by Sue Nelson
Perfect. Once inside a taxi headed towards the nearby European Space Agency (ESA) Astronaut Training Centre, Wally got out her research notes and interview questions for the day. ‘What’s the name of the astronaut we’re meeting again?’
‘Samantha Cristoforetti.’
‘Samantha Cristoforesti.’
‘Foretti.’
‘Foresstiti …’ There was a considerable pause. ‘Do I have to say her whole name?’
‘Yes … Nice try.’
Wally grinned. I admired the way she took each interview seriously, rehearsing and practising over and over, working on her delivery or pronunciations. As with everything in life, she wanted – and was determined – to do her best. I’d begun making interview notes myself once we were inside the taxi, but had got side-tracked into writing down her questions to me instead.
My parents had unwittingly ignited a future journalism career by buying me a notebook. They ordered me to ‘write everything down’ to reduce trips to lost-property offices. Despite having a good memory for faces and numbers, I was incredibly forgetful. So forgetful it cost me a position of responsibility. Aged eleven and newly installed at a local grammar school, I was shortlisted to become form captain. One of the other six girls was elected, but decades later an old school friend, now a breast cancer surgeon, confided that I had won the vote. The teacher had questioned the decision. ‘Don’t you think she’s a bit too absent-minded?’ The hands came down one by one.
‘Are you concentrating?’
Wally had noticed I was no longer listening to her. ‘I want to ask you about the truck. Oh look, a Shell gas station. I wonder how much their gas is.’
As I paid the taxi driver, I glanced up and noticed Wally was beside a car in the middle of the road. For a brief moment, I thought she’d jaywalked in front of it. But there had been no squealing of breaks and, as I got closer, I recognised the driver chatting to Wally through the car window. It was the European Space Agency astronaut, Samantha Cristoforetti.
Cristoforetti had been an Italian air force captain and a fighter pilot, part of the 101st Squadron, 32nd Bomber Wing, in Italy. The only woman selected for ESA’s class of 2009, she trained alongside fellow astronauts from a range of European countries: Alexander Gerst (Germany), Andreas Mogensen (Denmark), Tim Peake (UK), Thomas Pesquet (France) and Luca Parmitano (Italy). Like most astronauts, she was a dauntingly impressive superhuman. Cristoforetti has a degree in aeronautical sciences, a Masters in mechanical engineering (including a thesis on solid rock propellants), speaks at least five languages, is a qualified scuba diver, and – like Wally – is a pilot. But it’s not just space tourists who are on a waiting list. Astronauts too must patiently await their turn for the ultimate adventure. Cristoforetti had to keep her skills current for five years until her first mission into space in November 2014. When she returned to Earth in June 2015, after a stay on the International Space Station as a flight engineer, she set a record for the single-longest time by a woman in space – a few hours short of 200 days.
For the sci-fi fans among us, Cristoforetti reached legendary status before her mission even ended. While living on board the space station, she was photographed with her fingers apart in the familiar the V-shaped Vulcan salute shortly after the death of Leonard ‘Mr Spock’ Nimoy, and was pictured wearing a Star Trek Voyager uniform alongside a tweet saying ‘There’s coffee in that nebula’. This doubled as a quote from the USS Voyager’s captain, Kathryn Janeway (the first female captain in the Star Trek series universe), and a reference to the Space Station’s newly delivered espresso machine after years of instant coffee. If that wasn’t enough, she sported a towel around her shoulders as a tribute to Douglas Adams, writer of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, on Towel Day.
I had a good professional relationship with Cristoforetti. Within six months of arriving back on Earth, she had agreed to present her first ever BBC radio programme via our production company. Called A Home in Space, it was about living and working on the Space Station. She had also presented Songs from Space for us, which we produced for Project Everyone. This venture by Richard Curtis, the film director and one of the co-founders of Comic Relief and Red Nose Day, was to publicise the United Nations’ Global Goals for sustainability. We used a combination of astronaut recollections and space-related music to get the message across since Cristoforetti, like many astronauts before her, had experienced a heightened awareness of the fragility of our planet and its thin blue protective atmosphere when viewing it from orbit. Between the music there were interviews with astronauts supporting sustainability goals such as gender equality, climate action and clean energy. The astronauts included Canadian Chris Hadfield, NASA’s Cady Coleman – a chemistry graduate from MIT and veteran of three missions who took three flutes and a penny whistle into space (two instruments were from the Irish group The Chieftains) – plus Wally’s favourite astronaut, Eileen Collins.
