Jessica U. Meir’s CV puts us all to shame. With a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Brown University, a Master of Science in Space Studies from the International Space University, and a Doctorate in Marine Biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, her work has included studying the behavior of emperor penguins in Antarctica and the physiology of bar-headed geese. A marine biologist and physiologist, most notably Meir is a NASA astronaut. Talk about being the ultimate Wonder Woman.
Amongst her notable achievements was participating in the first all-female spacewalk with Christina Koch in 2019. Most recently, Meir served as a flight engineer on the International Space Station for Expedition 61 and 62. The Swedish-American NASA astronaut was also included in Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
“You always remember your very first trip out of the hatch—that first moment where you come outside of the space station and you look down, and there’s nothing between you and the Earth,” she shared in an interview with Vanity Fair, after returning to Earth last April. “You see your boots hanging there, and you realize that you are only separate from the vacuum of space by the thin visor in your helmet.”
Luckily for us, Meir shares her adventures in space on social media, attracting some 375k followers on Instagram alone. “When you look down on the Earth, you see this amazing, gorgeous planet and all the different land masses and oceans, and you don’t see any of those political boundaries that we’ve drawn on a map,” she reflected. “I wish that everybody could have that view [from the space station] because I think it really does help you maintain that perspective, and that’s something that we need to have collectively as a human species in order to save our planet and in order to get through this COVID-19 crisis.”
Following her Instagram page might help you maintain that perspective. Scroll down to see some highlights from Meir’s recent expedition:
