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“Houston We Have a Podcast” is the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center from Houston, Texas, home for NASA’s astronauts and Mission Control Center. Listen to the brightest minds of America’s space agency – astronauts, engineers, scientists and program leaders – discuss exciting topics in engineering, science and technology, sharing their personal stories and expertise on every aspect of human spaceflight. Learn more about how the work being done will help send humans forward to the Moon and on to Mars in the Artemis program.

On Episode 190, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who launched to the International Space Station on April 9, 2021, shares his experiences from his first flight to the orbiting laboratory and what he looks forward to for his second flight. This episode was recorded on January 14, 2021.

Transcript

Gary Jordan (Host): Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 190, “Before His Second Flight.” I’m Gary Jordan and I’ll be your host today. If you are new to the show, we bring in NASA experts to talk about all different parts of our space agency and sometimes we get lucky enough to bring in astronauts to tell their story. So today, we’re talking with Mark Vande Hei. He’s a U.S. Astronaut who is about to launch to the International Space Station for his second-long duration spaceflight. He happened to be one of the very first gets we had on the podcast back in Episode 13, “Before His First Flight,” which happened to be the title of that episode. So, in this discussion we talked about his background and anticipation of heading to space, basically continuing the conversation from 2017. We discussed how his first flight ended up going and what he did aboard. We discussed his return and what he’s been up to here in NASA since landing in the Kazak steppe. And of course, what he’s looking forward to this time around, and how the landscape of the International Space Station has changed in the few short years he spent back on the planet. So, here’s a little bit more about astronaut Mark Vande Hei. Enjoy!

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Host: Mark Vande Hei, thanks for coming back on Houston We have a Podcast.

Mark Vande Hei: Oh, it’s good to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Host: Hey, I’m just going to pick up from where we last left off. You were one of our first astronaut guests, actually, on this podcast. You were Episode 13. We called that “Before His First Flight.” And really, we had that conversation up through the moment right before you were heading over to — I think it was either Moscow or Baikonur at the time, but really just before your first launch. I want to pick up the conversation from right there. So, from when you last left the studio and you were getting ready for your first launch, what were some of the things that you were doing, some of the thoughts going through your head?

Mark Vande Hei: Oh gosh, that’s a long — a lot’s happened since then, of course. So, before launch, there’s a lot of ceremonial stuff along with the final exams, of course. I guess I’ll just go to the really interesting part and try to keep this answer short. The launch. So, the launch, for me, happened 0 Dark Thirty, I can’t remember the exact time. I just do remember it was a not a normal time for me to be awake. Very emotional when you’re driving away to say goodbye to everybody. And there’s a huge crowd of people cheering you on and you feel like a rock star and then it was shocking though how excited you could feel and then it gets really quiet on the bus and it’s dark out and you’re driving out into the desert in Kazakhstan to a rocket that’s all by itself. And then we got out to the rocket and we got on and I remember thinking to myself, “Oh my gosh, this thing is leaving in –” it was less than two hours and I thought to myself, “I have a lot to do.” So, we got into the spacecraft and they close us in, get us securely buckled down and then everybody else leaves and you’re just sitting out there. So, I guess what I’m trying to convey is a sense of tremendous community and celebratory, and then shockingly quiet and isolated.

Host: Wow.

