She might have retired from her former life in orbit but spacewoman and scuba diver NICOLE STOTT is still on a mission – to make us all aware of the vital connections between the cosmos and our watery world. She talks to Steve Weinman
Guests at COMO Cocoa Island in the Maldives were pleased recently to be joined on their dives by none other than a veteran astronaut – someone who had experienced everything from drift dives through sat-diving to space-walks in her time.
Even all these decades into the Space Age, at a time when well-heeled citizens are making their own fleeting trips beyond zero gravity, professional spacemen and women remain a rare breed.
For her part, Nicole Stott was enjoying the Indian Ocean reef-diving and a fresh opportunity to discuss her favourite topic: the multiple links between the oceans and space.
The South Male Atoll resort, with its 33 overwater villas, was hosting what was billed as an “Island Astronaut Camp”, with Nicole’s stay the result of a partnership between COMO and the twin initiatives close to her heart, Space For A Better World and the Space For Art Foundation.
Accompanied by instructors from the PADI Cocoa Island dive-centre, Nicole and the guests explored sites such as Shambhala Reef, close to the resort, and Bay Reef, set in a 12m-deep lagoon and featuring a thriving array of coral-propagation frames.
The divers were favoured by the local marine life: blacktip reef sharks, Napoleon wrasse and both hawksbill and green turtles put in appearances, along with a supporting cast of moray eels, oriental sweetlips, giant clams, anemonefish, cleaner shrimps, bannerfish, lionfish and butterflyfish.
After their dives, the guests were able to dine with Nicole under the stars and continue their discussions into the night.
“We’ve been fortunate to do these Island Astronaut Camps in several of COMO’s beautiful locations around the world,” says Nicole. “One of the things we love about this work with COMO is that they understand the connection between sea and space – that we live on an ocean planet.
“They appreciate that the kids visiting their locations deserve a meaningful experience, and they welcome the children from the local communities to participate. This is very important to us – and, if they can’t get the local kids to the resort location, they prioritise getting us out to the local schools and communities.
“We’re also very grateful that these locations allow us the opportunity to get in the water to dive, and that we can incorporate conservation activities like coral-restoration, planting mangroves and beach clean-ups.”
Late to scuba
Nicole Stott discovered scuba a little late in life, she says. “I was in my 30s and a group of friends I worked with at the Kennedy Space Centre all went to PADI classes together. Then we all did our first Open Water check-out dive together on Delray Beach.
“The whole time, I was commenting on how I couldn’t believe I’d waited so long to start diving!”
That was half a lifetime ago. New York-born Nicole, now 61, might have been working for NASA but it would take some time before she was selected to be an astronaut. “I think I always appreciated the connection between what we experience in the ocean and what we experience from space,” she says. “Turns out to be more connected than I expected.”
Her career had lifted off in 1987 when, armed with an aeronautical engineering degree, she joined Pratt & Whitney as a structural design engineer. She quickly moved on to join NASA at Kennedy in Florida, and in 1998 transferred to Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas.
Selection as a NASA mission specialist in 2000 meant two years of training and evaluation before being assigned to the Astronaut Office Station Operations Branch. Space was beckoning, and Nicole finally became flight engineer on International Space Station expeditions 20 and 21, and a mission specialist on the connected Space Shuttle missions in 2009 and 2011.
The first of those ISS missions saw her participate on its first spacewalk, and she was also the last expedition crew-member to return to Earth via the Space Shuttle. Altogether she spent 104 days in space.
‘Every astronaut is a diver’
Nicole’s career at NASA lasted for 27 years, but when she retired in 2015 she had no intention of sitting back – her combined space and scuba trajectories had left her on a mission.
She had continued to scuba dive, though she had never felt the need to progress through the PADI ranks and remains an Open Water Diver to this day, albeit one with some very esoteric experiences under her belt.
These include many dives in the NASA Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL) at Johnson in preparation for zero gravity and those spacewalks, as well as acquiring advanced skills in preparation for saturation diving on the Aquarius undersea research habitat in Florida.
