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A few weeks ago, Guardian Science correspondent Hannah Devlin received an offer she couldn't refuse. I actually felt really nervous ahead of this but at the same time obviously quite excited. Hannah was invited to join the latest intake of the European Space Agency or ESA astronauts on a three-hour training flight in order to experience weightlessness.
There was actually quite little preparation. We went through some safety procedures. And after an anti-nausea injection, she put on a flight suit and boarded the plane. The aircraft has to go up at a 50-degree angle, so incredibly steep upwards angle. And as the plane is accelerating upwards, you're being kind of pressed down into your seat or into the floor, and you can really feel that.
You get to the end of this steep climb and the airplane's engines orbit switch off. If you were released at that moment, you wouldn't fall directly down to earth. You'd follow a sort of curved path, almost like a little segment of an orbit around the earth. And what the plane is doing during that period is basically just flying around you like a protective bubble.
It's like magic spell is cast, but for this period of time and suddenly you just can lift upwards, everyone's floating around. This hushed ascended. There's literally no up or down. And then
After 20 seconds it's like a button switched and that kind of magic spell has switched off again. Everyone hears airborne. It's kind of unceremoniously dumped back onto the ground at the aircraft and we have another 20, 20 seconds of this kind of feeling really heavy and crushed into the floor. That process was repeated 31 times.
The nausea-inducing flights are just a taste of the intense and hugely demanding years-long training programme required to fulfil a childhood dream and work in space. So today, what does it take to become an astronaut? And once you succeed, what does the job actually involve?
Under Guardian Science Editor Ian Sample and this is Science Weekly.
Hannah Devlin, there are just some opportunities that as a science correspondent, you can't turn down. And one of those is getting to do a zero G flight. So first off, how do you feel physiologically when you're going through that sort of weightless period? Because obviously we've evolved in one G, we've evolved to pump blood up to our heads against gravity. When it suddenly switches and suddenly you're
in freefall. Do you feel anything odd apart from the fact that you're floating around?
Definitely, yes. And I think the first few, the fact that you could float was just so mad. In fact, the first one, I think I thought the ceiling was moving towards me because my brain just couldn't get, you know, get around the fact that I could be floating. And then the ESA person who was accompanying me kind of gave me this advice and she said, I'll just take a few to not do anything and just kind of focus internally on what it feels like. And I'm really glad I had that advice because in a way that was actually
the most extraordinary thing, kind of feeling internally that there's nothing weighing you down. And he said to me that sometimes astronauts actually forget that they have a body when they've spent a long period of time in this. And then conversely, when they come back to earth, you're almost burdened by the kind of weight of your body again. And I heard that one astronaut said when they came back, one thing that was really strange was just sitting in a chair and how uncomfortable it was.
and down on the ground before the flight, you actually got some time with Rosemary Coogan, a 33-year-old Brit, and one of the European Space Agency's newest astronaut recruits. That's quite a LinkedIn update to be able to share. How does she get the job? Yes, I mean, as you can imagine, it's what an amazing job being an astronaut. I think there was about more than 20,000 applicants, and she had to go through a year and a half selection process that involved
academic stuff so looking at your kind of memory skills, your maths, physics, visual memory and then there was a big psychological component. They really looked for people who worked well with other people and of course within a group of people who worked well together you still have really diverse personality types so it's not one certain thing that fits a box but it's
I think becoming more and more important, like you say, as we look towards longer space missions, as the shape of a mission starts to look different, that the people who are really prepared for the unexpected, and I think they looked for a combination of who you are internally. That's the sort of thing that they think you'll be suitable for, and also working in isolation, in small spaces with other people.
And apart from the parabolic flights, what has some of her training so far involved? Did you talk about that? Yeah, I mean, it sounded really wide ranging. So they have to train in all sorts of different elements of science because on the International Space Station, the astronauts are often going to be having to carry out these experiments on behalf of people who've sent up the experiments to the ISS. So physics, biology, you know, kind of
Basic grinding in all of the possible experiments they might be doing photography as well she said that you have to capture photographic evidence and then also kind of public outreach and then they also.
Want to test the boundaries and challenge them so she described going on a winter survival training in the Pyrenees, which was something that she said she'd never experienced, she'd never slept outside before in a snowy mountainous environment and that caused us some real challenges I think.
I managed to step into a kind of freezing cold and sludgey river where we're walking across a kind of a very very very small kind of snow bridge you might call it. I can see there was water there and the snow just went through and I got an extremely wet and cold foot and didn't think that much of it went to bed in the morning. My boot was completely frozen solid and I could not get my foot back in and you know my colleagues came home and said all right I brought a cup of tea you know from the camp stove and I've been a while but I honestly keep coming and about
And at that point, I just think, oh, you know, this is a silly of me. I should have realised that, of course, it was freeze-over night. I should have, yeah, I should have maybe left it by the firewall. But, you know, this is how we learn. And it's a really nice moment of, yeah, the team supporting each other. The winner of the Booker Prize, 2024, is Samantha Harvey for all of it.
