Nearly 20 years ago, you may have spotted a researcher at the University of British Columbia wandering around campus on a scooter, trailed by a dozen geese.
Maybe you can call it one small honk for space, as that former researcher called into the campus from the International Space Station on March 26. NASA’s Jessica Meir, now serving as part of Expedition 74, is a former postdoctoral zoology fellow at UBC. She raised the geese between 2009 and 2012 not only on the scooter, but in a wind tunnel simulating high-altitude conditions.
“They imprinted on her, so she was Mom,” recalled William Milsom, now a UBC emeritus zoology professor, in the recorded event provided to SpaceQ. “We raised them so they would wear a mask and a backpack, and then we could instrument them to fly in the wind tunnel, where we could measure breathing, metabolic rate, heart rate – and we could expose them to gases as low as [at] Mount Everest.”
This one-minute video from UBC, published six years ago, shows glimpses of the (inevitably adorable) bar-headed goslings at work. Meir’s space aspirations were shining even back then, UBC stated a few days ago, because this type of goose has been spotted over the Himalayas as high as 6,000 or 7,000 metres: “These high-altitude flying birds show how animals on earth adapt to extreme environments, providing potential clues for how humans can better handle the rigours of space and spaceflight.”
Of zoology and spacesuits
From an even higher altitude of 400 kilometres, Meir answered questions from students who had drafted their queries over Instagram. Those with the top entries were invited to chat directly with Meir, who was broadcasting – somewhat unusually – from the European Columbus module, backdropped by a UBC flag and adorned in a UBC zoology sweatshirt. (The Japanese Kibo module, which normally hosts live broadcasts, was occupied by another astronaut on a scheduled experiment.)
Meir showed her zoology background right from the first question from a high-school student, which asked generally about adaptation to space. As part of Meir’s answer, she focused on the brain. She noted space requires a “different sense of spatial awareness and navigation”, as sometimes her work requires her to be on what Earthlings would consider a ceiling.
“My brain would do this real flip-flop,” she said of her first two weeks in space during her debut 2019 mission. These days, with a long-duration ISS stay behind her, “I would kind of interpret that now as the floor because my body was in contact with it … the brain just adapts, and you have this plasticity ongoing, and these new networks formed and then suddenly after about those first two weeks, I could just – I think I was navigating in a different way, just using spatial cues like, ‘Okay, that computer’s over there. That means that this is on that side, and if I want to go to the kitchen, it’s that way.’ So, those simple things, I think, are the are the things that are really the most difficult at first, but then you get used to as you adjust.”
Other students leaned into Meir’s background. Another student, who described himself as a cognitive systems graduate at UBC and current law student, asked how animal adaptations on Earth might inspire spacesuit designs for the Artemis era.
“I know there have been a lot of researchers that are using this kind of biomimicry to solve some of these problems,” Meir noted. “Some of the things that I have heard about are some of the suits, like a type of compressive suit that actually helps regulate blood flow in microgravity.”
Meir cited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s BioSuit as an example, saying it uses mechanical counterpressurization to pressurize the suit instead of gas. She said that is similar in design thinking to giraffes, which have thick blood vessels in their unusually long necks allowing them to regulate blood flow to the brain. And the Z2 spacesuit at NASA, she added, includes inspiration from ocean creatures – “they were using kind of like an armoured plate system for fish and reptiles, and even incorporating some bioluminescent qualities.”
Meir also pointed to a European Space Agency robotic-arm project called GRASP (Gecko Rendezvous Autonomous System and Pincher), that “was inspired by the microscopic hairs on geckos. It was developing some new adhesives, some dry adhesives that might be able to help astronauts grip things in space. And I think a lot of the inspiration from animals – from animal-like movements and thinking about these new suits – is to make them to allow more flexibility and natural natural movements. I can tell you, I did a space walk last week in our existing suit … perhaps they weren’t quite as forward-thinking, and incorporating lessons from biology like we are today.”
Space today: Artemis 2, Artemis program and government direction
Meir’s conversation with students coincidentally took place during a busy month for the NASA community, with large implications for Canada. The NASA-led Artemis 2 is expected to launch for a round-the-moon mission as soon as April 1, with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. One of his three Artemis 2 crewmates – NASA astronaut Christina Koch – participated in the first all-woman spacewalk with Meir during Meir’s first mission in 2019, which UBC acknowledged in remarks moments before the call to space.
In recent weeks, NASA announced sweeping changes to the Artemis program. The planned moon-landing on Artemis 3 will now be an Earth-orbiting tech demonstration of a human landing system by either Blue Origin or SpaceX, depending on which company is ready, as soon as next year. Then Artemis 4, at the earliest, would be the moon-landing mission in 2028. The first lunar surface excursion’s science planning will be co-led by Western University planetary materials professor Gordon Osinski, no matter what mission it happens to be on.
NASA also said it will “pause” Gateway, a long-planned lunar-orbiting space station built alongside international partners, to instead construct a large moon base including aspects such as nuclear technology. The agency rationale is to have a substantial lunar presence in competition with Chinese ambitions. It is expected that Canada’s lunar utility rover would operate on that NASA moon base when the rover launches as soon as 2033, but Gateway’s indefinite suspension has effect on MDA Space’s Canadarm3 – funded by CSA in exchange for Artemis seats and science on NASA missions. MDA Space emphasized that the arm can be repurposed for lunar surface activities as it is in the design phase. Possibly Canadarm3 could be used with the utility rover, although that remains to be determined.
Additionally, in the past year there were sweeping cuts across the U.S. government, which Meir lightly alluded to while answering a question from a UBC geriatrics student about whether more career options in space exploration are forthcoming. (Note that on March 24, however, new NASA administrator Jared Isaacman indicated that he plans to do much more hiring “by bringing in new talent, expanding opportunities for interns and early-career professionals, and creating pathways for expertise to move between government and industry.”)
Here is Meir’s response: “There’s a lot of stuff going on with the U.S. government right now, as I’m sure you guys are paying attention to, and what it means for federal employees and the changes that have come. But I think in the realm of space exploration – and actually, even in the government sector of space exploration. We’re about to see another big rise in hiring, so that is very exciting for us as civil servants because there was a little bit dismal in in recent years with things that were happening.
“Even in the space sector, it used to be that really, only government agencies were going to space. It was too risky, and people didn’t have enough money or weren’t able to buy off on enough risks to do it. But now we have so many different companies that are getting involved in space in different ways, maybe not even orbital flight, but suborbital flights. And, of course, we have some companies like SpaceX and Axiom that are doing orbital flight as well.
“And then there are partnerships with NASA that enable sometimes private citizens to come up up to space. And a lot of times people think it’s a competition between the government and these private companies, and it’s really not. It’s a partnership. We are working with them all the time. Governments these days just don’t have enough money to do it, [or] enough resources to do it all on their own. “So, by having these international [missions] and partnership outside in the private sector, we’re enabling so much more. So to me, it’s an incredibly exciting time because there are so many different ways to be involved in space than there used to be, and that’s growing and growing and growing. I see a lot of opportunities for growth in terms of jobs, in terms of exploration and excitement as we go. So, yeah, stay tuned. Hopefully you guys can can join us and help some solve some of these problems, or come up here yourself one day.”