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Right now on ����vlog 8 News close up, astronaut Peggy Whitson, the Iowa native was honored Friday evening with the Robert D. Ray Pillar of Character award. This morning we talked with her about her career and how lessons she learned growing up on an Iowa farm helped her become *** record setting space explorer. ����vlog 8 news close up starts right now. This is Iowa's news leader. This is ����vlog 8 News close up. Good morning and thank you for joining us on ����vlogE News close up. Iowa native Peggy Whitson is one of the most accomplished astronauts of all time. This past December, the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs honored Whitson's work at its annual Celebrate Iowa Gala. That's where ����vlog's Lauren Donovan caught up with her to talk about the astronaut's record-setting 665 total days in space. The thing that draws you the most is the view. Almost everybody who's flown in space wants to go back not just once, twice, but 3 times. Peggy Whitson's journey to space. In fact, the Iowa native spent more time living and working in space than any American ever. Even if I was just cleaning the vents on board the space station, I was contributing to keeping the station alive. Humble as ever, she's done far more than that. Woodson's been the only woman to command the International Space Station, and she's done it twice. It does take some adaptation to get back to Earth life. Having grown up in Mount Air, it's just hard to believe she's part of *** museum now, especially with, you know, spacesuits of mine here. Yeah, that feels weird. She hopes sharing her stories with young women will help encourage them to pursue careers in the sciences. It's not uncool. You can be *** very successful woman and be *** scientist, be an explorer. And Peggy Whitson was honored with yet another award this past Friday, the Robert D. Ray Pillar of Character Award here in our state. She joins us now. Peggy, thanks so much for taking time to spend with us. No problem. It's great, great to be back in Iowa as always. Well, we are so happy to have you here. So you have received *** lot of recognitions. You returned from your mission recently, you were on the cover of National Geographic magazine and also named one of Glamour magazine's Women of the Year as well, and there is the National Geographic magazine cover. Tell us what it's been like to be in the spotlight. Well, it's, it's awkward for me. But, uh, the, the National Geographic thing was uh pretty special, very big honor. I remember growing up as *** kid looking at National Geographic glamour wasn't *** magazine I looked at. But I, I thought that was really special that they honored uh *** scientist and an explorer and so it was *** little bit out of character for what they would normally nominate. So I thought that was special as well. Really cool. Well, as you were growing up, you maybe weren't reading glamour, but you are something really probably triggered your interest in space. What was it in southern Iowa when you were growing up that really lit that fire for you? Well, it was. Distinctly remember, uh, my parents getting us, you know, we were already dressed for bed. We were always had *** very strict bedtime and we, they got us up to, uh, watch or kept us up to watch the moon landing when they actually when they first started the spacewalk and so I distinctly remember getting up to stay getting to stay up late to watch this and it. It really imprinted something, I think, in me to want to be something. Of course when you're 9 you want to be lots of things, but I think there were lots of little things that contributed to that. My, my father got his pilot's license when I was 10 years old and I got my first little ride in an airplane and. Uh, when I graduated from high school was the year they picked the first female astronauts, and I think that's when it went from being kind of just ***, *** dream into *** goal, and from that point on I, I was trying to become an astronaut. Uh, without knowing how difficult or challenging it might be, and I think in some ways I was lucky that I didn't know some of that information and I just kept plugging away, kept your eye on the, the end there, uh, talk about maybe then your life growing up in Iowa on the farm and maybe. Of the qualities that you developed through that experience that helped you reach your ultimate goal. Well, I think work ethic is, is probably one of the single most important things for me and my success, and that was something very, very prominent in everyday life, uh, with my parents on the farm. Uh, they worked all the time and had to solve problems, fix things. We didn't have *** lot of money and you just had to make it happen. Get the job done, um, and I think the ability to try and problem solve is also something very important that I learned and took away from, uh, growing up on *** farm and it doesn't happen overnight. You don't, you don't decide you want to be an astronaut and hey, you're up there. You have to work hard at it. Tell us about that. That journey and that road probably not always easy, but what was it like keeping keeping that goal in the long run? Well, excuse me, in college, I graduated in 3 years with 2 degrees in biology and chemistry because I was in such *** hurry. And I didn't wanna pay for more college, so, so I got through quickly and uh my advisor Doctor uh Dolores Graff, she was an amazing woman, full of energy and you know, *** great role model for me to get things done, and she wanted to, uh, show me the medical school