In 1984, the crew of the second flight of the Orbiter Discovery, STS-51A, had a mission to rendezvous with two satellites that had failed to make their designated orbits, capture them, and then return them to Earth. It was the first space debris cleanup mission, and who knew that 40 years on, space junk would be such a growing problem? So what lessons can we learn from that first mission, and what knowledge can be passed on to companies that are working to remedy space debris situation? Welcome to T-Minus Deep Space from N2K Networks, I'm Maria Varmausus. And our guest today is Dr. Anna Fisher, former NASA astronaut and mission specialist on the STS-51A crew. Dr. Fisher has recently joined the Board of Advisors for Cal Morris Incorporated, also known as KMI, and she tells us what drew her to support their mission to clean up space junk. My name is Dr. Anna Fisher. I was a doctor in emergency medicine and was selected as a mission specialist astronaut in January of 1978. Had a wonderful career with NASA. I flew on Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-51A, which was a mission to deploy two satellites and retrieve two satellites. Then I was going to be assigned to my second flight and the Challenger accident happened. I was about six weeks from my second flight and so had to make some decisions. I wound up taking a seven-year leave of absence to stay home with my girls, and then went back in 1996 and had a wonderful time being chief of the Space Station branch at the very beginning, as we were just starting to build the Space Station and figure out how to work with our international partners and how to operate it. Then was going to get in line to go fly again, and then the Columbia accident happened. I wound up working after that on the Orion spacecraft, which is our spacecraft that's going to take us back to the moon as part of the Artemis program. I retired in April of 2017 after 36 years and nine months. My goodness, Dr. Fisher, thank you so much for joining me. It's such an honor to speak with you. Would you mind indulging me a little bit about your journey to becoming an astronaut? Everyone's journey is so different. I would love to hear about yours. Well, for me, I wanted to be an astronaut ever since I was 12 years old when I listened to Allen Shepard on May 5th of 1961. My father was in the military. We were stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and luckily his flight was a little delayed. So when we got to school, our teacher told us to crowd around her, and we listened to Allen Shepard as he spoke to Mission Control. And at that moment, I decided that's what I wanted to do someday. But of course, it didn't seem like a very realistic goal. I was the first person in my family to go to college. I went to UCLA and took me a little while to figure out exactly what I wanted to do, but I got my degree in chemistry, my bachelor's and my master's, and then decided I wanted to combine my love of math and science with wanting to help people. And in the back of my mind, although it didn't look likely that I was going to get to be an astronaut, I thought, well, if I don't get to be an astronaut, perhaps I'll get to be a doctor on a space station someday, something like that. So, and I was just just found out just by chance with a lunchtime conversation with one of my medical school friends. Found out it was like one month before the deadline, and NASA had been searching for about a year now for not only pilots, but mission specialists. And applied and was in the first group of women interviewed and found out I was selected in January of 1978. So, I always wonder what would have happened if I hadn't wanted to have lunch that day or had been unable to have lunch that day. It's sort of scary when you look back and have your life totally change on a chance occurrence, but that's what happened. That's amazing. My goodness. It's incredible how people's stories can change like that. And just a chance thing by, my goodness, a lunch meeting. What an amazing thing to happen. And just completely, just set your life on such a fascinating trajectory. Wow. That's kind of, that's incredible. What happened after that? Well, we started on July 5th of 1978 and began our training so that took, you know, the shuttle hadn't even flown, didn't fly until April of 1981. So, there was a lot of time there where we were both training and we were also just working on making this complex vehicle work to figure out how we're going to operate it. So, I had lots of different jobs. My first job was working on spacesuits. They were trying to get spacesuits small enough to fit some of the smaller astronauts. And we weren't really too successful with that, but it was still a great way to start my career. I was a CAPCOM and Mission Control, the person that talks to the crew on orbit. I worked in SAIL, the facility where we verified our software, and just lots of other different jobs until I was, my last job before I was assigned to my flight was to work at the Kennedy Space Center. We had a group of astronauts that helped process the vehicle, be in the cockpit for testing, continue the cockpit for launch. Then when I got back from my classmates, Allie Wright's launch, I was still in for her flight. When I got back to Houston, I was called into my boss's office. At that point, I was eight and a half months pregnant, and I was not expecting what my boss asked me. I still wanted to fly in space, and I said, "Very definitely." So, it wasn't quite the way I envisioned it was ever going to be, but it worked out great. That's absolutely incredible. As a mom too, I'm just like, "I can't imagine getting that use at eight and a half months. I