Cristoforetti was our first ESA interview for The First Woman on the Moon and, due to her record-breaking feats in space, had featured in Women with the Right Stuff too, although I had done the interview rather than Wally. Cristoforetti autographed a photo for Wally, however, which I’d posted to the States. This was their first face-to-face meeting, and Wally had been looking forward to today. So, it appeared, had Cristoforetti. She had not only recognised Wally driving past her on the road, but greeted her like an old friend.
As Cristoforetti parked her car, we walked past the bronze bust of Yuri Gagarin into the ESA Astronaut Training Centre (EAC). This is where European astronauts like Cristoforetti completed their eighteen-month basic training. Inside a giant hangar-sized hall were full-scale mock-ups of the European-built components of the International Space Station, such as the Columbus science laboratory containing models of its experiment racks, and also the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket launched a fleet of five twenty-tonne double-decker sized ATVs into orbit between 2008 and 2015 to ferry cargo to and from the International Space Station.
‘We train on the ground in mock-ups,’ said Cristoforetti. ‘We also train in other mock-ups in Houston and Russian. When you get up there to the space station it’s almost like you’ve been there already.’
There were also medical facilities along one of the walls, since astronauts had to be monitored physically but also learn how to treat each other in an emergency. Wally enjoyed seeing the nearby fitness centre and the Neutral Buoyancy Facility. This was a giant swimming pool containing a full-size mock-up section of the Space Station for Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA), or spacewalk training. When underwater in a full astronaut suit, the right combination of weights and flotation devices can give the body neutral buoyancy. You neither sink nor swim. It may not be exactly the same as a spacewalk, but it was the nearest an astronaut could get on Earth to practising moving around in microgravity while moving large objects for prolonged periods of time. Naturally, although it wasn’t on her question list, Wally wanted to know how Cristoforetti’s experience in space compared. ‘Did it feel any different to just walking on air?’
‘It does because you’re not really walking, you’re floating,’ she said. ‘You’re weightless and you can inhabit the space in three dimensions. You’re not just walking on the floor. On Earth we live in two dimensions, unless of course you fly, like you and I do. But there you don’t need to jump in an airplane – you can float with your body and fly and have dinner on the ceiling. It’s very special.’
‘What did you fly in the Italian airforce?’
‘I flew a light ground attack fighter called an AM-X.’
‘Wow. You’re so lucky. You’re wonderful. You’re very smart.’
‘You’re wonderful, Wally.’
It was a heart-warming start, even if I was sat silently between them with a recorder, wearing headphones. Cristoforetti was well aware of the Mercury 13’s history and the barriers that Wally and the other female aviators had broken. She had been back from space for two years and wa
s now working on an initiative called Spaceship EAC. ‘The idea is we are very well set up for training astronauts for the space station, but what’s coming after that is hopefully going back to the Moon. So we’re working on being ready for that. It’s going to be an international endeavour but we want to create a niche of expertise, and that involves working with young people, students, encouraging innovative technologies.’
The European Space Agency’s director general, Jan Woerner, was a prominent advocate of a ‘Moon village’ – a base on the Moon for a community from Earth. ESA was also building a lunar dome in Cologne. The inside of the dome would replicate being on the lunar surface to test rovers and help train astronauts. It would be the Moon version of the Mars Yard, but on an even larger scale. And with people as well as rovers.
Cristoforetti saw the Moon as a ‘proving ground’ for further afield, and also admitted she would jump at the chance to be the first woman on the Moon. ‘If I had to choose between going back to the Space Station and going to the Moon, I would definitely pick the Moon. You want to go where you haven’t been yet.’