at University of Iowa because she thought I should try and maybe become *** doctor. And I, I was kind of interested in research, but, uh, she enticed me to go to the University of Iowa to meet Doctor James Van Allen, who was the discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belts. I'm like, well, you know, kind of *** space guy, you know, this is *** big go. I'll go, I'll go live in the medical school. Pretty exciting. So I, I went and, you know, got to see his laboratory, you know, through the glass, the guys in the white paper suits, you know, working on the space hardware, really cool, and I, uh, asked him, you know, what I, what, what I should do to try and become an astronaut, and he's like, you don't wanna be an astronaut that career, that'll go away in *** few years. That's, it's not gonna last. You should, yeah, you should try something else. Go for something with more of *** future. Yeah, I still didn't feel right, so I went ahead and did it, and I had other occasion when I finished graduate school at at Rice University again I had this phenomenal strong female role models. I worked in her laboratory, Kathy Matthews, and you know she was just *** great inspiration to me and uh I applied for *** postdoctoral fellowships and I got this really prestigious one out at uh the Falk Institute in La Jolla. And uh uh *** week later I called him and said, hey, I'm not gonna take it. I'm gonna take the one at the Johnson Space Center and he's like, you're making the biggest mistake of your life. Little did I yeah I kind of wished I'd remembered his name. I'd like to call him from the space station not so much. Turns out it turns out it was OK. It was OK. Well, our conversation with Peggy Whitson will continue coming up right after the break. Stay with us. Welcome back, everyone. Our conversation continues now with Iowa astronaut Peggy Whitson, and we want to hear *** little bit more about what it's like to be in space. Let's start with the lift off. You're laying there and you know what's coming, the lift off, what's going through your head as you prepare for that propulsion into space. Um, just thinking about the timeline usually, uh, of course, um before my first flight it was on *** shuttle launch, um, and I was like I can't believe it's really gonna happen. It actually seems like this might be real and of course we'd been in 3 weeks before we'd been in and got down to 9 minutes and then and we had to delay. There was *** problem with one of the valves and it was delayed and so. Uh, on that first launch, when we finally did get off, we got inside 9 minutes. I'm like, I think it's gonna happen today. So I was pretty excited and of course, before my first flight, you know, I had years of anticipation of what this is gonna be like and so I was just so excited. And it was uh pretty amazing on the shuttle there, the launch is, uh, got *** lot of vibration, *** lot of power associated with it. 66 seconds before the launch starts, the main engines, the liquid fuel engines fire. They have to get up to 100% power and then the solid rocket boosters ignite, and then you know you're going somewhere. You got *** There's *** lot of vibration associated with that and it lasts for about the 1st 2 minutes and 40 seconds because the, the SRBs, the solid fuel just burns *** little rougher, uh, and then after that, the, the pyros blow to, uh, get rid of this SRBs. You don't want to take the weight of the canisters to orbit. But uh they never told me that the pyros would feel like they were at my feet. It felt like the bottom of the shuttle was gonna explode to do this, yeah, but it was the right time, so I was OK with it, but it was like, wow, that was *** little more surprising. And during that time you have so much happening around you. Are there, are there things that you're responsible for? That moment as well that you have to keep your mind absolutely focused on and not I actually was on the mid deck, so we had two, you know, pilot and commander on the flight deck with 2 mission specialists who were assisting and I was one of the crews that was going to be staying on the space station, so I was in the mid deck and I didn't have as many responsibilities. The only one I had was like on the. The day when we didn't launch, you know, I had to get up and, and pin the, um, the, uh, explosive pyro explosives for the door and before so that the guys that opened the hatch would be safe and so that was, that was my job but of course you know we'd practiced it on the ground, you know, sitting in *** chair in *** normal. Position you lean back and you put *** pin in and so then we were laying on our backs and you know and I'm like I can't reach it. I can't reach it and I'm Valery's pushing on my backside trying to get me over to reach it, so it's *** little more challenging. Well then how about the adjustment to both to space and the adjustment to Earth? Does that just plain takes *** while, doesn't it? Well, um, most people, when they go to space, they call it stomach awareness. Not everybody gets physically sick going into space, but you might have some symptoms. The first time I went, I had *** few symptoms. I think I threw up once, but it was not *** big deal, and it was OK coming home. It's much, much more difficult, at least for me. I'm one of the people that gets sick on the downhill part, not the uphill part. Coming back into gravity takes quite *** bit of time initially it's the neurovestibular part where your inner ear hasn't been getting any signals for 6 months and so you just ignore it. And now once you're back