Mark Vande Hei: And so that was an emotional flip that I didn’t expect. Once you get into the process of going through all the checklist to prepare for the launch, that starts seeming, you’ve practiced this multiple times, you’re very focused and even the launch, the launch was so smooth that the biggest shock to me was that nothing went wrong, because all of our training has things going wrong every moment. And so, I was constantly scanning, trying to find the problem that was in the system somewhere because that’s what I was trained to do. And there was always something hidden if I just looked carefully enough. But nope, everything worked perfectly. So, I kind of wanted a better story. It wasn’t shaky enough. It wasn’t violent enough. It was really smooth. And then when you get to orbit and the thrusters are turned off, you really are in a free fall. That’s what being in orbit is. You’re just falling towards the Earth, but constantly missing it. And it shocked me how it felt just like being at the top of a roller coaster, when you’re coming up over the top of a roller coaster and you rise up in the straps. Of course, I was strapped down very tightly. So, when you in a roller coaster, hopefully you’re strapped down very tightly too. And if the roller coaster comes over the top and goes from going up to down rapidly, you’ll rise up in the seat. Well, that’s what I experienced. The reason you feel that in a roller coaster is because you’re in a momentary free fall, very short time. For me, it was exactly like that, but it continued for hours. So, that was just a strange sensation that it kept going. And also, kind of had this feeling like I was rotating forward, but very slowly I was rotating forward too. The sunlight was interesting. It’s gorgeous, very bright. But there’s something a little unsettling about it. And actually, went to a preview in Washington D.C. for “First Man.” And I watched the movie and I was really impressed with how they conveyed that feeling in that movie of being in a capsule. And I said, “something about the lighting that you guys did was great.” And the director told me, “Oh yeah, we had a NASA consultant. They said, “Make sure you use spotlighting.” I said, “Spotlighting? What are you talking about?” He said, “Yeah, spotlighting. Because the sun is a spotlight when you’re out in space.” And it occurred to me that every time I’ve experienced any sunlight before I was in orbit, it was always scattered by the atmosphere of the Earth. So, you never really get sunlight that’s just direct from one spot. It’s always coming from multiple directions because it hits other parts of the atmosphere and gets bent in your direction too. So that’s why it was beautiful but weird, if that makes sense. And I couldn’t put my finger on what is unsettling about this. So, it was very stark brightness and stark darkness in the shadows as we quickly would move as the spacecraft would go to different angles with the sun. And they had this little window next to me. Getting to the space station, I’ll never forget looking out over my left shoulder and seeing the solar rays, much bigger than I ever expected them to be. I lost my composure a little bit, because I was so excited and said, “Wow,” during a moment in the spaceflight when we were all supposed to be very quiet and concentrating intensely on the data that we were seeing, the telemetry. Life on the space station was really busy. Got to do lots of spacewalks. Vehicle — did one vehicle capture. Coming back to Earth, I guess, I really what I want to do is tell you a few things instead of going on for 25 minutes. And then if there’s something that’s interesting to you, then you can ask me more. So, I’m going to very quickly go through this.

Host: OK.

Mark Vande Hei: The landing process, I didn’t realize how afraid I was while I was waiting for the parachute to open and had nothing to do but wait for the parachute to open, until the parachute actually opened and I felt so giddy, because I was super, super happy. That was the first time I had let myself realize that this was actually going to succeed. I was also very shocked with the impact with the ground. In fact, my immediate emotion was I felt angry. I felt like someone had just hit me in the back of the head with a two-by-four, because it was a hard hit. We were fine. Everybody was safe. It was very safe. But it was shocking.

Host: Yeah, they say it’s like something like a 30 mile an hour car crash is like the — is like kind of the feeling.

Mark Vande Hei: I’ve never been in a 30 mile an hour car crash, but it certainly caught my attention.

Host: Yeah.

Mark Vande Hei: In fact, I made a mistake. One of the things the Russians tell you to prepare for that landing is make sure your head is back in the seat and your mouth is closed. You don’t want to bite your tongue if you hit hard. And I thought to myself, “Well my muscles will probably be weak enough, I won’t have had to balance my head. So, keeping my head in the seat shouldn’t be a problem. So, just remember to keep your mouth closed.” I did remember that I should have my head in the seat. But the — I thought we had about ten seconds before we hit, and I looked up to check something out and then we hit.

Host: Oh.

Mark Vande Hei: So, I hit my head really hard.

Host: Snapped it back. Yeah.

Mark Vande Hei: Yeah. So, I actually was wondering if I made a big enough mistake that I was going to have a concussion, but I was fine.

Host: OK.

Mark Vande Hei: It was no big deal.

Host: While you were in space though, you had — I mean it was 100 — let me see, I have the number here somewhere.

Mark Vande Hei: Talking about number of science experiments?

Host: I was going to say number of days, 168.

Mark Vande Hei: Oh yes, yes.

Host: But I’m sure you did a couple hundred science experiments as well.

Mark Vande Hei: I don’t know how many I personally did, I know as a team some of which happened to be without our interaction even, there was 234 science experiments that happened while we were onboard.

Host: Yeah, I like the way you described it too, because I think you’ve done multiple interviews since you’ve been back, and you know, one of the top things is you know, what are some of the science investigations that you did. And you always describe yourself as, you know, I was more of like a — there’s the lab hands, you know, I was just like the hands just kind of doing the work. That’s how you felt, right?

Mark Vande Hei: Yeah, I call it being a laboratory technician.

Host: Technician, yeah.

Mark Vande Hei: My job was to make sure that all the science experiments had the resources they needed. Very rarely was I an observer.

Host: Yeah.

Mark Vande Hei: A lot of times I was just making sure the videos were set up so that they could do the observation. Certainly, wasn’t doing any data analysis or writing papers like a scientist would do.

