House exploration isn’t nearly experiencing zero gravity or flying so excessive that you would be able to view your entire Earth by way of a portal window.
It’s about problem-solving and science, former astronaut Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger stated Tuesday. She was just lately the featured speaker at a fundraising occasion in Fort Collins for Science, Know-how, Engineering and Arithmetic grants given by the 4 native chapters of Rotary Worldwide to native faculties.
Astronauts have carried out greater than 3,000 experiments on the Worldwide House Station within the 25 years it has been in orbit above Earth, involving all kinds of material, in accordance with the Nationwide Aeronautics and House Administration. That work has led to enhancements in vaccines, most cancers therapies, mind surgical procedure, agriculture, pc and digital know-how, battery life and performance, and plenty of different areas, Metcalf-Lindenburger stated.
She spent 15 days on board the Worldwide House Station in 2010.
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Metcalf-Lindenburger is a retired astronaut now, spending her time educating individuals concerning the significance of STEM schooling and house exploration as a featured speaker at occasions all through the nation, just like the one Tuesday, and serving as an alternative instructor in Washington state, the place she now lives together with her husband and their daughter, who’s in highschool.
Her childhood dream of changing into an astronaut started in 1983, she stated, when she first realized it was potential after Sally Trip grew to become the primary feminine from the US to go up in house. She was in elementary college in Loveland on the time and the kid of oldsters who had each studied STEM topics in school. Her mother, Joyce Metcalf, was a math main, and her father, Keith Metcalf an engineering main, she stated, with a store within the storage the place Dottie and her youthful sister typically helped him design and construct issues.
When her household later moved to Fort Collins, her curiosity in science was piqued by a challenge at Boltz Junior Excessive, the place college students turned meals waste into ethanol to energy a lawnmower. In 1990, Dottie was capable of attend a NASA house camp at its flight heart in Huntsville, Alabama.
“It was superior!” she stated. “We launched rockets, we pretended like we had been astronauts, you pretended such as you had been a part of Mission Management. And, we discovered concerning the Hubble house telescope, as a result of in April of 1990, the car ‘Discovery’ was taking Hubble into house for the primary time.”
When Dottie returned dwelling, she constructed a mannequin of the house shuttle Discovery to hold in her bed room as “that bodily reminder that that is what I wish to do and now I do know what I have to do, which is I have to proceed pushing myself in math and science in highschool after which on to school.”
She accepted a place within the Peace Corps to show English in Kazakhstan for 2 years after commencement from Whitman Faculty in Walla Walla, Washington, figuring she’s come again to the U.S. afterward “for graduate college, do a grasp’s in geology, a Ph.D. after which go work on the (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory” in southern California.
Unrest in Kazakhstan in 1997 brought on the Peace Corps to tug out of that nation earlier than she bought there, she stated, and she or he wound up again in Fort Collins briefly, volunteering as a cross-country coach at Fort Collins Excessive College.
That led her to return to high school to earn a educating license, which she did, at Central Washington College, and a job educating highschool science in Vancouver, Washington. She taught Earth science for 3 years, she stated, however “I nonetheless had house on my thoughts.”
So, she created a brand new class in astronomy.
And a query from a scholar in that class, coupled together with her personal pure curiosity, led her again to NASA. The scholar, she stated, requested how astronauts go to the lavatory in house. In trying up the reply on-line, she wound up on the NASA web site and discovered that they had been hiring academics to affix their 2004 class of astronauts.
Dottie utilized, was invited for an interview — snapping an image of space-shuttle bathroom whereas there to deliver again for her college students to see — and finally chosen.
“So, curiosity not solely fueled my dream, nevertheless it additionally helped me discover my dream job,” she stated, proudly displaying the image of her testing the bathroom in a slideshow that was a part of her presentation.
Coaching was rigorous, she stated. Outside wilderness coaching in Maine. Water survival coaching in Pensacola, Florida, the place astronaut candidates needed to apply underwater escapes throughout simulated helicopter crashes. And flight coaching. First on small two-engine propeller planes after which T-38 Talon supersonic coaching jets, with cockpits just like these on the house shuttle “Discovery” that ultimately took her to house six years later, from April 5-20, 2010.
Dottie was one in every of 5 Mission Specialists on a seven-person crew that delivered science racks to the Worldwide House Station, in accordance with a NASA mission abstract, and joined a global crew of six who had been already on the house station. With three ladies on her flight and one already on the house station, their mission marked the primary time 4 feminine astronauts had been in house collectively on the identical time.
Her main job on the house station, she stated, was to maneuver tools and work intently with the 2 astronauts assigned to exit in house, tethered to the station, to carry out upkeep, upgrades and repairs. She and the opposite backup “spacewalker,” pilot James Dutton, helped the 2 males, Clayton Anderson and Rick Mastracchio, get into their spacesuits and into the airlock every day, then operated the airlock hatch as they exited and returned every day. She by no means truly bought to stroll in house herself, she stated.
Dottie and Dutton would then discuss to the astronauts and monitor them for 6-8 hours at a time whereas they had been out in house performing their work. They labored by way of options when issues didn’t go as deliberate, typically bringing in a staff again on Earth to assist troubleshoot.
These a number of layers of proficiency and teamwork, she stated, “assist us do nice stuff in house. So, it’s not only one particular person in any respect; it’s actually an enormous staff.”
And that staff, she hopes, may some day embody one of many 33 center college college students who had been within the viewers Tuesday. Somebody rising up in Fort Collins, fascinated with science and house the best way she was. Individuals who not solely wish to discover our universe, but additionally to work with these from different nations to resolve our most crucial issues.
Throughout question-and-answer session after her presentation, Dottie was requested about continued cooperation with Russia on house initiatives, in mild of the rising tensions on Earth between the 2 nations. Her response suggests those that have seen the Earth from afar, by way of a port window in outer house, don’t essentially view the world the identical as the remainder of us.
“I believe house makes us higher individuals,” Dottie stated. “We as people that care about our cosmonaut pals and our different pals which might be from Europe and Japan and all these completely different nations. We wish to work collectively. We want one another once we’re in house to remain alive.
“So, I simply suppose we’re our higher selves in house, and I want we might do this right here on Earth.”
Reporter Kelly Lyell covers schooling, breaking information, some sports activities and different matters of curiosity for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com,x.com/KellyLyell and fb.com/KellyLyell.information.
