Peggy Whitson – A Look at a Trailblazing Woman in Space

Astronaut Peggy Whitson gave an interview from the International Space Station in December 2016. Discussing what it felt like to celebrate Christmas in zero gravity as she looked down at the blue waters and the clouds and landmasses of the earth rushing by below her, she said the experience had provided her with a new depth of understanding about the meaning of the phrase “Peace on Earth.”

Whitson told Radio Iowa that this perspective provided her with a tangible sense of the meaninglessness of artificial boundaries. “We’re a planet, we are a people,” she said, a single human species that “should be together and at peace.”

A career filled with “firsts” and “mosts”

Peggy Whitson, a leading American biologist and astronaut, has broken a number of records in her lifetime. In 2017, she broke the record for the number of cumulative days spent living and working in space for any American astronaut, and for any female astronaut. Her total: 665 days.

On her return to the International Space Station in 2016, on the third of her three long-term rotations there, Whitson became the oldest woman—at age 56—to spend time in space, the first woman to command the ISS twice, and the station’s first National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) science officer.

 She broke the record for the longest single space mission by a woman—289 days—in 2017, before enthusiastically cheering on colleague Christina Koch for surpassing that record more than two years later. Whitson still holds the title for the most space walks by a woman with a career total of 10.

Whitson’s many accolades include induction into the Iowa Aviation Hall of Fame, four NASA Exceptional Service Medals, a NASA Silver Snoopy Award, and an American Astronautical Society Randolph Lovelace II Award. She was Glamour magazine’s 2017 Female of the Year, and her hometown of Mount Ayr, Iowa, named a science center at her old school in her honor.

A scientist becomes an astronaut

Born in Iowa in 1960, Peggy Whitson earned degrees in chemistry and biology from Iowa Wesleyan College and completed her PhD in biochemistry at Houston’s Rice University. In her mid-twenties, she accepted a role as a research associate with NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Over the course of her pre-astronaut career, she focused on how spaceflight challenges the biological capacities of humans and other living organisms.

She went on to serve as a supervisor with a NASA medical contracting company and as a member of the JSC’s Biomedical Operations and Research division. In addition, she served as a deputy division chief in the JSC’s Medical Sciences Division. Additionally, Whitson worked with Soviet and Russian counterparts on collaborative scientific projects.

She entered a two-year training period as an astronaut candidate in 1996, then worked in NASA’s Astronaut Office as part of its Operations Planning team. She participated in her first space flight—which would last for 182 days—in 2002, serving as a flight engineer as a member of Expedition 5 to the ISS. On board the ISS, she served as the first NASA ISS science officer, directing dozens of experiments focused on human biology and microgravity.

Bravery at 8 G’s

Whitson’s second space flight began in 2007. For this effort, she traveled to the ISS aboard Soyuz TMA-11, along with Russian and Malaysian colleagues, as the commander of NASA’s Expedition 16 mission. Taking a position as the ISS’ first female commander, she oversaw the expansion of crew space aboard the station and returned home after close to 192 days in space.

The descent to Earth of the Soyuz TMA-11 presented technical problems for the crew, with the equipment module refusing to disengage from the re-entry module correctly, resulting in dangerous conditions for the astronauts aboard.

The craft’s perilously steep descent produced an unusually rough landing in Kazakhstan, some 300 miles shy of the intended target. Local Kazakhs soon pulled the crew from the spacecraft. Whitson later described working alongside her colleagues to try to stay calm and gain control of a situation that resembled a rolling car crash. She remembered the terror of smelling smoke all around her as the landing craft tumbled end over end and lost communication with ground control, while she felt the crushing grip of gravity—with eight times its normal force on Earth—for an entire minute. Fortunately, she emerged with no lasting physical damage.

Whitson then spent three years as the first female—and first non-military—chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office, with responsibility for directing the crew selection and training process until 2012. In 2016, she served as part of Expedition 51, which returned her to the ISS. For part of the mission, she was in command of the station for the second time.

Speaking up for science and human cooperation

As one of the most recognizable public faces of science, Whitson became a spokesperson for reason, logic, and good citizenship when she offered some advice in May 2020 for people enduring the challenges of physical isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. Living in space had presented her with a similar experience, one that demonstrated to her the importance of staying focused on your goals and acting with a focus on the bigger picture of what is good for family, friends, communities, and humankind.

She urged those quarantining at home to “look at it in terms of the long haul.” By following public health guidance to quarantine and minimizing outside contacts, “we are saving lives.”