Some explorers focus on alpine heights. Other extreme extremes.
Megan McArthur is one of the elites of the submarines and spacecraft she is flying, exploring the expansion from the seabed to low-Earth orbit, looking down at the Earth from 250 miles above.
McArthur, now 54 years old, Retirement She has served as an astronaut and a senior leader of the Houston Jet Propulsion Laboratory for two decades.
Space historian Emily Carney describes McArthur as a pioneer, is one of the top 100 women in space flight and is a “magnificent career.”
She was the first woman to drive a SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft and the last to “touch” the Hubble Space Telescope with the robotic arm of a space shuttle. She boarded 213 days in orbit – 2021 at the International Space Station and 2009 on the Atlantis Shuttle, as the final flight of NASA for repairs and upgrades to Hubble.
“Her contributions have helped shape the future of human space exploration and we are very grateful for her service,” said Steve Koerner, acting director of the Johnson Space Center.
McArthur also built and flew a human submarine as an undergraduate at UCLA, where she majored in aerospace engineering. She received her PhD in Oceanography from the Scripps Oceanography Institute at San Diego in 2002 – she completed her training as a NASA astronaut.
She said: “It was a crazy moment when I got a call asking me: Do I want to go to work as an astronaut? During the interview From the 2021 International Space Station.
Her thesis advisor, Bill Hodgkiss, professor of applied marine sciences at Scripps Marine Physics Laboratory, said she was his only student to become an astronaut.
He said she built models to use sound to understand the composition of the seabed. Her specialty is undersea acoustics. Although there is little overlap between her PhD job and what she does as an astronaut, the skills she honed certainly contributed to her successful career.
“Very few people can do what they do as a graduate student for the rest of their lives,” he said. “What you really learn is how to solve complex research problems. As an engineering-oriented doctoral training, it’s a great thing for astronauts because they’re going to have new problems.”
Honolulu-born McArthur lives in Mountain View, California.
“My father was a pilot there, and we once saw astronauts coming to train, shuttle and land… It was the first time I realized that this was the real work of a real person,” she said. Tell a group Scripps Oceanography Student from Space Station.
She said it was her experience building an artificial submarine as an undergraduate, which reminded her of the career of the ocean.
“In many ways, exploring the ocean is similar to exploring space,” she said. There are many similar operating concepts, such as “you have to have all the equipment you want to get the job done.
Historian Carney said McArthur’s joining the astronaut army became increasingly common as he accepted women into the ranks.
“They are flying on the International Space Station, doing a lot of things on Hubble, and they are equal partners in space flight,” she said. “The shuttle program really helps democratize the shuttle.”
However, she fears that the Trump administration’s cuts in space programs and opposition to diversity could reverse the benefits women make and those of black, Asian and other minority professionals.
She said she hopes that offering business space opportunities with companies like Virgin Galactic would object to this.
McArthur is Chief Science Officer at the Space Center Houston, and she is now committed to promoting space flight and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) research and education to the center’s visitors.
“As a NASA astronaut and working with scientists from around the world for cutting-edge research, it is an incredible privilege that continues to have lasting impacts on Earth and prepares humanity for future exploration of the Moon and Mars,” McArthur said in a statement.
“Seeing our beautiful planet from space makes our houses so vulnerable and precious and the vital importance of our protection. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this work and I am excited to conquer our amazing engineers and scientists at NASA to conquer new challenges and pursue new challenges and further scientific discoveries to benefit all.”
