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Curious Iowa: What are Iowa’s connections to space science and exploration?
The state’s connections include astronauts, researchers and innovators
Bailey Cichon
Mar. 25, 2024 5:00 am, Updated: Mar. 26, 2024 10:07 am
People like to say “there’s always an Iowa connection” but is there an Iowa connection to outer space?
Iowans have had a hand in early space science, the lunar landing and beyond. In fact, 10 astronauts have Iowa connections.
In this edition of Curious Iowa — a Gazette series that answers questions about our state, its people and the culture — we share firsthand accounts from two of Iowa’s astronauts and stories from Iowa’s space science history.
Peggy Whitson holds the American record for most time in space
Peggy Whitson is America’s most experienced astronaut and the first female commander of the International Space Station. Whitson is a native of Beaconsfield, Iowa and an Iowa Wesleyan alum.
Whitson started her astronaut training in the 1990s. Today, she holds the record for spending more days in space than any other American astronaut or female astronaut in the world: 675 days in space. Whitson also has conducted 10 spacewalks for a total of more than 60 hours.
Whitson said the perspective of seeing Earth from space gave her a special appreciation for our “delicate” atmosphere and how special life is.
“When you’re passing on the eclipse side of the Earth, you can see all of those stars and it gives you a perspective of how big just our little galaxy is — because that’s all you’re seeing is the stars in our galaxy,” Whitson said. “And then recognizing there are billions and billions of galaxies out there. It gives you this perspective of, you know, where we are and all of that and how important our planet Earth is, but how small we are in the cosmos.”
Whitson said when she left NASA in 2018, she didn’t anticipate flying in space again. But the rise of commercial space companies led to another opportunity. Axiom Space launched Ax-2 on May 21, 2023 with Whitson as the first female commander of a private space mission. That was Whitson’s fourth spaceflight. Today, Whitson is the director of human spaceflight for Axiom Space.
"You see and you hear about all the different companies that are out there launching satellites, launching people, cargo, and it’s really exciting how space is really changing,“ Whitson said. ”And the paradigm of how we do exploration is even changing.
“For instance, Axiom Space is building the spacesuit that will be used by NASA astronauts when they land on the lunar surface. Other companies are building lunar landers and it’s getting those commercial entities involved is changing a lot about how space is happening and how we anticipate it to happen in the future.”
Whitson said she doesn’t know when her next flight may happen.
“But you know, I’ll always have my fingers crossed for another space flight.”
Whitson donated a number of items — her ISS Flight Suit and a few crew insignia patches — to the Iowa State Historical Society. She said it’s important for young people to recognize opportunity.
“… I think having young people in rural Iowa recognize that hey, I have options, I can do whatever I want to do, it is really important,” Whitson said.
The public can view artifacts from Whitson and “The Father of Space Science” at the Iowa State Historical Society, 600 E Locust St, Des Moines.
In 2024, Whitson received the Michael Collins Trophy, which recognizes outstanding achievements in air and space technology. It is presented annually by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and named for Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins.
David Hilmers
David Hilmers is a native of DeWitt and a Cornell College alum. Growing up in small town Iowa, he said becoming an astronaut was something that happened to other people.
Hilmers “preempted” being drafted into the Vietnam War by joining the Marines. He went to flight school and graduate school. When NASA was looking for new astronauts, he was stationed in Japan. He said applying was like putting his name in a sweepstakes.
“Just kind of as a whim, I said, well, I’ve got flight experience. I’ve got graduate degrees in electrical engineering,” Hilmers said. “So maybe they’d be interested in me. And one thing after another led to interviews in Houston and my selection.”
During his career, Hilmers went on four spaceflights, including STS-26. It was the first flight after the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff in 1986, killing all seven crew members.
STS-26 had an experienced crew. Every member had flown before. Hilmers described feeling grateful to be chosen for the 1988 mission and being given the responsibility to bring NASA back into space, but he felt anxious for the families and crew.
“Anyone that feels like they can strap themselves into a rocket that’s got 6 million pounds of explosives below it and not have some measure of anxiety is probably a little bit of a liar,” he said.
Hilmers retired from NASA in October 1992 and went to medical school. He is a professor at Baylor College of Medicine and the Chief Medical Officer for hepatitis B Free, a charitable organization that sets up treatment programs for various types of hepatitis. Hepatitis B Free was founded by Hilmers’ wife, Dr. Alice Lee. He travels the world treating people in places where disaster has struck or where there are high hepatitis rates.
Baylor has one of the only space medicine undergraduate medical programs in the country, which Hilmers has been involved in for about 15 years. Hilmers rejoined NASA a few years ago as technical lead for the Clinical Science Team. He works with other doctors involved in the space program to determine the best medical equipment to take on a trip to Mars or the moon. Hilmers compared it to a camping trip.
“You’ve got a backpack and you can only carry so much stuff on you … so you want to take enough stuff that you are able to take care of certain emergencies, but you don’t want to take so much stuff that you can’t carry food and water and all the other essentials,” Hilmers said. “And so it’s really kind of an optimization problem.”
Space medicine, Hilmers said, is not just treatment of diseases or medical problems but prevention.
“It’s also looking at all the hazards like radiation, both from the sun and from deep space, from galactic sources, cosmic rays,” Hilmers said. “And so there’s a whole wide variety of disciplines that are involved that overlap with engineering because you have to build a vehicle that prevents some of these things from happening, protects the crew.”
Hilmers will be inducted to the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame this summer.
What work is done in space?
Hilmers said there are basic maintenance tasks — taking care of yourself and the vehicle — and then mission-specific tasks, “whether it would be launching a satellite, doing specific experiments, working with the robot arm, spacewalks if that was part of the mission. It really was very much mission dependent and hour dependent.”
Whitson said astronauts may work on a variety of experiments in a given day, from imaging cancer cells to testing voice activated technology to conducting stem cell research.
Zero gravity can be used as a tool to understand things, Whitson said. One of the experiments she conducted on Ax-2 looked at breast cancer and colorectal cancers. The cells grow at an accelerated rate in space, and more like they do in the human body, Whitson said.
“Which you think, oh wow, you don’t want cancer cells to grow faster, but we can test drugs to fight and try and reduce the size of those tumors to kill it completely or to shut it down …” Whitson said. “And if we test the drugs and it works in a week, you know, hey this has a lot of potential. So then, we can do more studies on Earth to get it into clinical trials and hopefully help patients with those types of cancer.”
Who are the other Iowans involved in space work?
James Van Allen, of Mount Pleasant, was dubbed “The Father of Space Science” after developing his own “rockoons,” balloon-launched rockets, at the University of Iowa. Van Allen and others developed a cosmic ray-detecting instrument that was launched into space with the Explorer I satellite. This is what led to the discovery of the upper atmosphere radiation belts, or Van Allen Belts.
Arthur “Art” Collins, of Cedar Rapids, demonstrated his innovative nature and the quality of his communications system early on. Collins Radio, founded in Cedar Rapids, was identified in 1961 as the lead communications company on the Apollo mission. Today, Collins Aerospace produces spacesuits, life support systems and space-grade sensors among other space technologies.
Steve Bales, of Ottumwa, was 26 years old when he worked at NASA’s Mission Control during the lunar landing. When Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong noted a “1202” alarm code during their descent to the moon, it was up to Bales and his deputy, Jack Garman, to determine whether they needed to abort the mission. Garman, in a back room, told Bales the alarm was not critical and Bales told the flight director to continue with the landing process.
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Comments: bailey.cichon@thegazette.com