Garrett Reisman, Astronaut, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX

In March 2008, astronaut Garrett Reisman flew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour to the International Space Station, where he spent 95 days living and working in space. After performing his first spacewalk to help install the Space Station’s new robotic manipulator, called Dextre, he returned to Earth in June aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery.

NASA Tech Briefs: You began your professional career at TRW as a spacecraft guidance navigation and control engineer. How did you go from there to becoming an astronaut? Did you approach NASA, or did they recruit you?

Garrett Reisman: No, NASA doesn’t really do any recruiting. We have more people applying than we have spots available, so I definitely applied to them. It was something I always dreamed about doing, since I was a little kid, but I didn’t really get serious about applying or anything like that until I was almost finished with college and I realized that this was something that was within the realm of possibility.

When I was in grad school at Cal Tech I put in my application, and there was a requirement for a couple of years of related work experience. So I thought, well, maybe a couple of years of being a graduate student would count for that. I sent in my application then and I didn’t get too far, but I got farther than I thought I would. I thought, NASA’s probably going to laugh at me for not having the field work requirements, but it worked out okay. The second time was when I was with TRW and that time I made it all the way through the application process, and through the interview, and I got selected.

NTB: In June 2003 you participated in a two-week training exercise called NEEMO where you lived on the ocean floor 3.5 miles off the coast of Key Largo, Florida in an underwater laboratory called Aquarius. Describe for our readers what that experience was like and some of the challenges you faced.

Reisman:That was amazing! That was one of the most remarkable things – probably the most remarkable thing – I got to do, up until I blasted off in the Space Shuttle. We moved down there for two weeks and we were going outside making scuba dives almost every day, and we had these giant windows in our habitat so we could see all the fish outside. It was a really healthy reef where we were, so it was remarkable how much sea life there was outside the window. It was very good preparation for spaceflight because we use the same types of tools and we do a lot of the experiments that we did down there. I ended up doing the same things up on the Space Station. The food was the same. We tried to make it as similar to flying in space as possible. I even had the same commander that I would later fly with as part of our mission, so it was great preparation and also a fantastic experience.

NTB: You recently spent 95 days aboard the International Space Station, orbiting the Earth at a speed of 17,400 miles per hour. What is it like living in that environment?