Astronaut from Oregon, Don Pettit, set for mission to the International Space Station

PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — It’s been 12 years since Oregon native Don Pettit has been to space, but this September he’s set to launch on a Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station.

The mission for NASA astronaut Pettit, who was born and raised in Silverton, will be his fourth to space.

He will blast off with cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner for a six-month stay on the ISS, which has been orbiting planet Earth for 25 years.

Pettit just returned to the United States last week after training in Russia to learn how to fly the Soyuz rocket.

"We as astronauts, we're active astronauts. We keep our training current, and our job description is we fly in space. So getting assigned to another mission is just part of the job," he said Tuesday while standing in Building 9 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

During a Zoom interview, Pettit rotated his camera 360 degrees to show the inside of the building, where astronauts train on mockups of the ISS. (Video posted below)

NASA selected Pettit to be an astronaut in 1996 and he served as a science officer on the Space Station in 2003. He operated the robotic arm on the space shuttle Endeavour in 2008 and in 2012, he was the flight engineer for Expedition 30/31 on the ISS.

The graduate of Silverton High School and of Oregon State University spent nearly 30 minutes Tuesday discussing his upcoming mission to the International Space Station, where he’s part of the effort to figure out how humans can survive and live indefinitely in the harsh conditions of space and off planet.

Below is a transcript of the interview, edited for clarity and brevity, as well as the recorded video.

As he prepares for Expedition 72, Pettit also reflected on the human endeavor to spread into the solar system and why that matters for the continued survival of our species.

And so you're launching a Soyuz rocket on Russian territory. Why not a SpaceX rocket? Because the U.S. is now launching its own rockets from here. Is there a special Russia-U.S. connection to this mission?

Not a special connection for this mission. It's by international agreement, and currently only U.S., NASA and Russia have vehicles that carry crew to the Space Station. And this is an international agreement that's still strong where we cooperate, and this adds robustness to the program. Say, for example, there's a problem with the Russian launch vehicle, we could still get U.S., international and Russian cosmonauts to the Space Station, and if something happens to our vehicle, we can get NASA astronauts to the Space Station. So it adds robustness to a program where you are living and working out in the wilderness. We're on the edge of space. It's very much a wilderness. If something happens to one of these vehicles, it's good to have an alternative for getting our crews, and that's why every U.S. vehicle has a Russian on it and every Russian vehicle has a NASA astronaut on it.

What was your reaction when you were selected for this mission?

Oh, elated. This is the third time I'll be flying on a Russian Soyuz, my fourth mission, and we as astronauts, we're active astronauts. We keep our training current, and our job description is we fly in space, so getting assigned to another mission is just part of the job.

So I think it's been a little bit over a decade, 12 years maybe, since you were last in space. What does it mean to you that you'll soon be returning there?

Well, it just means I'm gonna be back in this frontier environment that I truly love to be in, and I could do the mission work that is required of me during Expedition 72. And that's why I'm an astronaut is to train to fly into space and fly into space.

Was there some kind of selection process to go through to get your name on the list, or was there a kind of like a list you just kind of move up to get selected for a mission?

There's a fairness in terms of how astronaut slots are given out, and there's a high priority to rookie astronauts to get them experienced so that way they can work between flight assignments on technical jobs dealing with human spaceflight, and they'll have the experience to deal with the engineers and the trainers for developing the best program possible for future spaceflight. So it's good to have astronauts in the office with flight experience, and we give high priority to the new astronauts. And then mid-career astronauts have another high priority to get re-flown. And then you look at retreads like me, the more times you've flown in space, the longer it's going to be before you fly again. And that's OK because it allows you to use your experience in not only training but working technical ground jobs for developing the next human space programs.

I understand you're going to be doing some scientific investigations and technology demonstrations, can you describe what those will be that you'll be doing on the International Space Station?