“These days every astronaut is a diver – or becomes one when they’re selected,” says Nicole. Much of her recreational diving has taken place off the southern Caribbean island of Bonaire. “It’s so accessible and so beautiful for all the reasons we dive – colour and diversity of life.”
New experiences always appeal, however, and the Maldives came into that category. “It’s so interesting to me to see how different the life and beauty can be from one place to another on Earth – I’m always comparing dives to what I’ve experienced in Bonaire.
“For me, what makes every location a favourite are the people I get to dive with. I especially love it when I can dive with my son – he’s been diving and loving it since he was 11.” Also a diver is Nicole’s husband, Isle of Man-born “space entrepreneur” Christopher. The couple are based in St Petersburg, Florida.
’Can’t just hop in your spaceship’
The Aquarius undersea research habitat mission in 2006 had been “a stand-out experience” for Nicole. As a crew-member on the NEEMO 9 (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) project, she had worked at depth with five other aquanauts for 18 days.
“There was something extraordinary about living in and experiencing the awe and wonder of ‘inner space’,” she reflects.
It was Aquarius that provided what she regards as the best analogue to living and working in space. “Once down at 60ft [18m] at the habitat for an hour, your body is so saturated with nitrogen that you can’t just swim safely to the surface. Being there for an extended period of time, in that extreme environment, was both physically and psychologically as close as you can get to space.
“You can’t just go outside without special equipment to survive – scuba gear / spacesuit. You can’t just bail to the surface if something goes wrong – you have to get both your crew and your vehicle in a safe configuration first, just like in space, where you can’t just hop in your spaceship any time something goes wrong.
“The confined space, the communication with your mission control team, the food, the minimal approach to what is really needed to survive and thrive, the science we do – all are similar in both places. And the exploration and awe and wonder!
“We joke that we get to live and work in inner space – surrounded by our planet – to prepare to live and work in outer space – where we’re surrounding the planet.”
’The pleasure is the pain’
Could any other experience ever beat extra-vehicular activity – a spacewalk – for thrills? For Nicole everything from the training onwards was a joy. “Loved it!” she says.
At the Neutral Buoyancy Lab it had been “very cool to be able to dive in preparation for a spacewalk, and to be in a place where the water is so clear it’s like air, and diving around a space station in a pool.
“Diving is probably the closest you can get to being weightless, especially if you do a good job getting yourself neutrally buoyant for your dive. Diving in the NBL certainly does as good as job as I think we can do in water here on Earth, but you still have the drag of the water and the weight and inertia of the spacesuit.
“Working in the 300lb [136kg] suit in the water is probably the most physically challenging thing I’ve ever done – the pleasure is the pain.
“Thankfully all that work and the challenges in the pool are met in space with almost effortless movement in microgravity – I’m grateful it’s not the other way around.
“To just be able to dive in the NBL around the space station hardware in the pool puts you in a really wonderful mental state, and anticipation of what it will be like to float in a spacesuit around the real hardware in space.
“There’s really no better way to establish a familiarity with the exterior of your spaceship, space station and external hardware than being up close and personal with it all in the pool. We have a cool VR lab that helps too.
“To me, performing a spacewalk is a lot like diving for another reason – it’s one of those experiences that is actually really difficult to describe, and is so much more awesome than you ever imagine it to be. I highly recommend them both!”
Emergency alarm
Nicole’s training has helped her to steer clear of any unwelcome “extreme” space or scuba experiences, “but definitely things have gone wrong or not as planned in both places. It’s why we prepare so much for all the things we think or know can go wrong.
“One of my proudest moments in space was the first time I experienced the emergency alarm going off at 3am, and witnessing how beautifully our crew floated out of our crew compartments, accounted for everyone and went to work to resolve the problem the way we had been trained to do on Earth.
“I think my PADI training and later preparation for the NEEMO mission did the same for me in the underwater environment. Situational awareness – for your buddy, your equipment, your environment – are key in both sea and space. I’d argue that situational awareness pays off to the benefit of all in all environments.”
In London I attended one of the first of what is planned to be a series of large-scale discussion events organised by Nicole and her collaborators, this one at the Science Museum.
Perhaps still at the experimental stage, it seemed to fall victim to its own success – it had attracted so many highly qualified guest speakers to the stage that time constraints reduced the chances of much meaningful debate between them.
As the event went on, however, it did start to dig quite effectively into the intricate relationship between space exploration and exploring the seas of our blue planet.
One of the big takeaways for me was the sheer extent to which we are now exploring and monitoring the oceans in minute scientific detail using satellite overviews. Nicole’s conviction is that all endeavours in space bring dividends on Earth, as outlined in her book Back To Earth or “What Life in Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet And Our Mission To Protect It.
At around the same time as the Science Museum event, Nicole’s two non-profits were working with a third, Ocean Culture Life, to take over the big screens in Piccadilly with marine-life imagery, calling on individuals, corporations and governments “to join the fight to protect Earth’s vital ecosystems”.
Watercolours in space
Nicole describes her Space For A Better World as “connecting the space-curious to the space-serious”, while the Space for Art Foundation is dedicated to “uniting a planetary community of children through the awe and wonder of space exploration and the healing power of art”.
The ex-astronaut had in fact been the first person to produce watercolour paintings in space. “My art is inspired by the awe and wonder I experience everywhere,” she says.
“The views of Earth from space, my spacecraft, the views of the colourful underside of Aquarius, the incredible creatures that we see on our dives, icebergs in Antarctica – the inspiration around us is endless. We are on a very purposeful mission to inspire people to understand how all of the work we’re doing in space is ultimately for the benefit of all life on Earth.”
I wondered what the people Nicole meets at her various events were keenest to learn about space and her experiences there?
“Divers in particular are interested in the similarities between diving and being in space. They are also the ones who seem to ask about why we are spending more money in space than right here on our planet, in the ocean, to explore and solve our planetary challenges.
“We love these conversations, because it gives us the opportunity to speak to the fact that what we do in space is ‘Off the Earth, For the Earth’ – that everything we’re doing there is ultimately about improving life on Earth.
“We’re measuring the vital signs of our planet from space – the bulk of the critical information we need to understand the state of the ocean and our planet in general – which will then allow us to solve our greatest planetary challenges.
“And divers, like everyone, are interested in what it’s like to be a human doing human spaceflight.”
The thin blue line
Had spending time in space changed Nicole? “Yes, I don’t think you can be a human and go to a place like space, experience that extraordinary vantage point, without being changed for the better,” she says.
“I think the same is true for diving. Going to space and diving – actually any awesome and wonderful experience – should be taken as a call to action.
“You establish a connection to the planet in a whole new way. You appreciate the simple – yet, I would argue, compelling – reality of who and where we all are in space together.
“We live on an ocean planet. We are all Earthlings. The only border that matters is that thin blue line of atmosphere that blankets and protects us all.
“And the ultimate call to action is for us all to accept our role as crew-mates and not passengers on spaceship Earth – by doing so, we have the power to create a future for all life on Earth that’s as beautiful as it looks from space.
“For all of us here on Earth, I cannot express highly enough how amazing it is to get under water and experience inner space – to understand the interconnectivity of all life on Earth, to experience the beauty, and to develop a greater appreciation for the awe and wonder that surrounds us every day.
“We just need to open our hearts and minds to it and take the plunge!”
Also on Divernet: DIVERS FIND TRAGIC SPACE SHUTTLE WRECKAGE, LISA TRUITT: BREATHING LIFE INTO PROTEUS, PHOTOS FROM SPACE THAT POINTED TO ‘TREASURE WRECK’, SHRUNK BUT SLEEPING BETTER, DR DEEP SEA RESURFACES
