Margaret Dean - Endurance - A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

“Scott!” Misha calls out to me with a mischievous smile on his face. “Do you know what today is?”

“Yes,” I answer. “It’s my birthday. February twenty-first.” The last time I celebrated at home in Houston, I was fifty. Today I’m fifty-two.

“Happy birthday, Scott, but that’s not it! We have only nine days left!”

I’ve avoided counting down this whole year. I’m surprised that the single digits have crept up on me, so it seems my strategy has worked. Nine days isn’t long at all.

“Scott,” Misha says with a note of excitement in his voice, “we did it!”

“Misha,” I answer, “we had no choice!”

Sergey, Misha, and I will do a few Soyuz training sessions together so we will be ready for our descent. Misha, who will serve as flight engineer 1, needs to refresh his training for serving as Sergey’s backup; it’s been a long time.

We start packing up our things and getting organized to leave. I have to figure out what is coming back with me on Soyuz—a small package of no more than a pound or so, including the gold pendants for Amiko, Samantha, and Charlotte and silver versions for my crew secretary Brooke Heathman, my scheduler Jennifer James, and my Russian instructor Elena Hansen. A larger allotment of things can come back on SpaceX later in the spring. I need to clean out my crew quarters thoroughly so it will be fresh for the next person. Because of the way stuff can float around in space, I have to clean the walls, ceiling, and floor. I have to disassemble the small room and vacuum out the vents—those are especially gross, as they are covered with a year of dust. I also hide a plastic roach for my successor Jeff Williams to find.

Amiko tells me she’s had someone come by to check on the pool and hot tub—the pool heater broke partway through my mission and she hadn’t noticed until she started putting everything in order for my return. She knows I have been thinking about how great it will be to jump in the pool. She asks me to send a list of the things I want her to have on hand when I get back. Typing the list makes me think about home even more: the sheets of my bed, the shower, the pool and hot tub in the backyard. I’ve spent this entire year trying not to long for home, and now I’m putting myself there deliberately. It feels very strange.

I email her a list:

Subject: Stuff I Want at Home

Gatorade (the old-school green kind)

Dogfish Head 60 Minute India Pale Ale

And a six-pack of Miller High Life (remember I said I had a craving for that)

Green seedless grapes

Strawberries

Salad stuff

Cabernet

La Crema Chardonnay

Bottled water

Often when I do interviews and press events from space, I’m asked what I miss about Earth. I have a few answers I always reach for that make sense in any context: I mention rain, spending time with my family, relaxing at home. Those are always true. But throughout the day, from moment to moment, I’m aware of missing all sorts of random things that don’t even necessarily rise to the surface of my consciousness.

I miss cooking. I miss chopping fresh food, the smell vegetables give up when you first slice into them. I miss the smell of the unwashed skins of fruit, the sight of fresh produce piled high in grocery stores. I miss grocery stores, the shelves of bright colors and the glossy tile floors and the strangers wandering the aisles. I miss people. I miss the experience of meeting new people and getting to know them, learning about a life different from my own, hearing about things people experienced that I haven’t. I miss the sound of children playing, which always sounds the same no matter their language. I miss the sound of people talking and laughing in another room. I miss rooms. I miss doors and door frames and the creak of wood floorboards when people walk around in old buildings. I miss sitting on my couch, sitting on a chair, sitting on a bar stool. I miss the feeling of resting after opposing gravity all day. I miss the rustle of papers, the flap of book pages turning. I miss drinking from a glass. I miss setting things down on a table and having them stay there. I miss the sudden chill of wind on my back, the warmth of sun on my face. I miss showers. I miss running water in all its forms: washing my face, washing my hands. I miss sleeping in a bed—the feel of sheets, the heft of a comforter, the welcoming curve of a pillow. I miss the colors of clouds at different times of day and the variety of sunrises and sunsets on Earth.

I also think about what I’ll miss about this place when I’m back on Earth. It’s a strange feeling, this nostalgia in advance, nostalgia for things I’m still experiencing every day and that often, right now, annoy me. I know I will miss the friendship and camaraderie of the fourteen people I have flown with on this yearlong mission. I’ll miss the view of Earth from the Cupola. I know I will miss the sense that I’m surviving by my wits, the sense that life-threatening challenges could come along and that I will rise to meet them, that every single thing I do is important, that every day could be my last.

PACKING UP to leave space is strange. A lot of stuff goes in the trash, which means stowing it in the Cygnus that will burn up in the atmosphere later this month. I throw out a lot of unused clothes—my challenge to myself to use as few clothes as possible has been a success, and there is a duffel bag’s worth of T-shirts, sweatshirts, underwear, socks, and pants left over to prove it.

On the weekend, I find the time to take pictures of a bunch of stuff people have asked me to bring—T-shirts, hats with logos, photographs, artwork, jewelry. I gather it all up and take it to the Cupola. As I open the shutters, I catch a glimpse of tawny sand, and I instantly know from the color and texture exactly where we are above the planet: the Somali plains just north of Mogadishu. In one way it’s satisfying to feel like I know the planet with such intimacy. In another way, it makes me feel like I’ve definitely been up here too long.

One by one, I take the items I’ve brought up here for people and float them against the backdrop of the Earth to snap a picture of each. It’s not hard or even that time-consuming, but it’s the kind of thing I never felt like doing and that could always be put off until later…until now.

There is another thing I wanted to do that I haven’t quite found the right time for. I’ve been thinking about the whole arc of my life that brought me here, and I always think about what it meant to me to read The Right Stuff as a young man. I feel certain that I wouldn’t have done any of the things I have if I hadn’t read that book—if Tom Wolfe hadn’t written it. On a quiet Saturday afternoon, I call Tom Wolfe to thank him. He sounds truly amazed to hear from me. I tell him we’re passing over the Indian Ocean, how fast we’re going, how our communication system works. We talk about books and about New York and about what I plan to do first when I get back (jump into my swimming pool). We agree to have lunch when I’m back on Earth, and that’s now one of the things I’m looking forward to most.

On February 29, 2016, I hand over command of the International Space Station to Tim Kopra. Tomorrow I will leave the station and return to Earth.

March 1, 2016

Dreamed I was doing a spacewalk with my brother. At first we went outside in our normal clothes, because you could do that if it was a short period of time. Then we went inside and he put on an American spacesuit and I put on a Russian one, the Orlan. I liked the Orlan suit, but I was concerned that I had not trained in it. We went back out of the airlock to find the outside of the space station covered in snow, like a winter wonderland.