was about ready to pop." Well, Kristen was born on a Friday morning, and I was back in the office on Monday morning for our pilot's meeting at eight o'clock on Monday. For the first four weeks, my training team tried to put all my training on one day, or two days a week, and then I'd get a little bit of time. Very quickly, that schedule had to go away because it's very busy getting ready for a shuttle flight. Probably, at about four weeks, I was back to work full-time. My goodness, within newborn. Ma'am, that is absolutely incredible. Doing two of the absolutely hardest things I could possibly imagine at the same time. Absolutely amazing. It was a challenge, but in a way, it was nice. I was doing the two things I loved most. I was very fortunate. I had an easy pregnancy. Kristen was very healthy. I just went through a situation with one of my grandsons going into the hospital for 12 days. I realized if anything like that had happened, that would have probably thrown a rail wrinkle into my plants. There's always a little bit of luck involved as well. Indeed. I hope your grandson's okay. Oh, yeah. He's fine now. I just realized that I was very fortunate that I didn't have to deal with something like that. That would have been, of course, a lot more difficult. Of course. Can you tell me a bit about your discovery? Your mission just sounds absolutely incredible. I was alive during discovery, but I don't remember it very well because I was quite young. I would love to hear a bit about what I missed out on hearing about on the evening news. Well, it was a really exciting mission, particularly because in February of 1984, the two satellites that I'm going to talk about were deployed from an earlier shuttle mission. They were supposed to have another rocket take them to deacynchronous orbit, which is a much higher orbit than where the shuttle flies. I was sent to New York to be on the Today Show because it was also the flight of the first man maneuvering in it. So when I got there, I found out that two satellites had been deployed and basically they were totally useless because they were in the wrong orbit because the rocket that was supposed to take them to a higher orbit failed. So they asked me in that interview, "Do you think NASA will try to go get those satellites and bring them back?" And I said, "I can't imagine how because they weren't designed to be retrieved and it was very still early in the program. We still weren't, didn't have all the experience that we had later on building the station and so forth." So I said, "Well, those are the best words I ever ate in November." So that was February and in November, we flew a shuttle mission to deploy two satellites and to also, for the first time in history, try to retrieve two satellites and bring them back to Earth so they could be refurbished and launched again. It was actually the insurance underwriters, Lloyds of London and their subsidiaries that were the big drivers for the mission. Wow, that's interesting. A very interesting education and things outside of space, seeing how that all worked out. Your mission often comes up when I talk to people about space debris nowadays of like, "We can't do that anymore." But it's just fascinating that that, it seems amazing to almost put it in modern, like if you think about it nowadays, the idea that we actually sent people to retrieve satellites, nowadays that would be, that blows people's minds. But it's just a fascinating that we did that, that you did that. It's just incredible. Well, you know, it, this is a pretty amazing place to work. When challenged, they can often find a solution for most anything. But we were really excited to have that mission because it did a lot of things. It showed that we could retrieve these large objects. We could handle them, which I think laid some of the groundwork for building the space station later on. And it was just really neat because it was the only mission that brought satellites back to Earth. There were several shuttle missions where astronauts went outside and performed a procedure to take the satellite because there was some problem with it, but then deployed it from on that same mission. So it was the first time that anyone had ever done anything like that. Tell me a bit about what it was like to catch those satellites because I've read about it many, many times. But I mean, I'm using catch very casually, obviously. But please tell me about it because I'm just so fascinated by this. There are two moments that, that really, really stick out. One is as we rendezvoused with the satellite. So now we're in position for me to go and grab the satellite. And the thing I remember most, the main difference from being in the simulator, one year wait list, of course, but, but it was all the motion because, you know, the satellite was right next to the shuttle, right off the starboard side of the shuttle. The shuttle was maneuvering a little bit. My commander, Rick Kalk, was, you know, maneuvering to station keep or flight formation with the satellite. And then the Earth is turning, the clouds are moving, and I'm getting ready to move the arm. The overpowering memory that I had is all that motion. And I was really glad I was so well trained because you really had to block all of that out of your, out of your mind. And I just prepared to, to do your task. And, you know, and it was really exciting to go and grapple something, to do a real grapple and not just be in the simulator. So that was really, really fun. We did encounter some difficulties. So we wound up having to change our plan a little bit, which involved me putting my crewmate Joe Allen in some foot restraints on the end of the