Host: Yeah, and there was — but there was a lot of work, right. Because you were just — you were the one lab technician for all these different scientists that had all these different priorities that they wanted to do.

Mark Vande Hei: Because there’s so many experiments going on simultaneously, yeah there’s no lack of work. In fact, there’s more work than we can get done.

Host: Yeah. Always a task list, right. That’s just hard to get to. You did a couple spacewalks as well, and I know those were a highlight for you during your first Expedition.

Mark Vande Hei: Yeah, they were, yeah. Good experiences. Everyone I was happy to start and everyone I was happy to finish.

Host: What were some of those lessons that you were learning? Because you’re about to go back to the International Space Station, I don’t know if spacewalks are on the table, but they certainly could be. So, some of those things you know you’re going to take forward with you on those spacewalks given your recent experience.

Mark Vande Hei: So, if I do another spacewalk, things that I will continue to do differently than my first spacewalk is move gently. So, as you can imagine, training under water you overcome water drag. So, every time you want to start moving you impart a force and the water is going to stop you. So, you have to keep adding force to continue moving. If you keep adding force to continue moving in space, you’re just going to keep accelerating. That’s undesirable. So, my first spacewalk I put in a lot of force to start moving. I had to take out all that force in the opposite direction to stop moving. So, I worked really, really hard. So, when I get back there, I’m sure I’ll very gently start motion, make sure I maintain contact, but you can just keep fingertip contact as you wait to get to the right spot, assuming your aim was good enough.

Host: Yeah.

Mark Vande Hei: Another thing that became very helpful on spacewalks after my first was instead of being really, really afraid of letting go with both hands from the space station — now, just in case someone is concerned, when we let go with both hands from the space station, it’s only after we put down a tether that keeps the space station within arms’ reach. So, I’m not talking about just letting go and hoping that I just stay in the vicinity. There’s lots of safety features to make sure we stay safe. But, there’s a big difference between being in the middle of rotating yourself and then letting go while you’re rotating, because you’ll start to just do a spiral.

Host: Yeah.

Mark Vande Hei: That’s very uncomfortable. Versus stopping yourself for three seconds, making sure there’s no relative motion between you and the space station and then slowly letting go with your fingers. Because once you’re done letting go, you’ll stay exactly there. There’s a little bit of force from the safety tether, but that didn’t seem like a big impact to me. And that makes it much more casual.

Host: It sounds like there’s a lot — so you trained a lot in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. There’s a lot that you can learn under water. But it seems like all these lessons are just that little gap between doing it under water and doing it for real.

Mark Vande Hei: Absolutely.

Host: The motions that you make. I mean that’s really the difference there.

Mark Vande Hei: Yes. Every — the NBL does an incredibly good job of training us. There’s just a few little nuances that they can’t quite replicate and yeah, you can learn a lot.

Host: Well, let’s go back to — you had that hard landing over in Kazakhstan. What have you been up to since, since you returned to Houston?

Mark Vande Hei: So, everybody who comes back from a spaceflight does a process of debriefings, rehabilitation, and also public events. We travel around for a bit. Share your experience. For me, that ended with me going to Washington D.C. to work as a technical assistant for Bill Gerstenmaier. So, I did that for a while. That was super interesting. I got to see how things work in Washington D.C. at NASA and I very much appreciate the hard work that those folks do. And then I came back to Houston again and worked as the EVA and Robotics assistant to the chief astronaut until I got this assignment.

Host: Wow. OK, so you — I mean, it sounds like a lot of that time has been — so some of those lessons that you learned from your spacewalk. What do you do as the — I guess, leading EVAs and Robotics? What are some of your tasks?

Mark Vande Hei: So, one task is giving recommendations to the chief astronaut for who will do spacewalks.

Host: Oh OK.

Mark Vande Hei: And of course, that comes along with staffing it with the trainers and staffing it with the flight directors to see if anybody has got concerns, but then giving the chief astronaut a recommendation that it will actually work. Same thing with robotic operations on the space station. A big part of the job was also providing some continuity in what the ground team should expect from astronauts. For example, we had a lot — we had 13 spacewalks in a year, recently. And there’s a lot of desire to do spacewalks really, really quickly. And my job in some cases was to share what situation that would create for the people actually executing the spacewalk. And to talk to them, if we ended up doing things pretty rapidly or maybe we decided we’re going to go ahead and have to do it this quickly, make sure everyone understood that this is something we haven’t done before with space station crew members, who are different from space shuttle crew members. Because space shuttle crew members used to get trained multiple times on a very specific EVA, whereas space station crew members don’t get trained as much on a specific task, but they’ll get trained for years on generic tasks and have to adapt to whatever we tell them that they need to do. Of course, they’re also spending more time in space so that has effects as well. And then training wise, so we had an astronaut candidate class that was finishing up as I was still working in that job. And what does it mean to say that somebody is certified to do EVAs? Or certified to operate the robotic arm? Things like that. Making sure we had a consistent grading and were fair, both maintaining a really high standard, but also making sure it’s the same standard for everybody.

