Season 5 Episode 6 Transcript White Mars

Alok: Hello and welcome to A Voyage to Antarctica, brought to you by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust. I’m your host Alok Jha.

This week we’ll be taking a trip across the universe with astronaut Dr Meganne Christian: to explore the many connections between Antarctica and space travel.

Meganne is a member of the European Space Agency astronaut reserve and a Senior Exploration Manager at the UK Space Agency, advising on human and robotic spaceflight.

She has a Bachelor of Engineering and a PhD in Industrial Chemistry from the University of New South Wales. From 2014 to 2023 she was a researcher at the National Research Council of Italy.She has also undertaken two missions, including one over-winter, at Concordia Station in Antarctica, where she was a research scientist in charge of atmospheric physics and meteorology. In November 2022, she was selected from a pool of over 22,500 applicants across Europe to be one of the 17 members of the European Space Agency’s first astronaut class in 13 years.

Alok: we've talked a lot on this podcast series about Antarctica connections, sometimes surprising connections with astrophysics space,. We've talked with a space plasma physicist and an NASA astro botanist. I think you are the first actual astronaut we've spoken to, so this is very exciting and given that the only reason I'm interested in science is 'cause I wanted to be an astronaut once a long time ago, and that sort of forced me down this road.

It's really amazing to talk to you. Can you tell me before we get onto the astronaut stuff, how your. Career began, you know, let's ground ourselves.

What is it about Antarctica that began this epic journey into the stars?

Meganne: I grew up in Australia. I was born in the uk, but grew up in Australia and I didn't actually think about being an astronaut as a job for me, it just didn't really cross my mind, even though I thought it would be probably the coolest thing in the world to do.

I had this kind of love of exploration. I think my whole family was dedicated to adventure. We would often do whitewater rafting trips or camping. And I also loved the sciences in general, so that kind of directed me towards a career in science and research. So I went on and did a bachelor of engineering in industrial chemistry.

And then I did a PhD in the same, so nothing to do with space and absolutely nothing to do with Antarctica either. But after my PhD, I was looking for some international experience, and I found a postdoc at the National Research Council of Italy in Bologna.

So I worked there for a number of years on this material called graphene, using it again for energy applications. But then I started to move into some space applications as well, and I did a couple of parabolic flights, which perhaps we can talk about later. But the key thing here is that the National Research Council of Italy has some permanent observatories.

In Antarctica at Concordia Station, and they send out this email every year asking for expressions of interest for people who want to go and spend a year thereSo I got this email one year. And I thought back to when I was about 12 years old and I'd been at the International Antarctic Center in Christchurch, New Zealand, and I was just absolutely fascinated by it.

At the time, I thought, I don't know, maybe one day I'll make a lot of money and get to go on a cruise to Antarctica. I never actually thought that I could end up working there. And in fact, when I got this email, I thought of that, but then I thought, Hmm, you know what, there's nowhere they'll accept someone like me.

It's not my background. I, I have a background in material science. They're looking for somebody to do atmospheric physics and meteorology. I. So I just dismissed it, but a year later it came round again and I thought, you know what? I'm just gonna send them an email, see if they'll accept an application from someone like me.

They said, yeah, yeah, come and have a chat. Turned out that chat was an interview and next thing I knew, I was in training to go to Antarctica.

Alok: And you mentioned Concordia station, which is where the advert that you'd seen was a mission there. Basically, they call it white Mars. Why do they call it that?

What goes on at Concordia

Meganne: Concordia station is like almost every other Antarctic research base.

It is a research base. You know, we are doing various kinds of research on glaciology, on astrophysics, on geomagnetism, across the spectrum of those natural sciences really. But it is in an extremely isolated location, so it is on the Eastern Antarctic plateau, it's about 1,200 kilometers from the coast.

