Astronauts on the ISS share their 'life-changing' view | The Excerpt
On Sunday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: The International Space Station, orbiting approximately 250 miles above Earth, is both a marvel of human creativity and engineering. Astronauts from around the world have called it home. Four Americans who do so currently are Expedition 72 Commander Suni Williams, and Flight Engineers Butch Wilmore, Nick Hague, and Don Pettit. They joined The Excerpt to share what folks on the Earth should know about the science experiments they are conducting and the perspective gained from even just one lap around the planet.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Mission Control - Houston:
USA Today, this is Mission Control Houston. Please call station for a voice check.
Dana Taylor:
Station, this is Dana Taylor of the USA Today podcast. How do you hear me?
Suni Williams:
Hey Dana, we've got you loud and clear on the International Space Station. Welcome aboard.
Dana Taylor:
Thank you so much. Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor.
The International Space Station orbiting approximately 250 miles above Earth is both a marvel of human creativity and engineering. Astronauts from around the world have called it home and we're fortunate today to spend time with four who are currently on board. International Space Station Expedition 72 Commander Suni Williams and flight engineers, Butch Wilmore, Nick Hague, and Don Pettit. Thank you so much for being on The Excerpt.
Suni, let's begin with the fragility of space travel. You and Butch have now been in space since June of 2024. Can you share any aspects of your training that have helped you survive the unknown or the unexpected?
Suni Williams:
Well, that's a great question, Dana. Astronaut training is pretty long. We train at least a couple years to be ready to come up to the International Space Station and all four of us are experienced space flyers, which means we've done that plus our initial astronaut candidate training and most of us are from a professional background where we've done some training as well. So being deployed for a little while is not unusual for any of us and that's part of the game when you come to someplace that's a little bit different from home. You might not come home right away and so you just need to learn how to adapt and obviously, we've all done that and we have made a great crew up here.
Dana Taylor:
Speaking of home, I'm in Orlando, Florida and I've stepped outside many times to witness a launch. They are intense and powerful to watch from the ground. What runs through your mind as you leave Earth behind?
Nick Hague:
Now, Dana, it's a mix of emotions as you're sitting there on the launch pad. I was thinking of all of the people that helped me get to that point and all the people that have spent the better part of the last two years getting me ready and teaching me everything that I need to do and all the things that I might need to do if something goes wrong. And so they get you ready and you don't want to let them down, so there's this intense feeling of wanting to be perfect in that moment just because everybody has invested so much time in you. You're also getting ready to leave family and friends for an extended period of time and so there's a little bit of that parting sorrow, but you're also, at the same time, super excited about the roller coaster ride that is in front of you and then getting to the space station and being able to live and work in microgravity.
Dana Taylor:
Nick, you and Suni completed a successful spacewalk less than two weeks ago. Did you have a favorite moment? Are you able to take a second for yourself during a spacewalk to just take in the view?
Nick Hague:
You can't help but do that. The earth is such a miraculous thing look down on and when you're in the spacesuit, it's a little different than when you look out the windows inside the station. Because our field of view is so large, for a moment you can just feel like that suit melts away and it's just you witnessing the marvel that is the Earth. And so there were some amazing sunsets that I took in for a few seconds because the sunset only lasts a few seconds up here, but they were spectacular.
Dana Taylor:
Butch, what's the most unusual thing you've seen or experienced during your time on the International Space Station?
Butch Wilmore:
The most unusual thing? Wow. I don't know about unusual but amazing. I mean, watching Don Pettit do science. I mean, he's doing science for all the primary investigators around the globe and then he's also doing science on his own, things that he's brought up here to do. And I can tell you, it is amazing to watch him work and sometimes maybe it is a little unusual too. And also for Suni and Nick and watching them and how they handle day-to-day events, changes, all of us have been extended a little bit longer than we planned, and how they do that. It is somewhat unusual that these situations occur. It's not a common thing, but it's something that, like Suni said, we've all prepared for and gotten ready for and mentally prepared for and our families as well. So all that and I could keep going, but some pretty amazing things taking place here.
Dana Taylor:
Have you encountered anything that's been difficult to explain or that's wowed you in some way and is space a place where you want to be surprised?
Don Pettit:
I see things almost every day that are difficult to explain. You look out the window and you'll see a flash of light. You'll see something on Earth, a volcano going off. You'll see another satellite in orbit and all of these have a certain mystery behind them. You can't explain every little detail you see.
Butch Wilmore:
And one other thing, one morning, Don and I, we're up a little bit earlier than Suni and Nick and I'm working out. He's in the cupola and he floats down and says, "Hey, come here." And we look out and just as the sun, just prior to the sun rising, there's a comet that appears over the horizon. I mean, none of us expected it and there it was, just truly thrilling.
Dana Taylor:
Don, we do want to touch on the Expedition 72 mission, but first, is it all business up there? What do you do with your downtime? I know that your astrophotography is now legendary.
Don Pettit:
It's mostly business. We come up here to do the mission work because we're here for six months or more. You can't work 12 hours a day every single day for months on, and you have to have some off-duty time. And I like the term "off-duty" because we're living on a vessel and you have to be willing to get back to work at a moment's notice. It isn't like leaving town for the weekend. So for off duty, we do a variety of activities here, whatever helps recharge your batteries. For me, I like to do more observational science. A lot of it involves photography. Other folks do whatever they need in order to get your batteries recharged, recuperate, and get ready for the next day's work.
Dana Taylor:
Suni, is there an experiment that you're currently working on that you can tell us about?