Host: That’s very true. Yeah. And I didn’t really think about the tasks of a spacewalk. I guess you’re right. I mean when you’re doing a shuttle, you train exactly for what you’re going to do. There is a lot of challenges, not only — and you described it so well — not only with training, providing a generic training so that you can adapt to whatever task needs to be accomplished, but if you’re talking about so many EVAs, so many spacewalks in a short period of time, when you yourself are in space for a long period of time, it could feel a little bit draining. I don’t know if you’ve experienced that yourself in space, just having to do so many tasks. We talked about spacewalks. We talked about different science experiments. If you felt a sense of, “man, there’s a lot to do in just these short six months.”

Mark Vande Hei: I definitely felt like there’s a lot to do. I felt very fortunate because I think between my first and second spacewalk there was — it was a five-day center to center. So, hatch opening on the first spacewalk to hatch opening on the second spacewalk was five days. I thought that was perfect, because that also happened over the course — during that time I had a weekend off, which gave me a whole weekend to study for the next spacewalk and to think about it. So that was ideal for me. And I think had I had spacewalks four months apart, it would have been harder to carry the lessons learned from the first spacewalk into the second spacewalk. So, they were so quick for me that that was really helpful, but far enough apart I didn’t have any lingering effects. I didn’t have — sometimes people lose fingernails after a spacewalk. You can have a lot of hand soreness. I had enough — I didn’t have anything serious enough that I wasn’t completely recovered before the second spacewalk. So, we got to pay attention to that having physical recovery and enough mental time to get mentally prepared for the next thing too. But for me it was, I was very fortunate. Months later I did another spacewalk. I can’t remember how quickly they were in succession, the third and fourth one, but I was definitely a fan of being able to — once I start spacewalks, focus on that and do nothing else, ideally, as opposed to flipping between science and spacewalk stuff.

Host: Yup. A lot has happened since you’ve returned, when you talked about, you know, your main task. You did a little bit of time at headquarters and then you came back, and you were working EVAs and robotics. But a lot has happened, especially in the astronaut world. We have commercial crew astronauts. We’ve assigned astronauts to walk on the Moon. There’s just a lot happening in your office. Talk about that landscape from when you landed to right now. Just like, how the astronaut office itself has really changed.

Mark Vande Hei: It’s interesting you mentioned those things as changes to the astronaut office, because I think the thing that feels like the biggest effect is COVID right now. Because we’re not seeing each other. I’m fortunate because I’ve been going to training and I get to see people that are making sure they’re well protected and that I’m well protected, but I get to interact with people. But if you’re not assigned to a flight, you’re doing your job from home, just like everybody else. And it’s challenging just like for everybody else. It’s a very dynamic time in the astronaut office, which if I was a new astronaut I would think, it’s the perfect time to be here because opportunities are just going to blossom.

Host: Yeah.

Mark Vande Hei: There’s going to be challenges, but that’s also always opportunities for growth and gives you great ways to contribute. So, I think there’s a lot to look forward to right now.

Host: I know you’re not really together then because of COVID, right. You’re not seeing each other as often, but I wonder if you’ve experienced — you talked about the new astronauts, I’m thinking of the astronauts that came in 2017, or as candidates and now they’re astronauts and some of them have already been assigned to a few flights. I wonder if you’re seeing that from that class of astronauts, a sense of excitement on what we have ahead of us?

Mark Vande Hei: Oh my gosh, yes. Many of them are assigned to that Artemis team —

Host: Yeah.

Mark Vande Hei: — to be ready to walk on the Moon someday. That’s certainly exciting. Some are assigned to be ready for a Soyuz potentially or back or some are primary crew members for Dragon spacecraft if I understand correctly. Yeah, there’s a lot going on.

Host: Very much so. Now, going back to you, you have this flight coming up. You’re going to be flying Soyuz again. What are some of the next things that you’re looking forward to? Is it much of the same? Has it changed a little bit?

Mark Vande Hei: It’s going to be very different for me.

Host: OK.