on the ground it's, you know, and everything feels so heavy, so it's quite an adaptation process even though we're strong because we exercise 2 hours *** day on orbit to stay strong and fit, uh, when you get home, everything feels so heavy and *** week after they will measure your strength and you'll be as strong, if not stronger than you were on orbit, but you feel really kind of awkward, lots of little things that. Your body has forgotten how to do and balance and coordination because you don't use those muscles, you know, when you're actually physically working out against resistance or you know riding the bike or running on the treadmill you don't get those same sensations in space that you do on the ground so you have to reteach your body how to balance and look up and do, do that kind of thing. So and but it's gravity way overrated. So you exercise for 2 hours per day. I imagine the rest of your day is also pretty scheduled out. Do you get any downtime during *** week, *** normal week, we get *** day and *** half off, so half of Saturday and Sunday we get off, and that's when we have our free time. And of course evenings after dinner, you have some free time, *** little free time. And we can actually call or email people, um, so it's actually pretty neat that you don't feel too out of touch. I think for our future exploration missions when we're going to Mars and we have that big time delay. Uh, there's, it's gonna be *** lot different, uh, in terms of adapting and feeling *** little more isolated, but when you're, when we're on board the International Space Station, it's actually relatively easy to feel like you're in touch because I could call *** phone call or email just make *** phone call and you've spent so many. So many days in space. Is there one moment that stands out as your favorite, or, or is there ***, wow, that was cooler than cool with, you know, almost, you know, not quite 2 years in space. I've got *** lot of those old cool moments. I really do. They every single spacewalk had some really old cool moments um. You get so focused on doing *** task during *** spacewalk that you get out there, you're working really hard, and on this last mission we were installing battery adapters, uh, to change out some new batteries outside, uh, on the truss, the end of this football field length truss we're changing out. These batteries, adapter plates, and uh we had pulled two of them off and Shane Kimbrough and I had installed the 1st 2 and we went back up and it was daylight when we were back up there and the place where we had pulled off the previous 2 adapter plates was mirror shiny. And so you know I'm like, wow, that's me. Look behind me you can see these huge solar rays in the air. It's like this this is you know that's, you know, it's, you forget sometimes how special it is this place that you're in. Oh, awesome. Well, we're gonna have more with astronaut Peggy Whitson coming up next on Casey. This morning we're spending *** fascinating half hour with IO in aid of an astronaut Peggy Whitson. Let's talk about some of the research that you've done in space then and if it has how it has connections to maybe our everyday lives here on Earth. Well, it's, I think it's always interesting because it's not what you necessarily predict. We'll have the application that ends up being the thing that is the spinoff that we end up using one example. During Expedition 5, my first flight into space, I was growing soybeans the same time as my dad was growing soybeans. Yeah, and it was really neat, but they had *** piece of hardware that they had to develop to grow these plants in space to make ensure that we didn't contaminate the space station, had *** special filtration system on that. Uh, and I'm not sure what Pioneer Seed corn did with the data that they got. They, they might have found something really interesting, but the, the interesting thing that happened is we found that the filtration system is actually extremely effective and efficient. And it's now used in hospital surgical rooms, yeah, and, yeah, and not necessarily, you know, what you would have predicted and also it's used in wineries too to keep the wines from being contaminate contaminated with microorganisms as well. So it's just neat that you know things get used that you wouldn't necessarily predict. You wouldn't, you didn't go in thinking it was *** piece of hardware that was gonna be the big spin off. Yeah, you know, the, the, and that, that's what happens in space. Being able to do research in *** long duration environment like that allows us to take those. I wonder why that happens, instances and actually do something. 11 experiment I was doing was looking at *** colloidal solution of iron and you put it in. An electromagnetic field and it goes from *** solution to *** solid and they're thinking of using it in like shock absorbers in like big buildings or suspension bridges like if there was gonna be an earthquake or something there so they're testing capabilities up there and trying to better understand that process and one day when I put in the electromagnetic field instead of putting 20 Hz I put in 2.0 because I eyes didn't see the little decimal place. And instead of forming *** solid, it formed this wave form and so after we, you know, and they said we didn't see this on Earth and so then we, they, we went back and repeated this investigation again and so you never know exactly what it is that you will find or what it might be the new discovery or even what it might mean or what it. Contribute to *** good mistake. Yeah, I tell myself