlight was an eighteen-minute videoconference with Pope Benedict XVI, the first-ever call to space by a pope. “Welcome aboard, your holiness,” I said.
I was touched that Pope Benedict mentioned Gabby, who was able to watch our encounter on NASA TV. Speaking to those of us on the space station, the pontiff said, “It must be obvious to you how we all live together on one Earth, and how absurd it is that we fight and kill each other. I know that Mark Kelly’s wife was a victim of a serious attack, and I hope her health continues to improve.”
We were grateful to receive a blessing for our safety from the Pope, and I got a kick out of the e-mail I received afterward from Gloria. She told me that Gabby was intrigued by the Renaissance painting of Jesus that was behind the Pope as he spoke.
Another conference call that we found very meaningful hit closer to home. One morning in space—a Sunday night in the United States—Mike Fincke and I fielded questions via a live video feed from four hundred students at Mesa Verde Elementary School in Tucson. Many of the students were classmates or friends of Christina-Taylor Green, the nine-year-old girl killed on January 8.
The kids, their teachers, those of us in space—we all knew the subtext. But I tried hard to be upbeat, like a friendly adult brought in for show-and-tell. I wore a red Arizona T-shirt, and when the Earth-to-space link was established, I said with enthusiasm: “Mesa Verde Elementary School, how do you hear?”
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