arm. And then he wound up having to hold the satellite manually, which, you know, probably weighs like a ton or so here on the ground about the size of one of those like small school buses. So then I had to maneuver him holding the satellite down into the payload bay. So it was, it was just so exciting because not only were we doing something for the first time, but we did have a problem that we encountered that we overcame, which is one of the reasons why having humans in space is so important. Because if it had just been planned, you know, with a robot or something, perhaps that wouldn't have been as successful at that time. So anyway, it was just an amazing feeling. And then to finally, after the second EVA spacewalk, seeing both satellites securely fastened in the payload bay, can't even tell you what that felt like. We were, I think my commander was heaving a sigh of relief. I could just imagine that the ingenuity of putting a crew member on the on the grappling arm, I just, that's just this, a thing that you could not do really on earth, but to do that in space, it just, it sounds fun. Just said that he felt like he was on the world's highest diving board, looking at the earth, 100 nautical miles below, you know, and I still have that image in my head of, you know, him off on the end of the arm, because I had both cameras and just out the window views to give me my cues for how to maneuver him. So, and it was also great just having such an amazing crew. We all worked really well together and worked very hard, but also had a lot of fun at the same time doing something challenging. We'll be right back after this quick break. What a fantastic challenge to take on. I can, all these years later too, I can still feel it, and it truly is the stuff of legends, and I'm just so thrilled that I could hear it from you after, I can't tell you how many times I've read about this mission in my life, so I'm just really thrilled that I could hear it from you. So, I feel like I'm one of the luckiest people on the planet. Oh, ma'am, that's amazing. That's absolutely incredible. I feel odd sort of transitioning into the CalMorris KMI news from this, but to me it feels like a sort of natural segue, because as I said when KMI told me that you were sort of on their advisory board, it just makes so much sense. So, I would like, can you walk me through maybe how this all transpired, because it must be an interesting story. Oh, yes, it is actually an interesting story. I speak at the Kennedy Space Center usually about twice a year or so, and as part of our responsibility, we give two talks a day, and we talk about our mission. So, I had a PowerPoint presentation that I was showing, and talked about the retrieval and all of that, and just what it's like to be in space. So, after that, we go to one of the gift shops at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center and sign autographs and take pictures with folks and who should come up, but Adam called, and he comes up and said he was just getting ready to leave on vacation, but they had stopped at the Visitor Center, heard my talk, and they informed a company to try to look at the issue of space debris and how to tackle it, and could he give me a call when he got back from his vacation, and that perhaps what I consider being a part of KMI. And so, I said, well, I'll certainly listen to what you have to say. And so, we scheduled a meeting after he returned, and we talked about it, and it sounded like a good fit to be a part of their board of advisors, and it seemed like a new different challenge for me to see, and I was very impressed with their dedication and their interest and how they had come to who found their company. So, I said, yes, I think I would like to try that, and I think I could perhaps help you out. Yeah, that is really fascinating. That's such a great way of meeting. I'm sort of trying to imagine what kind of conversations, like how you're guiding them. I mean, you have sort of the original perspective on space debris in a way, so I imagine you must have some really fascinating perspective as they are developing what they're working on. Well, it's very interesting because the board of advisors at this point is pretty much made up of people with financial backgrounds and venture capitals, the kind of things that you need when you're starting a new company. I was told they started KMI in 2019, so they had not yet really found the right person to perhaps give them the more technical side of things and working with NASA and that sort of thing. So, I think that's where I will be able to be very helpful, both in what it's like to be up in space and how easy is it to do the things that they want to do. And then also, just for the other day, for example, they have a prototype of their, I'll call it an end effector, that they're going to use to capture debris that's going to fly on the ISS, the International Space Station, and it's launching pretty soon in September of this year. And so we reviewed the procedures and, you know, I worked on Space Station, was a CAPCOM for ISS, so I'm quite familiar looking at their procedures. I helped develop the standards for how we do the procedures and things in my job as the lead of the Space Station branch in the astronaut office. So, there's lots of different ways, plus, you know, just giving them advice on, you know, people to contact, things like that. So, just the kind of things that you would do as on a board of advisors. And I was just very impressed with all the people I've met so far, their technical expertise, their enthusiasm, how they've gotten as far as they've gotten because space debris is a really, really big problem. And