‘Well, I think you’ll make it,’ Wally declared.
I felt a sympathetic pang at the realisation that here was Cristoforetti, a woman with all the right experience and credentials in place to be in with a realistic chance of going to the Moon, alongside a woman who might have become the first woman to walk on the Moon if history had panned out a little differently. It was the accumulation of fifty years of women’s rights in history that had made all the difference.
Cristoforetti expected the training for the Moon would be similar to what astronauts currently undergo. Operations would be a similar challenge. ‘You’re still interacting with complex machines and interacting with a crew,’ she said. ‘When I went to the ISS it was a very well-oiled machine. There was nothing new to invent. Now we’re looking at Moon missions. I think astronauts are going to have a bigger responsibility and will need to be flexible and interactive and give feedback to do things better.’
‘Are the kids going to have been smarter than anticipated now?’
‘There are a lot of smart kids around, so I’m not worried about that. It’s just a matter of getting them ready.’
‘Good, because I don’t see that in America.’
Wally was doing well and, as prompted on her crib sheet, asked about China. Cristoforetti was already adding Chinese to her impressive list of languages. ESA and China had shown an interest in working together, and shared plans for both astronauts and a base on the Moon. By the spring of 2016, the China National Space Administration had launched three successful lunar missions – Chang’e 1, Chang’e 2 and Chang’e 3 – all robotic. Chang’es 1 and 2 were lunar orbiters. Chang’e 3 had included a lunar lander and a rover, called Yutu, which rolled onto the surface on 14 December 2013, Beijing time. The chances were high that, in this renewed race back to the Moon, China could put the first woman on the lunar surface.
English and Russian were the two main languages currently used on the Space Station, but with the rise of China and India’s ambitious space programmes, the languages heard on the Moon or in space in the future would have even more of an international flavour. When the interview was over, Wally discovered that Cristoforetti had first visited Russia for her Master’s thesis in 2001, a year after her own week-long trip paid for by a TV channel. ‘I took all the tests with the cosmonauts,’ she said. ‘They told me I did just as well or better than the guys.’
This sounded suspiciously like the Lovelace clinic story and, while I believe Wally was physically capable of anything in her early twenties, I wasn’t so sure the same level of fitness applied when she was sixty. Though very little about Wally would surprise me.
Wally continued. ‘Did you fare better than the guys?’
Cristoforetti laughed modestly. ‘I don’t think they had a ranking. But I performed.’
‘You made it. You made it.’
‘According to expectations, I guess.’
‘Do you know Peggy Whitson? She’s a friend of mine so I’m excited for her.’ Peggy Whitson was an experienced NASA astronaut and its Chief of Astronaut Corps, 2009–12. As we talked, Whitson was circling the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour on the Space Station during her third and final mission. ‘I watch her on TV,’ said Wally.
‘I know Peggy,’ said Cristoforetti. ‘As someone said at JSC [NASA’s Johnson Space Center], “Superman flies in Peggy Whitson’s pyjamas”. She’s Superwoman.’
Whitson was indeed a Superwoman. After her most recent launch, on 17 November 2016, she immediately became the oldest woman in space, at the age of fifty-six. In a few months she would return, on 2 September 2017, and her 289 days, five hours and one minute in space, from three missions, meant she would not just break Cristoforetti’s record, but would hold the record for the most days in space for any American – male or female. A biochemist who became an astronaut, Whitson had received numerous awards. One of them, in 1995, was the American Astronautical Society Randolph Lovelace II Award. This particular award, now retired, ran for fifty years – between 1963 and 2013 – and recognised outstanding contributions to space science and technology. I scanned the list. Not surprisingly, Whitson was one of the few women on it. Other winners include Dr Nancy Grace Roman in 1979 and 2011, NASA HQ’s first chief of astronomy in the Office of Space Science. Due to her role overseeing the planning and development of NASA’s programmes, she is often referred to as ‘the mother of Hubble’ for her work on the Hubble Space Telescope. The 1976 award recipient was a familiar name – the man who took part in my Mercury 13 radio documentary and called Valentina Tereshkova a basket case: flight director Chris Kraft.
