I'm NASA astronaut Jessica Meir.
I may be one of the first people to
return to the Moon.
The Artemis mission has the stated goal of sending the first woman and
the first person of colour to the surface of the Moon.
It will have been over 50 years since humans have set foot there.
We aren't just going to go there once and then come back or go there
a few times, like in the Apollo missions, and then come back.
We're going to keep this presence going with a Gateway programme
that will be an outpost in orbit around the Moon.
Think of it kind of like a little mini space station with subsequent
missions of landings on the Moon and then eventually using all of
that time and knowledge in those lunar missions as a springboard to
go even further and go to Mars.
My mum tells me I first started saying I wanted to be an astronaut
when I was five years old, so it actually was quite difficult to
believe when it came true in 2013 when the phone rang
and I was given the option to come here to NASA to be an astronaut.
It's almost felt surreal.
Copy Jessica's egressing 10 seconds to a 20-second handover.
Coming out of the hatch for your first spacewalk is a moment that I
don't think anyone ever forgets.
My first spacewalk happened to be only a few weeks after I arrived on
the space station, so at that point, I was still learning how to
move and navigate myself around on the space station.
That day, I was with my colleague and friend Christina Cook.
She was in the same class of astronauts as me, so we really are
like astronaut siblings.
She's like my space sister.
We were ready to go out of the hatch that day for the first
all-female spacewalk.
Of course, there had been other women that had done spacewalks
before us. We were the 14th and 15th women to do so, but this was
the first time that two women together were going to embark on a
spacewalk. So there I am, and I'm looking down at my feet dangling
below the hatch.
And then there is nothing else between this Earth spinning below
and my feet. And that was just the most profound moment.
I was just in awe and so excited, just us up there.
We're floating the whole time going around our planet every 90
minutes. It was still even though I was living it, even though I
understood the science behind why I was there, it was still difficult
to believe that it was actually happening.
So it was really only after the spacewalk ended that I started
thinking more about what it meant.
And it was interesting because in the beginning I thought, why does
it matter? Why is there so much attention being drawn to this first
all-female spacewalk?
It just happens to be the fact that right now there are two women
going out the door. We're just as qualified as everybody else up
here. And so it's just a matter of time that this would happen.
But then when I started thinking about it differently, so many
people tuned in to watch that spacewalk and so many people
started giving us this feedback about how inspiring it was for them
and how much it meant for them.
And that really took me a little bit by surprise, and I also started
thinking more about the generations that came before us.
So Christina and I, both of us, when we look at this now, we don't
think about it as our personal achievement.
We had that opportunity because of the generations of women and other
minorities that had worked so hard, that had truly pushed the envelope
and broken those glass ceilings to allow us to be where we were.
So now, when we look toward the future and we look at the Artemis
programme, this administration has set forth the goal that we will be
sending the first woman and the first person of colour to the
surface of the Moon. Of course, I would be absolutely thrilled to be
that person, to be one of these first people returning to the Moon.
And to me, it would represent so much.
I know somebody asked me once what I would say, what would be
those first words like?
We have those famous first words from the Apollo mission, and that
is something I would have to put a lot of thought into.
I think, to me, it would be a little bit like how I describe that first
all-female spacewalk.
It wouldn't be about my achievement.
It would be about the achievement of everybody on this NASA team that
got there. And it wouldn't even only be limited to that, really,
that next person that goes to the Moon is a representative of all of
humanity.
So a lot of people ask us, why haven't we been back to the
Moon if we did this 50 years ago?
Why is it so difficult?
Why haven't we been doing it?
There's nothing easy about going to the Moon.
What we accomplished in the 60's was extraordinary.
We are due to go back to the Moon for so many reasons.
The first is simply for exploration.
It is an inherent characteristic inside us as humans to explore, to
want to look around the corner, to go further, to ask those questions
and just quench that curiosity that we have.
Secondly, though, and equally as important, is for scientific
reasons. If we look back at the Apollo missions, we learn so much
about our solar system, about the formation of our planet and of the
Moon, and I know that that will be true as well for the Artemis
missions. For example, we'll be targeting the South Pole because at
that area, we know that there is much more frozen water.
So by going to that spot, we can study and understand that water,
that ice, that frozen water will help us understand more about the
Moon, about our solar system.
And it will also be a resource.
We can use oxygen in the soil, we can use that frozen water in the
surface. We can use that to make fuel, to make resources for further
exploration. So that would be that next step; take what we learn
and the proving ground around the Moon and now use
that to get to Mars, where we need to be autonomous, we need to think
about things like sustainable food systems.
We won't even be able to necessarily carry all the food and
water that we need up there.
So maybe we want to bring some things that we can grow.
Everything that we learn in these early Artemis missions to the Moon
will apply then on to Mars.
Fairly soon, we will be launching that
Artemis 1 test mission, and that mission will be about three weeks.
It will go all the way out to the Moon and beyond it, and we will
test out all of those systems of the Orion spacecraft and that
launch system.
The next mission, the Artemis 2 mission, would have
crew members on it. So that will be the first mission that has
astronauts going out to the Moon.
They won't yet land on the surface of the Moon, but they will go out
again further than the Moon.
They will be in orbit around the Moon before they come back here.
So that will be another vital step in making sure we have everything
ready and we're prepared for those later missions, which will then
land on the surface of the Moon.
We'll also have the Gateway, which will be in orbit around the Moon.
So think of it kind of like a little mini space station.
Instead of being around the Earth, though, it'll be there proximal to
the Moon, and then we can use that to go back and forth.
We can keep people on board the Gateway and then we can have
regular excursions down to the surface of the Moon.
We can use that as a testbed for other hardware and technology and
experiments, and then we can eventually use that as a stepping
stone to getting to Mars.
To me, the Moon represents this spirit of exploration that I think
has driven humans from the beginning of evolution of our
species and also me personally. The stars, the Milky Way, the Moon
were so bright in our view, and I think that's something that really
shaped part of my childhood, letting that natural scientific
curiosity, that spirit of exploration extend not only from
what was in front of me on the ground but also to what was lying
up there above.
And of course, the Moon is this incredibly prominent object and
something that I think we're all drawn to.
It makes me so optimistic now to know that it is a national
priority again. We have laid out this foundation to get back to the
Moon, so we will return.