Mark Vande Hei: Knock on wood, being on that Soyuz crew because this time I’ll be in the right seat as opposed to the left seat. The left seat was being a copilot. So, I was fully engaged last time in flying the spacecraft. And sometimes — most of the time I was pressing the buttons on behalf of the commander, something I definitely didn’t want to mess up. This time, my responsibilities in the Soyuz are going to be very minimal. I think every two hours, if I remember correctly, I have to pump the condensate out, 120 pumps in two minutes.

Host: All right.

Mark Vande Hei: That’s my job and I jokingly will be like, “Is it time? Is it time? Can I pump the condensate yet?” So, I’ll be a lot more relaxed.

Host: Cool. Cool.

Mark Vande Hei: And when I get to the space station, I’m hoping that will continue. My goal is to do what people tell me. And I expect a lot of changes and I expect, again, things change but I hope my contribution is going to be just rolling with those changes and keeping a real steady sense of joy about this opportunity and doing my job. I’m probably spending — I have fewer personal goals this time when I go to the space station. Like last time I had all kinds of things I needed to take pictures of. This time — and that actually became a stressor because I had limited time and every week, I had a to-do list I was trying to get through. This time I just want to be a little more peaceful about the whole thing and try to enjoy it. Maybe — I didn’t journal last time. I would love to start journaling more and try to capture — for me, my assumption is that this is going to be my last opportunity to do something like this, so I want to do as good a job as I can to record it for myself if no one else.

Host: That’s incredible personal goals. It seems like you’ve put a lot of thought into the things that you want to do. Are you sharing this with — I’m sure there’s like, I’m going back to the newer class of astronauts, right, you’re thinking about this as your last flight and I’m sure like a lot of the newer astronauts are looking forward to doing exactly what you did on your first flight, like, “I have so much I want to do. I have this huge task list.” I wonder if there’s a benefit to that. Say, absolutely you should do that on your first flight. Or maybe, maybe this next flight that you’re talking about, take it easy, journal, you know, decrease stress maybe overall in your workload. Maybe that’s a benefit that you can pass on to some of the newer astronauts. Actually, it might be good to take your time.

Mark Vande Hei: It depends on the person.

Host: OK.

Mark Vande Hei: There’s Norishige Kanai was on the space station with me.

Host: Yeah.

Mark Vande Hei: He would work on the weekends and work on the task list on the weekends and I just didn’t do that. That was my free time and I had my own personal task list. And then I pulled him aside one day and said, “Hey –“, his call sign is “Nemo.” That’s how my classmates all call him “Nemo.” I said, “Nemo, you know you don’t have to do this on the weekend, right.” And he said, “Yeah, but it’s actually more pleasant for me to work when I can do it at my own pace.” So, he gained a sense of peace from getting things done, but without any stress of needing to get it done. So that’s why I say everybody is different. Nemo was different from me as far as what our needs were. And I would say even my needs on that first flight might be different from my needs on the second flight. So, we’re constantly changing human beings.

Host: Wow. Yeah, you just find that thing that gives you that sense of peace, because I guess that’s an important thing to carry with you. You know you’re going to be on station for a long time, so you have to find that thing, whatever it may be, because it sounds like it’s unique per crew member, but the thing that’s going to keep you — you know, keep you going for that long period of time.

Mark Vande Hei: Yup.

Host: Very cool. Well, Mark Vande Hei, I think that’s all the questions I have. I want to wish you the best of luck on your journey and Godspeed. Thanks for talking to me today.

Mark Vande Hei: Thanks very much for having me come today. I appreciate it. Good talking to you again.

Host: Thanks.

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Host: Hey, thanks for sticking around. Really enjoyed this conversation that I had with Mark Vande Hei today. I hope you did too. You get to watch his launch live on NASA.gov/ntv. So, make sure to go check out that schedule to see when you can tune into the launch of Mark Vande Hei and his crewmates at the International Space Station. I’m sure he’ll be sharing his journey in space. If you want to follow his story, he’s on Twitter @Astro_Sabot, S-A-B-O-T. You can checkout us and many other NASA podcasts at NASA.gov/podcasts. And you can talk to us, Houston We Have a Podcast, On the NASA Johnson Space pages of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. If you want to talk to us use the hashtag #AskNASA on your favorite platform and you can submit an idea to the show or ask a question. Just make sure to mention it’s for us at, Houston We Have a Podcast. This episode was recorded on January 14, 2021. Thanks to Alex Perryman, Pat Ryan, Norah Moran, Belinda Pulido, Jennifer Hernandez and John Streeter. Thanks again to Mark Vande Hei for coming on the show. Godspeed, we’ll be back next week.