It's at high altitude, 3,200 meters. And when you're close to the poles, the atmosphere is thinner. So it's like being at 4,000 meters at equatorial latitudes. And so all these things combine to make it an extremely similar environment to what it would be like to go on a mission to the moon or Mars, for example.

The conditions of isolation, confinement, and extreme environment. And so the European Space Agency actually sends a researcher there to do experiments on the rest of the inter crew for that analog environment.

Alok: But when you went to Concordia, of course it wasn't necessarily because you were thinking one day that you would like to go to Mars or anything else.

What was your particular project that you had been given the task of, and remember just going in the timeline, you were working on material science, then graphene, which was then and still is this material of the future.

Meganne: Yeah, so it was kind of like a sabbatical from my normal research career when I went off to Antarctica, because I didn't take anything of the research that I had been doing on graphene. What I was doing there was atmospheric physics and meteorology. So for example, looking after the radiometers.

Measuring the albedo effect. Radiation that comes in from the sun is reflected from the snow. And this kind of data then goes into international databases that help us with information on climate change, for example, and meteorology. So launching the weather balloon every day so that we could get our weather predictions, but also, again, modeling for climate patterns.

So completely different to anything that I had done before.

Alok: What an incredible opportunity though, to be able to go into a completely different field of research.

Meganne: Yeah, that's right. It was an incredible opportunity. It's why I didn't think that I could do it in the first place because it was nothing to do with what I had done before.

But at the same time, I'd worked with a lot of different scientific instruments before, and it's just a matter of transferring those skills. The people who are there on the station during the winter are not necessarily the principal investigators of the experiments. Almost never. So what we need to do is be the hands, be the people that can make those experiments run, make sure the data is getting home correctly.

Alok: What's it like to live in Concordia? I mean, just describe for those of us who have never been or possibly never will go, what is the sort of bizarreness of that place?

Meganne: It was a life-changing experience. I think you probably hear that from everybody who has spent time in Antarctica, but particularly Concordia because it is so isolated and it's one of only three bases in the internal part of Antarctica that is open during the winter, and it's also the only international one.

So you have a combined crew of French and Italians. I was with the Italian crew. And also you have this research doctor from the European Space Agency who could be from any of the member states of ESA. So it's really multicultural. It means that you have to get along well with everybody, or at least work out how to get along well.

But also, of course, the physical conditions we got down to minus 80 degrees Celsius or a wind chill of minus 104. I was working outside every day, so I got to experience that, which was just mad. Also, those, the low atmospheric pressure means that. Just walking up and down stairs, for example, is hard work, and one of the tasks that I had to do was to basically clean off any of the snow and ice that had built up on the various instruments around outside.

And some of these were on a tower, 45 meter high tower, which was about a kilometer away from the base. So my colleague and I would go out there weekly, we'd put our harnesses on, we'd climb the tower. Clean all the instruments and come back down and walk back to the base. That was pretty tough. It was the toughest part of the week, but it was also the best part of the week because we would just let our eyes adjucst to the darkness.

We had a hundred days where the sun didn't rise, so we would take our headlamps off and let our eyes adjust to the darkness and just look at the stars, which were incredible. I mean, the stars were so bright that you could see your shadow in the light of the Milky Way. It's extremely difficult to describe.

There are so many shooting stars and that brightness that when you look down, you look down and you see your shadow and you know, there's no sun, there's no moon, but somehow you're seeing your shadow and that's from the Milky Way, which is incredible.

Alok: What you're describing is beautiful, but also kind of terrifying in some ways because you're talking about being a night in this sort of Antarctic winter where there's no sunlight, at least for months and months on end.

And many people have talked about this time as you know, sometimes driving them mad in a way because you're kind of just alone in the bottom of the world in this strange place. But also then. Climbing up that tower, 45 meters in the dark, doing all these things, doing these experiments, I have to ask, do you have a sort of thrill seeker gene in you somewhere?

Meganne: I definitely like exploration and adventure. It is part of my DNA and most of all, I just like to challenge myself and to look for those limits, both mental and physical.