Yes. There's a whole suite of experiments that we're trained to do. Some of the experiments we don't even know at this point what they're going to be because of the launch schedule, if they could get bumped because of priority and things like that. But we are generally trained, like graduate students working in a lab to work any number of experiments that might fall on your work schedule. Just as example, some of the experiments are going to be dealing with combustion, there are physical science experiments dealing with fundamental physics. Some of them involve observation platforms that are on the outside of Space Station that we need to maintain. And then we have life science experiments from anywhere from dealing with rodent experiments on Space Station to human experiments, where we're basically guinea pigs, where we look at our own physiology through ultrasound and sample preparation, sample sampling, blood sampling, spit sampling, urine sampling, feces, and they're doing physical measurements where we put electrodes all over our body and then we get on one of our exercise machines and we exercise till we can't exercise anymore.

And all this data is recorded, and it all goes down for peer reviewed science that is well orchestrated by the Space Station program.

How will these experiments prepare crews for future space missions?

Well, initially science, you know, when you get scientific data, particularly human scientific data, you may need 10 or 15 data points before you can draw conclusions. And it might take you five or six years to get 10 to 15 data points on astronauts living and working in space. And then you have to analyze all that data, and then you go through the peer review process of getting it published. So it's not unusual for the results, scientific results on Space Station to be delayed six to 15 years before they get published. And this is normal for research laboratories on Earth. You look at research laboratories at universities or research laboratories at government labs or in industry, it's oftentimes 5, 10, 15 years before the experiments get published and then the results can be applied to future endeavors, and it takes a while.

There are some things that you can learn in short order dealing with training and scheduling on Station, where we get feedback right away in terms of how many hours do you schedule a crew a day, and how much time do you give them for each activity? And sometimes we learn that, hey, you don't give the crew enough time to finish the activity and do a careful job of it. And then they get way behind time. And there's some feedback like that which can immediately go to helping organize the next suite of missions to Space Station.

What are the biggest challenges to human space exploration? And how does working on the International Space Station, and these experiments you'll be conducting, help solve those challenges?

I think the biggest challenge for human space exploration of space, and you need to eventually paint a human being in the canvas of space exploration. The biggest challenge is your life support equipment. It just something as simple as a toilet and having to have a robust toilet that not only functions as a toilet but allows you to recycle the water from your urine and deal with the feces in a hygienic way. These are not simple pieces of equipment, and they are prone to always breaking down and always getting better for the next generation. And let me point out right now we are recovering about 95% of the water in urine right now on Space Station. And that water goes right back into our galley, and we use it the next day for our food preparation. And I like to refer to this process as the coffee machine, because it takes yesterday's coffee and turns it into today's coffee. And this is just an example of kind of an ick factor, but you need to have this technology and you need to have it down so it's robust and it works when you're planning to go away from planet Earth for long periods of time.

Watch a National Geographic special on the marvel of the engineering that is the International Space Station. Pettit is featured in the show.

As far as mission objectives is concerned, how's this trip to the ISS different than your previous ones?

A lot of it is the same. We're going in space to advance human beings living and working in an orbital environment. And every time you go into space, you learn something new, and you can advance the technology. And just to compare that my first trip was in 2002, 2003, and we were in the process of building Space Station at that time, and we had one fourth the electrical power, one fourth the pressurized volume, one half the cruise size, and we were living in Space Station while we were building it. And I liken it to living in your house while it's still under construction, and you have a bucket where the kitchen sink should be and a table saw set up in the dining room. And, you know, this is a temporary process, but you need to do that while you're living and working in the house that you're constructing, and that's what we did with Space Station.

Why should there be a thing such as human space exploration? Why is it important?

