'One Strange Rock' Asks Astronauts to Tell the Story of Earth

The new mega-md series One Strange Rock seeks to tell the story of Earth.

Launching on National Geographic on March 26, it's a vast undertaking, filmed across 45 countries, six continents, and fifty-fifty from outer infinite.

Information technology takes a very galactic view of Earth. Imagine, if you lot will, that an extraterrestrial spaceship is heading for Andromeda and suddenly locates Earth on its ultra loftier-stop scanning device. Calling up the properties of our planet, its crew learn how the Earth creates and regulates oxygen, that its inhabitants formed from single-cell bacteria, that its extreme environment includes global dust storms and collapsing glaciers, and that the sunday expels devastating particles and mortiferous radiation, yet provides the means for life.

NatGeo's One Strange Rock

Few beings have such an overarching perspective of our planet (that we're enlightened of), merely astronauts do.

That'due south how One Strange Rock frames its out-of-this-world view. Information technology drafted eight astronauts (Chris Hadfield, Jeff Hoffman, Mae Jemison, Jerry Linenger, Mike Massimino, Leland Melvin, Nicole Stott, and Peggy Whitson)—who have i,000 days in space between them—to anchor an episode each; the entire serial is hosted and narrated by Will Smith.

NatGeo held a printing event in Los Angeles recently and PCMag went along to interview Stott (described by Will Smith, in his onscreen voiceover, equally "a badass"). During her 27 years at NASA, she spent 104 days in space, starting time traveling to the International Infinite Station as role of the crew of STS-128. In 2009, Stott performed a half dozen-hour and 39-minute spacewalk, and two years later, she was on the concluding flight of the Shuttle Discovery.

On I Strange Stone, Stott hosts Episode 2, which explains how Earth was sculpted from cosmic violence due to random collisions in a dangerous creation. We sat down with her to talk almost spacewalks, shuttles, gravity, and her role in on the show. Here is an edited version of our conversation.

Firstly, tell us how yous got involved with One Strange Rock. Did Darren Aronofsky have your dwelling phone number in Florida?
Ha! No. The folks from Nutopia called me in 2022, and I thought the concept was merely so fresh. At offset I wondered why the astronaut connectedness, but then I got it. One Foreign Rock—yes. It is. This is our home. And when you lot take the time to think about it, it'due south pretty wild to retrieve about our domicile as a planet, and that nosotros are all Earthlings. I am really pleased with how the series has turned out. I remember everyone who watches it will feel like they've been re-introduced to the awesomeness of our home planet.

NatGeo's One Strange Rock

And then let's talk nigh your experience in space, which gave you the perspective the producers wanted on Ane Strange Rock. When you were doing that six-hour spacewalk, what was your mission objective?
The mission objective for the spacewalk was to recover scientific discipline results from materials exposed to the space environment on the European Applied science Exposure Facility (EuTEF) and Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE) hardware, which was located outside of the International Space Station on the Columbus Laboratory; and besides the removal of an ammonia tank that had failed several months earlier our flight—all of this hardware was going to be returned in the space shuttle to the scientists on Earth.

Can y'all describe what information technology was similar upwards there during your spacewalk?
Flying in space is surreal. The spacewalk was the most surreal role of the spaceflight experience—to be outside in my own personal spaceship and itch all around the outside of the ISS and experiencing the planet below me through simply the visor of my spacesuit. The highlight for me was riding on the end of the robotic arm, the big crane. I was strapped into the end of the arm and I pulled this box called EuTEF off the finish of the space station. As I grabbed it, I'1000 in the foot restraint, and this box has just been asunder, then in my mind, I thought: 'On World, this thing would weigh 900 pounds!' But I could just easily move it, considering we were in infinite. I could move it anywhere I wanted.

NatGeo's One Strange Rock

A realization of superhero-style powers while in zero-g?
I did think: 'Wow, I am super strong.' But then I had to tell myself: 'Okay, Nikki, don't get information technology moving too fast, cause if you do it'south gonna take you with information technology, or hit the ISS.' You don't desire to be that person...

Simply a deeply cool moment. Earthbound laws of gravity simply don't utilize up at that place.
Correct! It was a realization of the impressive physics of the entire mission and our role in it. [Sir Isaac] Newton got it correct with that whole concept of momentum and laws of move: What'southward in movement, is going to stay in motion.