it gets bigger just as time goes by. The space debris is growing exponentially. And it's something that we have discussed in our meetings. We have the Association of Space Explorers that meets once a year. And I would say at about the last four of our meetings, there's always been a lot of talk around the problem of space debris. And we're trying to figure out, you know, how we can solve that. And so it's something that I was interested in before Adam contacted me. And so it's just, you know, just like a perfect fit to something that I really believe in. And I get to help them solve a very big problem that we're going to have to deal with in the future. Absolutely. KMI is a fantastic company. I've had the privilege of speaking with them several times. And what they're doing is truly impressive. And certainly, there are also, there are many companies and organizations, I should say, trying from many different angles and approaches to tackle the space debris problem because it is very multifaceted. I'm curious, as you look at sort of the field of, you know, all these organizations trying to mitigate space debris, what fascinates you and like what excites you about what people are developing right now? It's just exciting to see young people who just graduated and they decided they wanted to get involved in space. So they researched it and came to the same conclusion that many of the astronauts have come to that space degree is a growing problem and a problem that's growing exponentially. I don't know what all other areas they looked at, but I think they picked one that is really important and one that we're very concerned about. We're trying to tackle it a little differently from the Association of Space Explorers. We really feel that we need to create an international organization, something like the FAA, but for space. And right now, anyone can launch into space at any time and there are no rules or regulations. And so there's nobody to say, okay, if you're going to launch the satellite, what is your plan for its end of life? And there are many ways they could try to handle that, but at the moment, there's no requirement for them to even have to do that. So from our association point of view, we're trying to tackle that, try to get the United Nations to get a regulatory body. And then we also think it would be worthwhile to have an international astronaut office for all the astronauts around the world. And so that's another area that we're tackling. But in the meantime, it's really a pleasure to see that a group of very bright, talented engineers recognize this as a problem and are trying to find a solution at the same time, finding, creating a company of their own. So it's really, I'm very fortunate that Adam just happened to hear my talk that day. That's amazing. So all these fantastic lunch meetings and it's just absolutely incredible. Sometimes they wonder, you know, who's looking out for me, but it's really been a fun adventure so far. So we're just, we're just getting started in our relationship. And I'm really looking forward to it because I have every anticipation that they are going to be successful because they're, you know, to start a company in 2019. And now they have hardware launching to the space station. Next month, that's a pretty impressive achievement because I know how hard it is to get on board the ISS, you know, to have your whatever project you're proposing approved and go through all the safety analysis and develop the hardware, develop the procedures, training and so forth. So they've done that in a very remarkable time. They're really, really a fascinating company. I've been following them with great interest. So Dr. Fisher, you've been so generous in your time with me. Before we go, I always want to make sure if there's anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to say to the audience, I want to give you the floor if there's anything you wanted to add. Well, I've already made my catch about the problem with space debris, which is something that we're working really hard to make people aware of. But the one thing I would say to people who are listening to your show is, you know, life is really interesting. Just my story, the coincidence of finding out about the astronaut selection coincidental, you know, just by chance. When it was something that I had always dreamed of doing, and now having my relationship with KMI again, it just shows that, you know, if you put yourself out there and you get yourself well trained, get a good education, you don't know what opportunities are going to come up in your life. And so it's neat to get as prepared as you can to be able to take advantage of those opportunities when they arise, because the world is changing so quickly now. And especially in the arena of space, things are evolving way more rapidly than I ever anticipated. And so it just, it's just, again, getting a good education and good preparation and then being willing to take chances and go after what your heart wants to follow. That's it for T-Minus Deep Space, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. And we'd love to know what you think of this podcast. You can email us at space@n2k.com or submit the survey in the show notes. Your feedback ensures that we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. T-Minus Deep Space is produced by Alice Carruth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We are mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester, with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrel is our president. Peter Kilpie is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmasas. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
