(radio beeps)
- [Woman] Auto sequence initiated.
- [Man] Auto sequence is initiated.
That second tower now retracting.
10 seconds from launch.
- [Anne] As the countdown comes down,
you start hearing the engines rumbling.
(radio chatters)
(rocket engine roars)
- [Man] And liftoff!
We have liftoff!
- [Anne] And you can feel the power behind your back.
And just knowing what you're sitting on top of is,
it's a pretty incredible and unique experience.
Today you're launching to space.
You're launching to space today.
(rocket engine roars)
(radio chatter)
- [Narrator] 16 times a day,
Anne McClain circles the earth.
She's an astronaut
aboard the International Space Station,
an orbiting laboratory
as long as a football field.
- [Anne] When I looked up at the stars.
When I looked at astronauts doing their jobs,
it was something just deep inside of me
that I felt like that's where I belonged.
There are no words I can accurately
put to describe the feeling
of being able to look out a bay window
and seeing all of the world
and all of everything that you've ever known
and every person that you've been close to
and every experience you've ever had
in one glimpse of the eye.
- [Narrator] From 250 miles above the surface,
Anne gets a difference perspective on our planet.
She witnesses a sunrise
or sunset every 45 minutes.
- [Anne] By far my favorite thing to see
that I've been surprised at
is watching the moon rise as in moon sets
and it just moves so fast.
It's like it jumps off of the horizon
and up and over us.
When you first get here,
when you go into a new room
you wanna go, "Okay, which way is up?
"Which way is down?
"Which way is left and right?"
Because we're so used to, on earth,
kind of just subconsciously mapping
all of our surroundings like that.
But up here what's really interesting is that
after a couple weeks,
you don't think that anymore.
It's like your brain remaps in 3-D.
- [Narrator] But astronauts aboard
the International Space Station have a job to do.
They're growing protein crystals,
researching Parkinson's Disease,
and performing experiments
to help farmers
more efficiently irrigate their crops.
- [Anne] We have over 200 experiments
every single day on board.
Sometimes, we ourselves become the experimentee.
Where you're studying
how the human body reacts
in microgravity.
We're doing experiments on ourselves both mental,
our mental reactions to things,
how we are functioning,
and how our blood is flowing,
how our fluids are shifting inside of our body.
So if we're doing extended stays on the lunar surface,
we need to understand how
that effects the human body.
- [Narrator] Much of Anne's research looks
onward to the stars.
Looking back offers unique insights too.
Orbiting high above her home
and everyone she's ever known,
Anne can see all humanity
and all our potential
from a different perspective.
- [Anne] When come up to the International Space Station
and we can look back at our earth,
it's this marrying up
of an amazing view of our planet
while sitting inside some
of the most advanced technology
that's ever been developed
by humans across the world.
And it gives you this perspective
of really what we're capable of
when we focus on our common interests
instead of our differences.
Every single day we work
with people across the globe
who are driven by a passion
for exploration
and a desire to go beyond
where humans have ever gone before.
You still remember that little kid in you
that would look up at space
and say, "What's out there?"
That fundamental need to explore,
to look past where we are right now.
And maybe you can look up
at the International Space Station
and you can see that it looks like a star
moving across the sky
and you think, "For 18 years
"we've been sustaining human life
"continuously in this dot in the sky."
(machine thrumming)
(dissonant tones)