Going back a bit now. What was your most challenging part of astronaut training?
Learning to speak Russian. When you're going to the ISS your crew is made of astronauts from all of the international partner agencies, and while English is the official language used on the ISS, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft is your rescue vehicle. On the Soyuz and for all the operations that go along with it, everything is in Russian—the procedures, communication to the ground, all the panels are in Russian—everything.

NatGeo's One Strange Rock

So the comms in your ear are all Russian and you meliorate know what they're saying? There's no real-time multi-lingual translation going on?
No. Exactly. All Russian. And so y'all accept to be able to communicate—and practice so in very technical terms.

How long did information technology take to get technically proficient in Russian?
A few years. And, I don't know how I did this—because somehow I got all the way through academy without ever taking any foreign languages—so I ended up beingness 40-something, and learning intensive Russian every bit my first strange linguistic communication.

Impressive. At present tell united states what was the most exhilarating aspect of astronaut grooming.
At that place are and then many things virtually astronaut preparation that are exhilarating. I hateful merely the idea of training every bit an astronaut is exhilarating. Simply if I accept to option one aspect of training, I'd have to say the spacewalk training, definitely. You get into the big spacesuit, the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, and then are submerged into the NASA Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, where you larn to go through all the same motions you'll have to go through up in infinite. When yous become to space though, luckily, you don't have all the aforementioned drag equally you experience in the water, considering that's not present in space. Getting from i place to some other, on a spacewalk, isn't the difficult part, information technology's stopping yourself that tin be the trouble, so yous have to be diligent nigh that.

Astronaut Nicole Stott, NatGeo's One Strange Rock

But the incumbent physical furnishings of reentry tin't be easy.
Well, when I came back to World, I didn't land in a Soyuz. That'due south a niggling like beingness in a automobile crash when information technology hits the ground. I got to re-enter Earth's atmosphere and land in the shuttle, which is a beautiful landing, the fashion human beings should get back to the ground, a nice glide onto a runway. On my first flight home, after being in space for a petty over three months, it's strange coming dorsum. Y'all're doing all those lovely swooping "S" turns to dump all that energy, to go from 17,500mph downward to 200mph to land. Our commander is talking to us the whole time and counting up the k load as we re-entered: 'OK, that was point-one-Thousand' and I remember thinking to myself: 'How tin THAT exist only point one?' No manner to really tell before flying how your trunk is going to respond to getting to space or coming back to Earth—the one thing everyone has in common coming back to Earth and its gravity, though, is feeling really heavy.

Because the pressure is oppressive later on being upwards there in space?
I don't recall it being oppressive merely more actually unusual. Once you've been upward in space in all that liberating, floating nix-grand and microgravity feeling, to feel any force on you at all—it'due south like 'Holy Moly! 0g and 1g are two very different environments!' When you go into space, it's really astonishing how speedily your body and listen work out how to motility, and be, navigating that iii dimensional space gracefully and when you get dorsum to Earth it figures out how to readapt to the load of gravity. That's not to say it does it without some challenges, but information technology's pretty cool how information technology adapts.

But reentry to Earth means gravity actually kicks in?
It builds up every bit the shuttle comes into country. So it's ane yard—up to iii 1000—but but briefly, and then the large reality bank check happens on landing. I remember thinking, 'This is what we live with, on Earth, every mean solar day—gravity is a existent load on our bodies.' You just feel heavy, at start, back on World. I had to think a little about belongings my neck up, to support my head. Luckily we piece of work out two hours a day on the ISS as a countermeasure to all that, but still, your vestibular system is affected. The bottom one-half of my leg felt like it weighed 100 pounds every bit I crawled out of the shuttle and came to the hatch. I had to really focus on my weight-training squats to become me up and out onto the ground again.

In One Strange Rock, nosotros run into how astronauts have an incredible perspective on life on Earth. Thanks for sharing with the states a piffling of how y'all went into space, and what that was like.
You take to go with an attitude of risk into space, there'southward no other way. When I beginning went up, I remember looking out from the ISS and seeing the outline of Florida, all blueish, and thinking, 'That'south my habitation, I live at that place—and so very quickly looking beyond just Florida, but to planet Earth as my dwelling house.' That'southward what I hope we communicate, as astronauts, in 1 Foreign Rock, that feeling about this incredible planet nosotros all live on.

One Foreign Rock airs on National Geographic on March 26.