And interestingly enough, I don't think I've found them yet. I think that's why I want to do more. So I spent a year in Antarctica, but what comes next?

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Alok: Back in Concordia, you weren't training to be an astronaut, and I dunno if you had thought about it at that time, what set you on the path to the place you are now, which is that you're in the European space, agency's astronaut core did you, at that point in that mission itself in Concordia decide, or was it a longer journey?

Meganne: It was working at Concordia station in Antarctica that convinced me to become an astronaut. I was having these inspirational experiences, you know, seeing those stars in that way. I found that I really enjoyed working in an extreme environment. I found that I also really enjoyed being the custodian of other people's experiments.

You know, people who had put their life's work into designing these experiments, but they couldn't be there. To run them themselves. So that's what I was doing. And as I've mentioned, they're not necessarily part of my, let's say, traditional career path. So I learned that I was able to adapt and, you know, do experiments from different kinds of sciences.

And I really loved that. I hadn't done a lot of electronics or programming before. I had about two weeks of handover with the previous winter over crew. I had to pick it all up then. But I loved that. I loved that steep learning curve and. These are the kinds of things that astronauts do on the International Space Station.

So on the one hand I was learning a lot about myself and what I could do, or what I thought I couldn't do, but I could. And at the same time, I was also learning about the European Space Agency and the kind of experiments that they're doing for the future of space exploration. So these things kind of combined and made me convinced that I wanted to apply to become an astronaut.

And it was good timing because for the first time in 13 years, the European Space Agency opened up applications for astronauts two years later.

Alok: I remember that advert that went out from the European Space Agency, and you're right, it is a very rare thing that these windows open. And 13 years before, I think Tim Peake, the British astronaut, had been selected and then went on his very famous expedition up to the Space Station.

I remember following him through his training in Germany and interviewing him before he went, and then also interviewing him when he came back as well. It was such a big, exciting thing to be on the sort of sidelines of this. And I remember that when the advert for your one came up, I was like, am I too old now?

I was advised by my wife not to, but obviously thousands of people applied to that. I know lots of people who applied and it's incredible the class of astronauts that have been selected.

Many British ones too, actually, which is exciting. So tell me what the process of selection was like. You put your application in, it's not an easy process by any means, so just give us a flavor of what it's like to go through the sort of selection and the things they make you do.

Meganne: Yeah, so 22 and a half thousand people applied.

Alok: Wow.

Meganne: I guess it's pretty popular across Europe to want to become an astronaut. It took about 18 months to go through the entire process. It was long. There was a lot of patience involved, a bit of anxiety waiting to find out whether you are through to the next phase or not. But yeah, basically you submit your application.

The background that they asked for is a master's degree in some kind of science, technology, engineering, or medicine, or a test pilot license Plus three is a professional experience. So that was the baseline. And from that, they had these 22 and a half thousand applicants.

We sent in a CV and motivation letter. We had to answer a questionnaire, which included things like, how much time have you spent in extreme environments? So Antarctica definitely helped me add a few points there. We also had to upload a preliminary medical certification, so the kind that you need to have a private pilot's license to kind of begin that screening.

Then they took 1400 people through to the testing round, which was in Hamburg, in Germany, and we had to do tests on maths and physics and logic and hand eye coordination memory. From there, 400 people went through to the psychological testing round, which were interviews with psychologists, one-on-one and a panel.

We had teamwork exercises and we had pair exercises to test our communication skills. Then about a hundred people went through to the medical round, which was a whole week of medical testing. I thought the test that I did to be able to go to Concordia was serious. It was one whole day of medical testing, but no, this was an entire week.

Of basically everything. And then from there, there was a panel interview and finally an interview with the director General of the European Space Agency.

Alok: You do all of this. You beat 2200 and a half thousand people or more to get to this point. And the thing is, of course, you are just at the start because you've got lots of training to do and it's gonna be even more crazy for the next part of it. Right?

