JESSICA MEIR

Astronaut

Half Swedish, half Israeli and all American NASA astronaut, Jessica Meir was the first Swedish female in space. As part of the Artemis lunar mission she is also a candidate to be the first woman to land on the Moon and the first person on the moon since December 1972.

Jessica Meir

Listen to the interview

Use the player to listen to the interview with Jessica Meir or follow the link below for the full episode (Includes Swedish narration).

Jessica Meir went to the ISS in September 2019, and returned just over six months later. During that time she did a lot of research, and no less than THREE space walks! One of them together with her colleague Christina Koch, which mede it the first all female space walk. Talk about taking the rocket straight through the glass ceiling!

Although Jessica herself emphasizes that all missions are group work, where everyone involved is equally important and qualified, certain steps on some walks are simply a little more significant. Just the fact that the whole thing had to be postponed because they did not have two spacesuits in the right size says something about how groundbreaking this walk was.

And while Jessica took giant strides out there in space for humanity, the earth was hit by a pandemic. So, when Jessica came home in mid-April 2000, it was to a world in quarantine.

"If it were up to me, I would have stayed longer,

It was much to short for we. Even 7 months, I wasn’t ready to come home. I do hope to go back [..] and since things did go well there is a very good chance I’ll have another mission. I don’t know what or when that will be, but I hope to play a role whatever that next mission is, whether it’s back to the space station, whether being involved in the Artemis missions sending the first woman and the next man to the moon”

- Jessica Meir

PORKCHOP
RICHARD GARRIOTT
JENNIFER NGO-ANH
AVI LOEB