Hannah, this book orbital about the lives of six astronauts on the International Space Station, six fictional astronauts on the ISS, has just won the Booker Prize. And that book talks a lot about some of the sort of the mundanity, the repetitive nature of a lot of the work on the space station, but also being so far removed and a missing loved ones at home and so on. Did you talk to Rosemary about any of
the challenges of being on the ISS long term, what that's like kind of emotionally. Yeah, I mean, it does feel like a big part of the time is just maintaining the spacecraft. I asked about whether that would become mundane. And she said that it's challenging, but she wouldn't see it as mundane. It's part of the job. There's also just the health side of being in space. It's hard on your body. It felt really relaxing being in zero G, but that's actually
you know, really bad in the long term for your bone health, your muscle tone. Astronauts have to spend about two and a half hours a day exercising just to keep in shape and kind of stay healthy. She said that they do have all, you know, people have all sorts of things they like to do is hobbies. She's particularly into board games. She's been planning which board games she can take that won't have loads of little pieces that kind of flying off in all directions. I think you probably
form such a strong bond with the other people that are on there, and you do probably feel like you're in your own world, you're very focused on what you're doing, you're very busy. I'm sure people do really miss the loved ones, but at the same time,
You probably don't have loads and loads of time to think about that. You're probably so focused on the task at hand. Even simple tasks take a lot of thought, planning, preparation that perhaps lessens those feelings of missing what's going on on Earth. I think in my own reporting on astronauts in the International Space Station, there's one story that's always stayed with me probably more than any other, but I was talking to some astronauts about
how they go to sleep on the space station, your classic sort of journalistic question. The astronauts, they tend to sort of hook a sleeping bag to the wall when they go to sleep. But at the time I was doing the institute, there was a cosmonaut who was renowned for just going to sleep where he finished his day.
If you were up after most people had gone to bed, you might just see him drifting around, dosing, bouncing off the walls, and he would essentially be carried just by the currents of the fans on the space station. And so you could just be working suddenly have this sleeping figure.
gradually slowly drift past you. And I found that absolutely extraordinary because this man and this space station, these people are traveling 17,500 miles an hour and they're falling to earth, but they don't hit it because they're going so fast. And he's asleep, just drifting around. And I find the whole thing just such a bizarre juxtaposition of the reality in his mood and his state that it's an extraordinary environment.
Yeah, I mean, I guess you really are at close quarters. And if you've got any sort of weird habits or kind of quirks, they're probably going to come out in that environment. And so I guess it makes you think who you'd want to take up there with you, if you're going to be trapped for a few months with them, not just working together, but potentially seeing them floating past sleeping.
Hannah did where we talk about what the future holds for her. What kind of missions could she be selected for? Yeah, so she knows that she will be assigned a six-month period on the International Space Station, but that could be any time between essentially now and 2030. And then, you know, beyond that, that's a bit of an unknown, really. I mean, we do know that there are going to be ESA astronauts
participating in the Artemis missions, NASA's Moon missions, which will see astronauts back on the Moon. So that's a possibility in the future. And then, you know, further down the road still, there's this ambition to go to Mars and to land the first astronauts on Mars. And I asked her about that, and she said that was something she'd love to experience. She'd definitely be up for it.
But at the same time, she had quite a different perspective from someone like Elon Musk, who wants to set up civilisations on Mars, and I've talked about colonising Mars, and she didn't see it in that way. There is an awful amount to learn from going to this planet in terms of our solar system, where we've come from.
know how we can use resources around us, you know, they're not the same resources we have for us, you know, Marsland Moon don't have the same sorts of things to offer. But I think what's really important is to learn about those things and to learn about how we can stay on those planets but isn't the same as colonising or being a permanent presence.
So I think it's a personal opinion, but I don't envisage a future where we have permanent colonies. We have a fantastic, amazing, beautiful planet here. And I think what we learn from the Moon and from Mars, we can bring back to this planet and we need to look after the planet Earth. And I think going to other planets will actually help us do that. But I look at it from kind of that way around.
Hannah, having heard about what it takes and having this little taste of life as an astronaut in your parabolic flights, what did you make of it? Did you get a sense that it was something, a job you could enjoy yourself?
I really enjoyed the little taste of it. I honestly don't think I would make it through the selection procedures, having kind of met these people who have done and just seen just how impressive they are across the board. It's not just being really good at one thing. It's having that intellectual ability, but then also being really calm in anything that's thrown at you, being able to kind of adapt to that and being such a team player.
I just was really in awe of the astronauts who'd made it through all of that and also kind of being able to just put that first and essentially be ready to go on whatever mission you're sent on. I think that's not something that most people would be able to do and I just thought it was really impressive. It's great to hear about. Thanks for coming on.
Thanks again to Hannah Devlin. This episode was produced by Ellie Sands and Madeline Finley. It was sound design by Joel Cox and the executive producer is Ellie Bury. We'll be back on Thursday. See you then.
Hey, it's Michael Safi here, a presenter on Today in Focus. Today in Focus takes you to the heart of the story with our reporters all over the world. The Guardian doesn't have a billionaire owner. It's independent of corporate interests or political influence. It's funded by readers and listeners like you. Not everyone can afford to pay for the news right now, but if you can, please choose to support The Guardian. You can do that by following the link in the description of this episode.
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