So what's the sort of early part of your training been like? You've been in the astronaut core for a few years now. What's the training?

What's the sort of life of an astronaut like now?

Meganne: So in the end, 17 of us were selected back in November, 2022, but the European Space Agency only has five flights guaranteed at the moment. So they selected five, what they call career astronauts, who went immediately to be employed by the European Space Agency, and they began their basic training.

They've now graduated from basic training. Two of them have been assigned their long duration missions and the other three awaiting assignment, including Rosemary Krugen from the uk. The rest of us make up part of the reserve. This is the first time that ESA has had a reserve. One of those reserves is also John McFall from the uk, who's doing a study into the feasibility of an astronaut with a disability.

Initially, we didn't quite know what to expect. We knew that being part of the reserve meant waiting for potential opportunities to come up. And indeed, one of my colleagues, Marcus, from Sweden, almost immediately got called and they told him You have to be in Houston in a week to start training for a mission to the International Space Station.

So in January last year, he went to the ISS. It was amazing because Sweden decided that they wanted to have this short duration mission, and the same is happening with the Polish Reserve Sławosz. He'll be heading to the ISS next month, so it's really exciting. More and more of these opportunities are coming up, but what does that mean for us?

In the meantime? We continue with our day jobs. Mine would've been continuing with my work at the National Research Council of Italy, but I wanted to get more involved in the space sector. So I got a job at the UK Space Agency, and then we do some astronaut reserve training to increase our readiness in the case that we do get called up for a mission.

So this is. Many of the parts of the basic training that the career astronauts went through. So I've just done my first two months of that astronaut reserve training that was in Cologne at the European Astronaut Center. We covered things from human behavior and performance training, so things like leadership, teamwork, communication, those kind of soft skills through to some of the sciences.

We did a number of different biology modules. We also did international space station and human space flight history. We did a lot of presentation skills as well. And we also had our first training in the neutral buoyancy facility, so in the big pool that they have at the European Astronaut Center where we go underwater and start to familiarize ourselves with what it feels like to do a spacewalk or an extravehicular activity.

And so we did our first certification for that.

Alok: You also mentioned earlier you've been on a parabolic flight. Do you wanna tell the listeners what that is and how did you fare?

Meganne: Yeah, so parabolic flights are a way of. We say simulating zero gravity, but it's not actually a simulation.

You are weightless for certain periods of time during this flight. So the airplane, which is just a converted normal, A330 or something like that, does some special maneuvers called parabola. So it climbs up very, very steeply. Then it basically kind of shuts off its engines and goes over the top of its arc, and during the top of its arc you have 22 seconds of weightlessness.

At the bottom of that arc, you actually have 20 seconds of two G, and then you come out the other side and you're in two G again. So you're constantly changing between double gravity and zero gravity, which is why it's also called the vomit comet. And what I was doing was actually testing the materials that I was developing for cooling devices in satellites because they have to be able to work when you're in weightless conditions.

So yeah, my colleagues and I were there testing these materials, trying to avoid the inevitable results of the vomit comet. Actually, it's not that common that you get overwhelmingly sick, but unfortunately, the second time I did a flight, I did, I was very unwell for most of it. And I was worried because this was about the time when I was applying to become an astronaut and I thought, oh no, this is going to be a problem.

But I spoke to the doctor on board and he said, actually, it's a different mechanism to the way that astronauts get sick, so you're okay. Thank goodness for that.

Alok: Well, thank goodness for that. 'cause then you got onto the program and I, um, I have to tell you my vomit Comet story. I went on the vomit comet, the European one in the south of France more than 20 years ago now.

I remember the being given the briefing beforehand in the airport.

You know, the captain was saying basically, uh, you know, this is how it works. Just relax. If you're sick, it doesn't matter. Make sure that you know, your stuff doesn't go everywhere, basically.