Suni Williams:
So we had a lot of experiments when we had a SpaceX cargo vehicle up here because it brought a bunch of science. We did a bunch of stuff and then it left. Right now, we're actually in the process of getting ready for another spacewalk, so that's sort of taking a lot of our time at this moment in time. But reflecting back on SpaceX 31, I think some of the coolest stuff that we did was stem cell growth up here. We're actually checking out to see whether or not we can grow stem cells in space that has many applications for as we leave low Earth orbit. For us as astronauts, it actually has a lot of applications for Earth, also for new technologies and how we can actually grow stem cells. Really amazing stuff, stuff that I had to ask Don about because I didn't really understand all of it. What are we actually doing? But getting your hands in there and actually being the lab tech that's participating with the scientists was really rewarding knowing where this can lead to.
Dana Taylor:
And Nick, what about you? Is there an experiment that you'd like to share with us?
Nick Hague:
The things that we do up here are so they span the entire spectrum. So we're talking about stem cells. If I continue on the biology, I spent the better part of six weeks growing microalgae. And why are we trying to grow algae in space? Well, the air that we breathe here, we have to scrub that. We're breathing out carbon dioxide and on the Earth, plants would consume that carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. Up here, we require systems to do that for us, complicated machinery that we have to maintain and repair. And so as we try to go and explore deeper into space, go to the moon, go to Mars, those complicated machines are a failure point. And so we're looking at ways that we can come up with solutions that don't have those failure points. One of those is using algae, trying to recreate what happens naturally on the earth, have it consume our carbon dioxide and produce oxygen for us and use that to revitalize our air. So we're doing... some of the research is focused absolutely on impacting life on Earth, but it also has applications as we go deeper into space.
Dana Taylor:
Butch, can you share an example of how you're using microgravity as a tool in your scientific research while you're on this mission?
Butch Wilmore:
Asking me a science question, I'm going to hand it off to Don Pettit. He is the man for science. Go, Don.
Don Pettit:
Well, one of the chief features of being in microgravity is the lack of sedimentation. They settle down rather quickly on Earth, even if you have a liquid suspension. And one of the reasons they're doing stem cell search here with research, which is what Suni pointed out, it has to do with sedimentation where if you can keep the stem cells suspended, they can naturally form a three-dimensional structure on Earth. They're growing like in a flat plane in a Petri dish. So it allows a different expression of morphology because of the lack of residual acceleration or micro-G as we call it. And that's just one of many examples from crystal growth to combustion experiments to effects holistically on the human body, bone decalcification, retinal degeneration, immune system suppression. There's all of these things that seem to be a function of when you go into an environment where gravity is now a factor of 1 million less than where it used to be.
Dana Taylor:
Suni, we spoke with one of your fellow astronauts, Victor Glover, a pilot on the Artemis II mission, and I was struck when he talked about the spirit of international cooperation in space exploration. What's that been like for you on the ISS?
Suni Williams:
I think it's really awesome. I mean, indicated by the flags behind us, you can see all the countries that participated, that are participating in the International Space Station. Of course, we have our Russian colleagues just down the hall as well and you were asking about what we do in our free time. The other day, we had a little bit of a moment of free time. We all got together and watched a movie and it's fun to just trade stories around the dinner table and talk about culture and food. Everybody sort of brings their favorite thing to the table and it's pretty awesome. And you forget the boundaries of countries just melt away when you're around the dinner table and you're just talking about life and family. And so I think that's really amazing and it's a role model for a lot of organizations on Earth. You can do it. We can put aside all the issues that are there and we can just hang out and talk as people.
Dana Taylor:
Butch, after being reunited with your loved ones and colleagues at NASA back on Earth, what are you most looking forward to upon your return?
Butch Wilmore:
Obviously, it's getting back with family back and unity with my church family as well. But I try not to focus on that. I mean, we're here. We try to focus on the now, what's taking place here, the important work that's going on because it requires that. We have to stay focused, especially when you're doing things like suiting someone up to go out into the vacuum of space. You got to be focused. And that's really what the primary thing is. I try not to long for anything that I don't have now and just fret over. There's no benefit to that. So we focus on the now. Looking forward to when we get back
Dana Taylor:
And fin the experience of space travel seems so profound, we fairly or unfairly expect something profound to say about it. No pressure. What can those of us who've never been to space take away from your experience?
Nick Hague:
I think the... going back to what we do in the moments we have that are free, I think that something that we all do is we gravitate toward the window and we take pictures of the Earth. And I think the reason that we do that is because the perspective here allows you to see the Earth as this precious whole thing that lacks a lot of boundaries. And it shows us the perspective that we have, that we're all connected on the Earth and in large part, we have more things in common than we have different with the whole population of the Earth. And we depend on each other. And we're interdependent on each other and in that sense, that perspective is, I think, what everybody that calls the Space Station home goes away with. And if there was one thing that I could share with everyone on the ground, it would be that perspective. I wish that everyone could come and visit the Space Station so that they could get that perspective because I think it profoundly changes your life after you go back to the Earth.
Dana Taylor:
And Suni, is there a parting thought that you'd like to leave our listeners and viewers with?
Suni Williams:
Yeah, I just have to agree with Nick. I just really wish everybody could take just one lap around the planet and I think it would change everybody and everybody's perspective. This place is a very special place and I just wish everybody had that opportunity.
Dana Taylor:
Suni, Butch, Don, and Nick, from all of us at USA Today back on Earh, thank you you so much for being on The Excerpt.
Suni Williams:
Our pleasure. Take care.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producer, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan, for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.