Peggy Whitson, Director of Human Space Flight, Axiom Space, joins Cheddar Innovates to discuss Axiom's involvement in the first fully-private mission to the ISS, and her experience spending 665 days in space.

Cheddar Innovates

What Spending 665 Days in Space Feels Like

Welcome back to cheddar innovates brought to you by curiosity, stream space exploration and space travel. Well, it's booming right now while we all tune into these launches and catch on as billionaires take off into outer space. There's truly some incredible research and work being done behind the scenes. Axiom space just launched. The first ever fully private astronaut mission to the space station is now pioneering a new chapter of space exploration joining us now and what a privilege it is to have her Peggy, Whitson record breaking astronaut and director of Human Spaceflight for axiom space. What a treat it is to see you and to have you on the broadcast today. So what makes this particular mission Peggy so historic? Well, it's the first time we've ever had a private, an entirely private crew on board the international space station. And uh, we've had individuals who've gone up and done various things during their stay. But this crew is doing over 25 different experiments uh, during their stay and doing a lot of stem outreach uh, to communicate the importance of science and education uh, to our young people as well. It's very much in my mind a different kind of a mission because this is a precursor for what axiom plants, which is a commercial station in low earth orbit. And that station will have things like manufacturing and research facilities that were going to use that low gravity environment as a tool to make things and make a commercial environment in space. So I think the commercial industry as you said, is exploding right now and there are going to be all different kinds of venues and a lot of it is going to be tourism but for what axioms doing, we're looking forward to that time when we are going to develop a commercial space station that will service um and develop hardware and supplies potentially for on on the earth as well as in space. Some examples. Okay I just wanted I'm so excited about the science. They're doing one of the investigations is doing stem cell research. Another is looking at a technical technological demonstration of these hexagonal tiles that are actually going to self assemble in microgravity. So potentially you could use that in the future to build modules in this environment. So just really diverse different types of things going on up there. I mean honestly I could just sit back and listen to you talk for like an hour on this stuff because it's so again it's so awesome to see you and to to have this conversation and it's incredible. I think the goals of axiom there are very well stated. So you you sort of answered what was gonna be my next question. So let me move to this if I may you you have spent more cumulative time in space than any U. S. Astronaut. Any woman in the world. What goes into preparing for a trip to space like what what do you do? I have no idea. Well a lot of its training uh and training ad nauseam on different things. So for as a NaSA astronaut I trained on how to do spacewalks and robotics uh science investigations. A big part of the training is emergency training. I actually trained as the backup for the commander. Mike Lopez alegria on this first mission and I will commend the second mission. Um So I've already gone through my training as a as a commander on the station as a commander of the axiom mission. Of course there's already a commander on the space station But our crew, like any other crew has to train significantly for emergency procedures. You have to be able to be safe in this kind of an environment. And and then on top of that then learn all the science and how to do these investigations that some are very complex. So it takes some time to train. These folks had trained uh starting last uh summer most of them over 1000 hours each. Which is less than a Nasa astronaut would. But the this is actually a very significant dedication of their time and efforts to train for this mission and and be ready to go to able to accomplish this. Eight days worth of science Peggy. Speaking of days Spence you've spent 665 days in space. If I'm not mistaken. What was the best part of all of that? Oh gosh it's so hard to to define just a best part being in the environment zero G environment you know where every all the rules that you've grown up with are so different. So being able to learn to live in that environment and make it your home is really special. It's a it's a very unique experience to be able to adapt to something so different. But if I have to pick a favorite part it's always going to be the spacewalks. It is just so amazing to be out there in your little spaceship built for one uh conducting all this uh you know we were assembling the space station or repairing parts of the space station or replacing and adding new parts to the station when I was up there. So The spacewalks are impressive. I was lucky enough to do 10 of them. It's absolutely mind blowing. And again what an incredible privilege it is Peggy to me to have you on the broadcast and to and to get some of your thoughts. Congratulations. What a hero you are too many Peggy. Whitson astronaut director of Human Spaceflight for Axiom. Space Peggy. Thank you incredible