To Bath and Beyond
NASA astronaut Colonel Anne McClain shares her
journey from campus to the cosmos.
Everything has been building to this moment. It’s December 2018 and NASA astronaut Colonel Anne McClain is strapped inside the cramped Soyuz spacecraft, waiting for the countdown to commence.
The noises, vibrations, views – they’re all the same as the simulator where she’s spent countless hours training for her first expedition – but this time, Anne has to remind herself there will be no going home after liftoff. In six hours, she’ll be aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for six and a half months.
Reflecting on those moments of anticipation before the ultimate ascent, Anne says: “I was sitting there thinking, ‘I have no idea what my evening looks like,’ and I had the profound realisation that the dream I’d been pushing for and working for was maybe about to come true. I had this unexpected emotion of looking back and feeling really proud of my younger self.”
Every decision she’d made had led to that moment – one where the sky wasn’t the limit, but the beginning of an extraordinary adventure.
One of those choices that propelled her towards the stars was to enrol at Bath. Anne moved from the US Military Academy at West Point to study for a master’s in Aerospace Engineering thanks to a Marshall Scholarship in 2002.
20 years later, Anne is a Colonel in the US Army, an engineer, testpilot and a NASA astronaut – and she’s back in Bath to accept an honorary degree of Doctor of Engineering. “It was an incredible honour,” she tells us when we meet after her graduation ceremony in Bath Abbey. “The University of Bath was such an influence so early in my trajectory that it’s really special to come back.”
Reflecting on her time here, Anne says that the people she met had as much of an impact on her as the time she spent researching and working on the subsonic wind tunnel on campus. “It was the first time I had lived overseas and so it was very formative for me to look back at my home and see it from a different perspective.
“The friendships and contacts that I made going to the University really helped inform my whole career going forward,” she continues. “The first time I realised that no matter what country we’re from, we all have a lot more alike than we do different, was right here at the University of Bath.”
When Anne wasn’t studying, she was on the rugby pitch and even went on to play Premiership Women’s Rugby and for the United States Women’s National Rugby Union team. She later discovered that the sport had prepared her for expeditions in unexpected ways. “It was interesting to me how many parallels there were between playing rugby and going to space, particularly doing spacewalks,” she says.
“Spacewalks are very physically and mentally challenging – I hit a level of exhaustion I’d only really felt in the 60th minute of a rugby match"
While on the ISS, Anne racked up more than 13 hours outside the spacecraft, carrying out repairs, upgrades and maintenance.
“Spacewalks are very physically and mentally challenging – you burn the metabolic equivalent of a marathon,” she explains. “You’re in the suit for six to eight hours with just a drink bag on you. I hit a level of exhaustion I’d only really felt in the 60th minute of a rugby match and you have to focus; you have to play smarter not harder. I remember thinking, ‘I know I can push through this because of those experiences.’”
It also must be challenging to focus when you have the entirety of the Earth in your eyeline. “It’s hard to describe the feeling of coming out of the airlock,” Anne admits. “I remember looking down and the only things in between me and the planet were my feet. I thought, ‘What an incredible view’ and, ‘What am I doing?! This is the craziest thing humans have ever done.’ Then, I got to work.”
The reality of floating in the dark void was a far cry from the world’s largest indoor pool, where astronauts train on full-size replicas of ISS modules. 40 feet [12.1 metres] deep, the water simulates the weightless environment of space. “At the bottom of the pool, we get to know the outside of the Space Station very well – we know where every handrail is, every piece of equipment and every wire – but what we can’t replicate when we train is how the Earth looks.
“You come back with an amazing perspective. You realise how small and fragile the Earth is"
"You don’t see borders from space but what you do see are natural disasters, or a volcanic eruption that affects multiple countries. You look down and realise we’re just humans on a planet and any of these differences and lines in the sand are drawn by us, and they’re certainly not worth fighting over.”
During her time on the ISS, Anne and her fellow crew members carried out hundreds of science investigations. “We interact with researchers all over the world and for a brief period of time, we’re the hands on their experiment,” she says.
“It could be changing a petri dish, mixing chemicals to get a reaction, investigating flame, or something like drawing your own blood at certain intervals – so we end up becoming the research as well. Every day is certainly unique.”
Back on Earth, Anne’s career has been just as distinctive. A high-achieving engineer with three master’s degrees and published research, she’s also a Master Army Aviator with more than 2,000 flight hours in 20 different aircraft. Her ambition since the age of three was to reach for the stars, and in 2013, she became the youngest astronaut on the NASA roster.
Now, she’s shooting for the Moon. Anne is one of only 18 astronauts selected for the Artemis programme, a NASA-led mission to put man – and the first woman – back on the Moon. “It’s very exciting to be a part of and I feel like I’m either going to walk on the Moon or one of my good friends will and both of those are absolutely beyond my wildest dreams.”
She continues: “We’re going back with better technology, with a much larger spacecraft that’s capable of more exploration and research, and we’re going to the Lunar South Pole where there are more resources, including ice, which we’ll be able to utilise.”
The goal is to establish a long-term base to prepare for the next giant leap: sending astronauts to Mars.
Her advice to anyone looking to follow in her boots, from Bath and beyond, is not to eliminate yourself. “From someone on the inside, who has sat on the board for astronaut selection, I tell every single person that there is not a demographic that is prohibitive for the astronaut programme,” she shares.
“Your sexuality, gender, religion, even now your country of origin – what matters is what you bring to the plate. What we look for is people who have the technical ability to be part of the mission and who are looking to make an impact so much beyond them as one person.”
Since her expedition, Anne feels a sense of duty to share her experiences – a responsibility she says many astronauts feel overwhelmed by. “When you fly, you realise you’re a representative of humanity,” she explains.
“This wasn’t Anne McClain’s flight: it was your flight and everybody who’s reading this. My responsibility is to share that with them in some way that not only do they hear what I’m saying and be able to picture it but maybe they will feel something that makes them look at their own life a little differently.”
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