that in addition to the scientific part of what you're doing, there's also the cultural part, it's an international space station. Talk about the importance of what those missions do for that. Well, I do honestly think that the legacy of the International Space Station will be that international cooperation. We have built something so incredibly complex. I mean, this isn't just one module up there. There's 15 modules, uh, they're like I call them school bus size, and I'm talking to the children filled with the laboratory experiments on each side, and they're all connected together and we, we constructed them on orbit. Uh, using *** robotic arm built by Canada, the pieces came from Russia and Germany and lots of places in Europe and Japan and the United States, and most of them weren't fit checked together, and we built them at 17,500 miles an hour in low Earth orbit and put them all together and of course, you know, not everything worked exactly right the first time that because you're there we're doing power data. All the communications, the command and control systems had to interface through all these modules, and we had to learn and adapt and, uh, but all of it's been just *** phenomenal learning experience and we did it within an international environment and that makes it hugely more complex but at the same time I think it really demonstrates what we're capable of as *** world as *** people. That's awesome. Well, we wrap up our conversation with Peggy Whitson right after this. Well, we are wrapping up now our conversation with Peggy Whitson. Peggy, we know you talk with *** lot of students right now and inspire them. What is your advice to those, those kids in southern Iowa who whose kids whose parents keep them up late and watch what's going on up above? What do you tell them about dreaming about scientific exploration? Well, I think, you know, number one, the most important thing is you have to find your passion, find what it is that drives you, uh, motivates you, you know, the whole journey of life needs to be fun, needs to be something that you're gonna enjoy. So find that passion and number 2 work to make it happen because you know most of us aren't lucky enough to have what we dream of handed to us on *** silver platter you have to go out there and make it happen, make it and put out *** lot of effort to make it happen and it may take *** lot of time, and I remind people that it took me 10 years of applying. Before I was ever lucky enough to be selected as an astronaut and so you do have to get out there and try and work. Did you ever have moments of doubt during those 10 years saying Oh, every, every 2 years rejection, yeah, yeah, I was definitely had doubts, but, uh, I, you know, I had the great support of *** husband who kept telling me don't give up. That's awesome. So many women in space and the role models that they that are before them. What's your reaction to kind of those efforts to get STEM, and especially in front instead of young girls? Is it working? Are we doing things right or do we need more? I, I obviously think we need more until until we have, you know, 50% female astroments we're around 30% now, which is not bad, but we need more. Uh, in every field in science and engineering, people need to feel like, hey, this is *** doable job, this is cool to be *** scientist, cool to be an explorer, and it doesn't matter what gender you are, let's just go do it, do what it is that inspires you and what you dream about, um, and my, my actual final bit of advice for the young people is to live. Outside of your comfort zone, don't do what's just easy for you because you can go through your whole life and you might live your dream, but you might live even more by just pushing yourself to challenging yourself to do just *** tad bit more. I felt like I have. You've inspired so many people in doing that. Um, who did you look to as role models? When you were going through those times of maybe getting those reduction letters or needing to kind of pick yourself up to keep on working towards your goal, well, uh there were role models, you know, I, as I mentioned in college and graduate school, and when I got to Rice there were some fantastic female role models that were scientists and, uh, role models that were astronauts and so. I had lots of role models to look up to, uh, you know, my personal, you know, support system was my husband primarily, but yeah, that's great. And looking forward to the future of the space program, what do you, what do you hope to see actually coming up? Oh, I think, I think it's gonna be an exciting time. I think there's *** lot going on with the comm commercialization. Uh, that's going on now. I can, I kind of like to look, think of it as we're going from barnstorming to commercial aviation, you know, now this is kind of where we are in, in commercial space flight, but you know it's kind of *** little bit of *** misnomer to call it commercial space flight because all the contractors that have supported even through all of the uh the Apollo era, the Boeings, the Northrop governments, that all those people have always been contractors and. They were the ones that were developing things and now we're trying to, you know, make it *** little more independent, but it's still *** government process and we're involved in trying to stimulate that commercial development because I think that will be important for us in any future exploration. It's going to be very expensive and we have in order to be successful, we're gonna really have to step outside. Thanks for joining us. Thank you.