The Red Bulletin June 2020 (US)

23 – 25
ISS Crew
A habitable satellite in Low Earth orbit,
the International Space Station always
has three to six crew members on shifts
that usually last about six months.
Jessica Meir, flanked by Morgan (left) and Cassidy, fields a question from The Red Bulletin on April 10.
-0:45
Close encounters
of the fun kind
With the world turning to video chat as
one of the best ways to communicate,
two people logged on for a conversation.
Only one of them was on Earth.
Words TOM GUISE
As Jessica Meir prepared for her flight back
to Earth from the International Space
Station this April, she was set to return to
a changed world from the one she had left
on September 25, 2019, when her rocket
blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in
Kazakhstan. But, as an astronaut, Meir has always
viewed the world differently from most of us.
There’s even a phrase for it: “the overview effect.”
When you first lay eyes on Earth from space, there
is a transformative moment as you see it for what
it truly is: a tiny, fragile ball of life without national
boundaries or human conflicts, hanging in the
void, protected by the mere skin of an atmosphere.
Within that atmosphere, on April 10, one of
those lifeforms excitedly readied herself to talk to
Meir. Tahira Mirza, a London-based photo editor
for The Red Bulletin, has been a fan of space ever
since she saw footage of the moon landings as a
child. Having organized a photo shoot with former
NASA astronaut Mike Massimino a few years back,
Mirza could be considered our resident astronaut
correspondent, and now came another opportunity
she wasn’t going to pass up. “Many people don’t
get the chance to speak to astronauts, let alone
when they’re aboard the ISS—I felt so privileged
and humble,” she says of the invitation to speak
to Meir during the crew’s final press conference
before departing the space station.
As the three astronauts—Meir, Andrew Morgan
and Chris Cassidy—huddled in front of the view
screen onboard the ISS, 220 miles above the
Earth, Mirza waited on the phone, watching the
livestream from her home.
“The ride was amazing,” said Cassidy, who
had only arrived at the space station the day
before. “No matter how many times you ride on
a rocket to space, it never gets old. You strap in
and the thing lifts off and you feel this immense
power pushing you and pushing you.”
“Living in isolation is something we’re very
good at, and everyone on Earth is experiencing
NASA
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