I did a physics degree. So I understood about the parabolas, but I thought it would be just one parabola. There's 32 of these para, it's like I'm on a 20,000 foot roller coaster, basically.

I hate roller coasters so much and every whatever it was, few minutes, you'd be weightless. Every few minutes you'd be. Double the weight. And again, someone told me you need to stay as still as possible in the double G bits because you move your heads too much. You got sick. But it was fantastic. It was amazing experience and by about parabola 28, I was getting used to it and I was having a bit of fun, and you see everyone flying around inside on the two minutes of weightlessness. So it's the most incredible experience.

Alok: So you say that right now you are in the reserve and that you are kind of getting into the space industry itself.

You are working with the UK Space Agency at the moment in space commercialization. Just tell us what that means. What does space commercialization involve?

Meganne: I'm specifically in the exploration team, so kind of looking at what commercialization means within exploration. Commercialization has been a huge part of the space industry for things like satellites and so on, but it's a bit more complicated.

When you think about exploration, On the one hand, you have this kind of aspect of commercial procurement, so for example, NASA buys flights from SpaceX to get their astronauts. Into space. So that's kind of the one end of the scale. The other end of the scale would be companies who send something into space, for example, and make money from it.

And there's no kind of need for a government as an anchor customer. So you have these two completely different ends of the scale. And that other end could be, for example, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals in space, the microgravity environment or zero g weightlessness means that crystals grow in a different way.

They grow larger and more uniformly. Which means that there's a lot of drug discovery and development of drugs that can be done. So for example, Merck did this amazing study where they managed to crystallize a chemotherapy drug in space that they couldn't crystallize on Earth. And that means that instead of cancer patients having to go into hospital and spend days even having infusions, they could just inject it intravenously, like diabetes medication.

So it has the potential to really revolutionize health also 3D printing of organs. I mean, there are all these really futuristic sounding things that will come out of space exploration that will be in the future, fully commercial.

Alok: From your own point of view, you know, in terms of how you are sort of thinking about space, how does it map onto the experiences you had in Antarctica? In a way, Antarctica in the beginning of the 20th century was kind of like what space is now in a way, isn't it?

It's unreachable. Only the heroes and heroines go there. It's off the edge of the world basically. And it was the stuff of legend and stories and you know, space has been like that for a while, but now space is gonna become a business as we know. How does your experience in Antarctica prepare you for what you're gonna be doing in space?

Meganne: I think there are a few different aspects here. So first of all, just the personal experience that I had in Antarctica definitely helped me. To kind of understand what astronauts go through in that really extreme isolated environment. Also, how to keep that teamwork dynamic going. Well, all those different sort of elements of living in an isolated, confined environment.

I think it's quite telling that the European Space Agency selected two Concordia alumni, so to speak, in this class of 17 astronauts. The Austrian Reserve also spent a year at Concordia the year before I did. So I think they really value the fact that we've demonstrated that we can live in those kinds of environments.

Alok: It's a good training ground.

Meganne: Exactly. It is a really good training round, and I think agencies are using it more as a training ground for astronauts. Sometimes they send astronauts there just to see what it's like and to do some research down there to get experience in those conditions. I think more broadly, Antarctica is a beautiful model for space exploration.

I think if in the future we look at the moon, the way that we look at Antarctica, I think that would be an amazing thing. Having a series of research bases from different countries that work together with this amazing barter system. It's a beautiful example of international collaboration and I think if we can apply that to future exploration, for example, of the moon, I think that would be fantastic.

Alok: So in Antarctica now, and we've touched on this in previous episodes, but it's worth sort of highlighting in Antarctica now because of the Antarctic treaty signed in the middle of the last century, the continent cannot be mined for resources. It's not allowed, but there are many bases and people doing scientific research of all types as we've discussed.

And you mentioned the barter system. Just talk to us a bit about that. What is that and why does that make Antarctica a special place?

