Space pioneers and physicians Mae Jemison and Jay Buckey reflected on their NASA missions while assessing the progress and promise of interstellar exploration in a Feb. 3 panel discussion, “Launch to the NEXT Frontier.”
“Both astronauts are visionary intergenerational leaders, researchers, and global ambassadors for STEM education,” said Ansley Booker, the Penny and Jim Coulter 1982 Executive Director of Dartmouth NEXT, which hosted the event, along with several house communities, the Department of Environmental Studies, the Dickey Center for International Understanding, the Institute for Black Intellectual Life and Culture, Dartmouth Center for Career Design, Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth Cancer Center, and the Provost’s Office.
Booker moderated the hourlong discussion, which drew 170 people to Loew Auditorium and more than 150 watching a livestream. Topics included the safety of space travel, its effects on the human body, and the importance of interdisciplinary problem-solving in extreme environments.
In her welcoming remarks, Odette Harris ’91, a Dartmouth trustee and the Paralyzed Veterans of America Endowed Professor of Spinal Cord Injury Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, recalled meeting Jemison, a Montgomery Fellow in 1993, following a memorable talk. “She skillfully taught us that science could be real, that science could be nuanced, and most importantly, that science could and should be accessible,” Harris said.
The speakers were introduced by Victoria Ruiz ’26, a Coulter Scholar studying bioengineering, whose research makes use of the hypobaric chamber at the Space Medicine Innovations Lab.
Jemison, a physician and engineer who has taught environmental studies at Dartmouth, in 1992 became the first woman of color to go into space. Aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, she performed experiments in material science, life sciences, and human adaptation to weightlessness.
A NASA astronaut for six years, she now leads 100 Year Starship, a nonprofit initiative seed-funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to ensure that capabilities exist for human travel beyond our solar system to another star by 2112. Its goal, she said, is “to transform life here on earth and beyond, and to be inclusive across ethnicity, gender, geography, and even more so across disciplines, because all the disciplines are involved in space flight right now.”
Jemison, who received an honorary degree from Dartmouth in 2006, said her route to NASA was fueled by unwavering ambition, as a little girl growing up in Chicago, to travel into space. Before joining the Endeavor mission, a collaboration between the U.S. and Japan, she delivered medical care to vulnerable rural populations as the area Peace Corps medical officer in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
“It was a very good backdrop for space medicine and extreme environments,” she said. “Things are so different in space. It’s not only microgravity. Even the bacteria in your skin changes. Some of it becomes more pathogenic.”
Buckey, a professor of medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine, leads the Space Medicine Innovations Lab. In 1998, he was a payload specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia for the Neurolab mission.
“That mission was devoted to studying the brain and nervous system: how they adapt to weightlessness and re-adapt to being back on Earth,” he said. One question addressed on the mission, he said, was “Is gravity needed for us to grow up and develop normally?”
Just days after the 40th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, which took the lives of all seven crew members, Booker asked Buckey to weigh the risks and benefits of space exploration.
“The Apollo program had a disaster. The shuttle had its losses. But I think every year it’s getting a little safer,” said Buckey. “It’s getting a little more routine. And if you look toward the future, we’re talking about private space stations. We’re talking about next month maybe sending a capsule to the moon. There will always be accidents and disasters. It’s never going to be totally risk-free, but the journey is important. If you don’t go, if you don’t take chances, you’re not going to get anywhere.”
During the Q&A, Hermann Mazard ’87, who traveled from New York City to hear the panel discussion, asked Jemison and Buckey about the shift from government-funded space exploration to commercial ventures.
“Within a year, SpaceX is going to issue its IPO. A number of companies have sent missions to near space,” Mazard said. “Can you talk about the role of the private sector versus nation states in influencing the future of space travel?”
“If you look at how a lot of technologies have developed, if you think about what led to a lot of commercial airplanes, it was a lot of investment for war,” Buckey answered. “The government has funded a lot of the core technologies that we use all the time. Now space exploration is commercially viable, and I think that’s exciting. You’re using its discoveries every day. With your phone using GPS, we don’t even think about it, but we have incorporated space into our economy.”
Jemison struck a more cautionary note.
“Who gets to be the gatekeepers? Who makes the calls about who gets to participate?” she asked. “Yes, the government does the foundational work. But when we start to give away and not continue to fund the high-stakes things that the government does, then we may stymie progress.”
Both Jemison and Buckey hope that initiatives like Dartmouth NEXT will help produce the next cohort of space scientists and explorers. In fact, Buckey noted, one of his former students, Lauren Edgar ’07, is part of NASA’s latest astronaut candidate class.
Thanking both speakers, Dean Madden, vice provost for research and a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, said he was pleased that NASA has been funded at the same level as last year.
“That was huge. In fact, it’s also going to fund a $28 million research project that’s coordinated out of our Department of Physics and Astronomy, using the small satellites, CubeSats, to explore the aurora borealis and the Van Allen belts. This is very fundamental stuff that makes all of our life possible by deflecting the solar radiation,” he said.
Also fundamental, Madden said, is recruiting the broadest set of skills and creativity to the next generation of STEM leaders.
“We want you to get excited. If you feel like you’re hitting a roadblock, please don’t give up. That is the vision of Dartmouth NEXT, to create this sense that everybody has a role. Everyone’s talents are needed.”
“One of the objectives of the NEXT program is to not only launch more students into the Dartmouth STEM ecosystem but to increase the number of students entering into the global workforce,” Booker said.
Madden said he was pleased to see young children in the audience, “because today I felt like I was 5 years old. And when I was 5 years old, we had not yet been to the moon. So I just want to say to everybody, young, old, and in between, keep your sense of wonder.”