The first award recipient, however, was Dr Jeanette Ridlon Piccard: a scientist, a consultant to the director of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center) 1964–70, the first female priest in the Episcopal Church, and a balloonist. In 1934, Piccard became the first woman to enter the stratosphere.
The flight began from Dearborn, Michigan. She was the hydrogen balloon’s pilot and her husband, the Swiss scientist Jean Piccard, whose name later inspired Star Trek’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard, was navigator. They were joined on-board by their pet turtle. The gondola resembled a huge ball or diving bell with a window, and it was surrounded by Geiger counters to measure cosmic rays. They reached 57,579 feet. Perhaps it was the loss of national pride, but when Tereshkova made her record-breaking spaceflight in 1963 some US newspapers alluded to Jeanette Piccard having got into space first. But a quick calculation shows that 57,579 feet is 10.9 miles (17.5 kilometres), which is nowhere near the NASA, USAF or Karman definitions of space.
When Wally and I were ready to go to our next interview, Cristoforetti thanked Wally for paving the way for women astronauts. I could see from Wally’s face that this recognition mattered.
The rest of our interviewees that day were equally charmed. Scientist Aidan Cowley gave us a tour around his labs, where improbably young engineers and scientists experimented with technologies for a future that expanded beyond our planet.
‘What do you think of the Astronaut Training Centre, Wally?’ Cowley said. ‘It’s cool, isn’t it?’
‘It’s better than cool,’ Wally shouted. ‘It’s fantastic! Do you want to go to the Moon or Mars?’
‘I saw a talk by Elon Musk saying Mars is the new America,’ Cowley replied. ‘You don’t want to be on the first boat. You want to be on the third, fourth or fifth boat.’ Wise man.
Cowley’s labs are specifically interested in fuel-cell prototypes for energy production and storage, as well as 3d printing for future missions to the Moon. Unlike the Earth, the Moon has a fourteen-day period of daylight followed by fourteen days of lunar night. This makes visiting the Moon for more than two weeks a challenging technical problem to solve. For two weeks at a time, any solar-powered batteries, for instance, would have no sunlight to power them. This was why fuel-cell systems were of interest. They could combine hydrogen and ox
ygen to produce water, and in doing so produce electricity. At the end of the cycle, water could potentially be split into hydrogen and oxygen again during the day cycle, and then be stored as gas. Hydrogen and oxygen could be isolated from water ice, for instance, on the Moon. This process could be repeated multiple times and replenish an energy supply, allowing astronauts to survive for long durations.
‘It’s a brilliant piece of equipment. How many people had to come up with these ideas and make it?’
That question wasn’t on the list. My first thought was that it had no relevance. I was wrong. ‘Fuel cells have a fantastic history with spaceflight, because the original Mercury, Gemini, Apollo missions, and even the Space Shuttles, were driven by fuel-cell technology,’ said Cowley. ‘Unfortunately people have turned away from fuel cells in the last few decades and focused on battery technology, but batteries have significant problems for being on the moon.’
Batteries could be big and heavy. They didn’t like extreme temperature variations either. ‘You’ve got from 100 Celsius at the equator to -108 degrees on the dark side of the Moon. A fuel-cell system could potentially be a lot more stable and last a lot longer. This is the kind of technology we think would allow humans to be on the Moon.’
Shorter stays would not be a problem if the mission was timed for astronauts to land during lunar daylight, as batteries and photovoltaic (solar) panels can provide the energy required for powering any equipment or vehicles. The longest time spent by astronauts on the lunar surface, for instance, was just over three days, between 11 and 14 December 1972, on the Apollo 17 mission. It was the last time a human being set foot on the Moon, and the first mission to contain a scientist. The Lunar Module Pilot, Harrison ‘Jack’ Schmitt, was a geologist.