Meganne: Yeah I mean, the whole purpose of Antarctica based on the Antarctic treaty is that we use it for peaceful scientific purposes, and that kind of sets up a very collaborative attitude.

So the bases, they help each other out. If you need a flight, this way we can provide the flight. If you give us a certain amount of fuel, for example, or exchanges between researchers for Different kinds of projects. For example, the Beyond Epica Project, which is Epica, was European project for Ice Core and Antarctica drilled an ICE Core going back 800,000 years of atmospheric history Beyond Epica is going back one and a half million years, and this is a collaboration between a lot of different countries and these countries are pooling their resources to be able to make this happen.

So it's not always necessarily an exchange of money, but it's also an exchange of goods and services that you get. In Antarctica. Now, I don't think this is going to be possible to replicate perfectly on the moon. I think mining of the moon will be a reality. I think there will be commercial usage of the moon and you know, possibly also military usage.

But we really have to set it up now in a way that it's not going to be detrimental to either the moon or the Earth. And I think the Antarctic treaty is a great model for that.

Alok: So people like Scott and Shackleton and Amundsen and Mawson, these sort of pioneers of Antarctic aspiration about a hundred years ago were the ones sending off missions and kind of doing the amazing things.

Do you see yourself in that tradition of really pushing the boundaries of where humans can and should go? You talked earlier about, you know, looking for your own limits and not quite finding them. Space really is somewhere that pushes all human limits beyond anything, doesn't it?

Meganne: I think so. Absolutely. It does push those limits as a whole. I dunno if I would see myself as a pioneer necessarily. There are hundreds of people that have gone to space before me and done amazing things, but if I can just. Push that little bit further so we can keep expanding and keep exploring and keep pushing those limits, then that's what I aim to do, and I think that's what exploration is these days.

It's not quite how it was back in the days of the explorers that you mentioned. We have a lot more resources. There's a huge crew that work towards it on the ground, so I think there's a lot more support in place nowadays.

Alok: There are some grand ambitions around the world in space agencies to sort of not only get back to the moon, but then go to Mars and who knows where else?

Where do you think your ambitions lie on that front? You know, say that you're selected, you go to Space Station, they say, right, Meganne, you're gonna be on a mission to the moon. Do you say, yes, you're gonna be on Mission to Mars? Do you say Yes?

Meganne: Oh yes, yes. I say yes.

Alok: There was no hesitation whatsoever.

Meganne: Well, okay, maybe there's a little bit of hesitation when we talk about Mars, so if we ignore the technological difficulties for a moment, say that we've overcome all of those.

If the mission is planned to be: Go to Mars, do some work, come back again. Yes, I'm in. I don't want to do a mission that is not intended to return. I accept the risk that I may not return, but I don't want a one way mission to Mars. Thank you.

Alok: I mean, even a return mission to Mars will probably be three or four years.That's quite a long time.

Meganne: It would be a long time. It takes sort of six to nine months to get there. You need to spend some time on the surface and then the same amount of time to get back again with all the difficulties that that entails. But that doesn't really daunt me. I spent a year at Concordia Station.

It's a lot closer than Mars is, but it has given me a taste of what that might be like, and I want more.

Alok: Just a final question for you and one that we ask all our guests, and I think it's very poignant asking you because in a way you want to go beyond Antarctica because that's just where your desires and ambitious go. But what is it about Antarctica that matters to you most?
Why do you think it's a place that we should care about?

Meganne: I think it's the definition of exploration and discovery, and that is what I'm passionate about. I mean, there's so much that we haven't explored yet. I mean, you can also talk about the depths of the ocean, but Antarctica is a really special place where we can learn to live and work.

We have learned to live and work in some of the most extreme conditions that humans can encounter, and so if we can learn to live and work there like we have, then we can learn to live and work on other planetary bodies.

Alok: Meganne Christian has been absolutely fascinating talking to you. Thank you so much for your time.

Meganne: Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.