Iowa girl reached for the stars and became one of NASA’s
She’s spent most time in space of any American
Star Trek’s Capt. James T. Kirk came from Iowa, but a real-life American space hero from that state has actually gone where no man — or woman — has gone before.
NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who was raised on a farm near Iowa’s smallest town of Beaconsfield, soared to become one of the most successful astronauts in American history.
She’s spent 665 days in space, the most time away from Earth by an American and the most time in space by a woman from any country. She’s the oldest female astronaut and the first female commander of an International Space Station mission. And she’s completed the most spacewalks by a woman, among other feats.
At the end of her space career, she can look back at a truly remarkable life, one that’s given her a unique perspective on our spaceship Earth.
“Looking at the Earth from above gives you a very real sense of how fragile our planet is,” she said. “We have a global responsibility to take care of it. It’s the only home we have, so far.”
Whitson is the star of the 10th episode of the National Geographic Channel series One Strange Rock, which airs at 10 ET/PT Monday.
Five decades ago, long before her thousands of orbits around the Earth aboard the International Space Station, Whitson was an Iowa farm girl fascinated by science. As a 9-year-old in 1969, she saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon, one of her most vivid memories as a child.
From then on, she was hooked. “First, becoming an astronaut was a dream, then it became a goal,” she said.
After studying biology and chemistry in college and biochemistry in graduate school, she joined NASA in 1989. It was 13 more years before she went into space.
Noting the difficulty of becoming an astronaut, she said the “odds were so against it happening at all. Luckily, I had no idea how hard it would be.”
Her most recent — and final voyage into space — was as commander of the historic, nine-and-a-half-month mission of 2016-17, of which she said there were 18,000 applications for 12 positions.
Aboard the International Space Station, she contributed to hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science, welcomed several cargo spacecraft delivering tons of supplies and research experiments and oversaw six spacewalks to perform maintenance and upgrades to the station.
Whitson participated in four of those six spacewalks, bringing her career total to a record 10 for a female astronaut.
Whitson has been an inspiration and pioneer, not only for female astronauts — but for males, too. “She is by far the most hardworking and strong-willed person I’ve ever met,” said European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet when Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people of 2018.
“She never accepts limitations,” Pesquet said. “And she’s a genuinely good person: passionate but kind, fearless but gentle, with all the heart you want a leader to have in order to follow her into battle.”