The View from Above

Definitely. I think leaving Earth gives you a very broad perspective on the world. Our brains have not adapted to seeing Earth from above, so the experience really shifts your reality. It helps you see how everything is connected — that we’re part of space, and space is part of us.

It’s a similar feeling to being here in the Maldives and seeing the marine life. The wildlife is so present here, it’s not something we’re used to seeing in our everyday lives. It helps you understand that Earth isn’t ours alone, that it belongs to these creatures first, and that we have a responsibility to protect them.

The programme centres around what it’s like to be an astronaut, but also how it relates to life on Earth. By showing young people how space exploration can help solve problems here on Earth, we help them understand why it’s important.

Many young people will see space as a concept distant from their everyday lives, and likewise the idea of being an astronaut as an impossible dream. But by having them interact with someone who has travelled off our planet, and by relating that to things that they understand here on Earth, it expands their understanding of what is possible.

To be honest, when I was a child I never really dreamed of going into space. It wasn’t something that was part of my world  – for example, we weren’t watching rocket launches on the TV, and there were no astronauts from my corner of the world.

Growing up, I was told not to study mechatronics because it would be too difficult for me as a woman, I was told not to do biomedical engineering because I would have no opportunities. I was told I was wasting my time by even being interested in these fields.

For me it all started when I realised I had too many questions that I couldn’t answer. I’m an engineer, so I’d learnt maths and theory, but all the questions I still had really bothered me.

So I chose to ask myself — which of these questions, with my skills and understanding, can I help answer? Which tiny thing can I take responsibility for, to help make life on Earth better? And that led me to the path I am on now.

In both situations, you are putting yourself in a position that — without your equipment — you wouldn’t be able to survive. You also have to be comfortable wearing and operating that equipment, and to be aware of your movements in it, because  those movements will affect the environment you’re exploring. You also have to rely on others for your safety — in orbit it’s your crewmates, in diving it’s your buddy.

The main difference is how the experience feels to your body. In space you are much more weightless, and you can’t feel anything around you, whereas in water you can still feel your surroundings.

It felt very surreal. I got the call on July 11th, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, so it felt almost like the universe had been pulling me towards that moment my entire life. It was a process to really accept that it was happening to me. I had to do the work, do the training, and not let that feeling consume me.

But it all really felt like it was happening the morning of the launch, when I saw the rocket. I remember driving towards the launch pad, the windows were down in the car and there was a nice breeze and I looked at the rocket, and time stopped at that moment. I understood that it was finally happening — that was the moment where it all clicked.

That’s a really good question and it’s important to talk about. Our brains are so much more powerful than we give them credit for, and we have a lot more control than we think we do. Through practices like yoga and meditation, you can train yourself to deal with stress and fear, and to eliminate it.

Before going to space, I had to meditate a lot and visualise what it would be like a couple of times a day. I had to put myself in that capsule in my mind and visualise it over and over, replacing the fear and anxiety I felt with a more peaceful feeling, whilst also staying present.

When we’re stressed, we have all these neurons firing and it creates a cloud that really affects our judgement. Meditation helps you train your brain to release the right hormones to calm itself down, and to give you the clarity to make good decisions.

The most surprising thing to me was just how close ‘space’ was. After getting the news that I was going, I would look up at it and think “I am going to go up so high, our skies are limitless, Earth is just so big.” But actually it’s not that big, it’s really so much smaller than we think it is.

After the rocket separates and it’s just your capsule left up there, the only thing that is telling you you’ve crossed into space is the colour of the sky: it goes from light-blue to dark-blue to purple to black, and your brain can’t keep up with how fast that happens, how fast you have exited Earth. It takes a few minutes. You realise it’s just this very thin layer protecting us from what’s out there, and that we’re really ‘in space’ all the time.

I’ve travelled a lot in my life and have always been moving, so I’ve never felt like somewhere was home to me. But when I was in space it felt, for the very first time, like I was home, like I was finally where I was meant to be. That was just surreal and I never, ever expected it to feel that way.

It really does change you. You look back at Earth and think this is our home, the only home we have. We cannot survive anywhere else. It’s really fragile and we shouldn’t be taking it for granted.

I think that it’s very unlikely that we’re the only life in the universe because it’s just so big. Also, the maths leans towards it being more likely that there is other life in the universe than not.

Seeing the vastness of what lies beyond first hand, you do get the sense that we’re not that special. When you think about the variety of life on Earth and the variety of environments it survives in, it seems much more possible that there are other kinds of life out there in the universe. As for whether this life has visited us though, that I’m not very sure about!

Within an hour of arriving we decided to go for a snorkel and whilst we were in the water we saw hundreds of dolphins swimming past us. We were just a few metres away from them and it was such an incredible and surreal experience to see in the wild. They were spinner dolphins, so the babies were leaping out of the water and spinning through the air, and we could hear them squeaking and talking to each other. It was so unexpected and beautiful. I also didn’t know I’d love tiny crabs so much before coming here!