This an interesting almost philosophical subject to discuss. And if somebody believes that human space exploration is an endeavor that we shouldn't do, what I find is no amount of discussion will change their mind. And then you'll find somebody that just innately says, well, of course human beings have to expand into space. Again, no amount of discussion will change their mind that human exploration is a waste of time. So it's more of a philosophical, spiritual feeling within each person. And ultimately, if we want Earth to be an open petri dish, we have to have humanity spill out into our solar system. And that means human beings moving away from planet Earth onto other rocky planetary bodies, and there's plenty of places right now for human beings to expand in our solar system. So if you believe in that, then human space exploration is the first step needed in learning how to live in low Earth orbit. And if you look at our Artemis program, the next step from low Earth orbit is to do the same thing on the moon. And then the next step after that will be to learn how to live and work on Mars. And that's about as far as NASA's crystal ball can look currently for human space exploration.

A related question, where do you think, or where do you see the future of human space exploration going?

I believe that the future for human beings is going to be to expand throughout our solar system. And then expanding beyond that, who knows, the current physics and engineering we have would make it difficult to go beyond our own solar system. But by the time we've expanded into our own solar system, who knows where our technology will be. And I think a metaphor for why human beings need to expand into this space can be learned by the dinosaurs. If the dinosaurs had explored space, if they'd colonize other planets, they would still be alive today. And we know enough that planets can get whacked by asteroids. This is catastrophic to life as we know it on any planetary body that would get whacked. And we don't want, we as humans don't want to become like the dinosaurs. And one of the best ways to do it is to have your presence on more than one planetary body. So, I see exploration in our solar system as more of a survival for human beings as a species.

Switching gears a little bit, what advice do you have for kids, students who want to get into STEM or space-related studies or do what you do?

Yeah. Space is an incredible magnet for drawing not only the technical uber geek kind of kids -- engineers, scientists and things -- but there's room for all sorts of disciplines in space -- for pipe fitters, welders, electricians, even down to the janitorial staff that we have at NASA, they're all excited to be part of America's human space exploration. And when I talk to students in all walks of life that want to come and be part of America's space program, or even a venture to be an astronaut, one of the things that I point out to them is that space is a harsh place. Human beings are not innately meant to live there. And the only way we can go with this space and live there are to make machines that provide all the things we need in order to live. And as a astronaut today, in today's era, you have to understand how those machines work because your life might depend on knowing how to fix and maintain the machines that in turn maintain your life. And to do that takes math and science and engineering. So right now, if you wanna be a professional astronaut, if you wanna live and work in space for long periods of time, you gotta have a strong foundation in math and science and engineering. And that's one of the lessons or one of the directions I try to point to students -- you wanna do my job right now? You better study these subjects and you better be able to do them really well because your life depends on knowing this stuff once you get into space.

I kind of think I know how you're gonna answer this question, but if you could, if the technology was there today, would you just pack up everything and, you know, colonize Mars?

Yes. I've said this and, and I say it from the bottom of my heart, because I really feel this way. It's also safe to say, because we don't have the technology, so nobody gets to call me on this, but if we had the technology, I'd load my family up on the next rocket and we'd immigrate into space and never come back to planet Earth. That's how strongly I feel about exploring the space frontier. And it's a similar construct to what continental Europeans must have felt when they got on a ship circa 1500 to 1600 to come to the New World. And they knew that they were never gonna come back to continental Europe again. They knew it was going to be a one-way trip. But I do wanna differentiate, this is predicated on you have the technology to expect to live for the rest of your natural life. One-way trips to Mars where you get there and a month later you run out of life support and everybody dies, I have no interest in that. Going to Mars to set up a continuous base where you have every expectation to live out the rest of your natural life, that's a different story.

Is there anything else you'd like to add that I didn't ask about?

I have a soft spot for the state of Oregon. That's where I was born and raised. I did my undergraduate education at Oregon State. I was born and raised in Silverton, which is a logging, farming community. Silverton High School gave me an outstanding preparation for when I hit Oregon State University. I felt like I was at least equal to or maybe even well ahead of other students that I saw when I was an undergraduate there.

I love the rain and the clouds, and the darkness of the Willamette Valley in the wintertime. And I like going to eastern Oregon. I like the coast. Oregon is a wonderful place. Maybe one of these years I'll find myself back there.