Emily Calandrelli becomes the hundredth woman in space

Sarah Al-Ahmed: The Space Gal becomes the 100th woman to go to space, this week on Planetary Radio. 

I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of The Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. Sometimes, space dreams really do come true. Emily Calandrelli joins us this week to discuss her experiences becoming the 100th woman to venture to space. Then Bruce Betts pops in for What's Up? and a new random space fact. 

If you love Planetary Radio and want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it. 

Today, we celebrate a remarkable milestone. Emily Calandrelli, known as the Space Gal, has become the 100th woman to go to space. Her journey symbolizes the progress made over the decades, thanks to countless women who dared to reach for the stars and overcome systemic barriers. 

The path was first paved by Valentina Tereshkova, a Soviet cosmonaut that became the first woman in space in 1963. It took nearly two decades before another woman followed, Svetlana Savitskaya. She became the first woman to go to space more than once, the first to conduct a space walk, and the first to board a space station. I think a lot about Svetlana when I reflect on how much attitudes towards women and space have changed. When Svetlana boarded the Salyut 7 space station in 1984, the cosmonauts on board gifted her an apron and asked if she could handle the cooking and the cleaning for the rest of the mission. In 1983, American Sally Ride became the first non-Soviet woman in space. And in 1992, Mae Jemison inspired millions as the first woman of color to venture beyond Earth. These trailblazers opened the doors for countless others, and today, women all over the world are contributing to crewed spaceflight. Since 2023, Singapore, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Antigua, and Barbuda have all joined the club. 

Now, Emily Calandrelli joins that legacy. An MIT-trained engineer turned Emmy-nominated science communicator, Emily has inspired so many through her shows and books. Some of her TV shows include Xploration Outer Space and Emily's Wonder Lab. She was also a correspondent on one of our CEO's TV shows, Bill Nye Saves the World. I was particularly touched by one of Emily's books, Reach for the Stars, that she wrote in part for her daughter. As a long-time fan of Emily's work, I could not be more thrilled to see her achieve this dream. 

On November 22nd, 2024, Emily blasted off on a Blue Origin New Shepard suborbital rocket as part of the NS-28 mission. It was the 28th flight for the New Shepard program and Blue Origin's ninth human spaceflight. But what Emily didn't know when she began her journey to try to go to space was that she would ultimately become the 100th woman do so. 

Hey, Emily.

Emily Calandrelli: Hello. Hello.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Thanks for joining me. It is wonderful to meet you for the first time.

Emily Calandrelli: Yeah, I'm so excited to be here.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And right after this huge moment in your life. Congratulations from me and everyone at The Planetary Society for becoming the 100th woman in space. I'm sure you're grappling with ridiculous emotions right now.

Emily Calandrelli: Oh, yeah, a dream decades in the making. I don't think I'm going to come down from this high for a long time.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What first inspired you to want to not just love space and try to communicate it to people, but actually take the step and do everything you need to do to go to space? Because that's a lot.

Emily Calandrelli: Yeah. Well, to be honest, ever since I started my education in aerospace engineering and I learned of suborbital spaceflight, that was an area of spaceflight that I was like, "I want to do that." Because when I was in college, I did a microgravity program. I flew on a parabolic airplane, the Vomit Comet, and experienced weightlessness in that way. And I was like, "Well, the next logical step after this is suborbital spaceflight." And so ever since I was a college student, this has been a dream and something that I had planned to try to find a way to do.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. I know there's so much complexity to the way that people think about commercial space, but then I see instances like this where it empowers people who are civilians or just have these dreams of going to space to actually be able to do it. Setting aside all of those other conversations, it's enabled you to become the 100th woman in space. When did you realize that you weren't just going to space, but you were going to be hitting this milestone?

Emily Calandrelli: Oh, it wasn't until a couple of weeks before. For the longest time I thought I was either going to be 99 or 101. The numbering system is really interesting because there are some people who account for Christa McAuliffe who unfortunately never reached space, but they want to make sure that she has her flowers for being an astronaut herself. And so I thought that I was going to be 101 for a while and I was like, "I'm going to make the 101 Dalmatians. Dalmatians are going to be my entire personality. 101 is my number. I'm going to get it tattooed. That was going to be my thing." And then I learned that most official accounts don't actually count her. And then for a little while, I thought it was going to be 99 depending on how it played out, but then the Chinese sent up a female taikonaut a couple of weeks before my space flight. And so I actually had to check with a few different people to be like, "No, wait? What number am I going to be, you guys?" It's all very confusing and complex. And they're like, "No, you're..." I had my friend Sirisha Bandla who is an astronaut with Virgin Galactic, and she was like, "No, Emily, you are officially going to be 100." And I was like, "Sirisha, really? Am I really? Is that true?" She's like, "Yes, I've checked everywhere." And this is somebody who knows her numbers. And so trusted her on that front, and she was the one who officially told me that I was going to be number 100.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What a cool moment, not knowing. Either way, going to space is a huge achievement, but it's really wonderful seeing someone who's such a public figure who's done so much to inspire women in space but also kids who have this passion for space to be that face of this moment in history. I feel like that's really poignant and gives it a little bit more visibility than it would otherwise.

Emily Calandrelli: Yeah, it feels really nice. And I take it as such an honor to be a bookend to this milestone that I think so many of the women that I know that filled those positions 1 through 99, this was a hard fought, hard-won milestone where women for the longest time weren't even allowed to pursue this type of career. And for so many of the women there, this was not an easy thing. They had to fight tooth and nail for their number, and I feel very honored to follow in their footsteps to pave the path for numbers 101 through 1,000. And yeah, just one of the things that I brought up into space was a picture of the 99 women who came before me as an homage to all of the work that they had done to allow me to be number 100.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I had such a wonderful time watching all the cool things that you took to space with you, and we'll get into some of those details because I feel like what you decided to bring up with you was very poignant, and I loved your series of videos on it. That was fantastic, but that was a huge decision-making point after you'd already been told that you got to go to space. Did you have to keep it a secret for a little while? Because I know that's a thing I've heard from other people that go on these flights.

Emily Calandrelli: I had to keep the date a secret. So I knew when I was flying long before I was able to share it, which was the hardest part because people were like, "Well, when are you going up? When are you going up?" And then we were allowed to share that we were on the next flight. But when I said that, people thought, "Oh, the next flight. Maybe it's next year, maybe it's a few months from now." And I was like, "You guys, it's next week." And so when I was finally able to share that I was going up, it was a very fast turnaround because from the point that I was allowed to share that I was going up, I was already headed to astronaut training. So it all happens very fast for the people who follow me.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: How much training did you have to go through in order to go on this flight?

Emily Calandrelli: Yeah. See, this is the beauty of suborbital spaceflight and these rockets itself because this rocket is fully autonomous. I think something that most people are not aware of is that there is no pilot on board. There's no pilot inside the capsule. There's no Blue Origin employee inside the capsule. We are all new passengers to this vehicle, And so there's only three days of training. Now, of course, the months leading up to getting there, there's a lot of virtual training that we do to understand all of the things that can go right and all of the things that can go wrong, because they take it very seriously to have informed consent. And before you sign on the dotted line, you really need to know that you are putting yourself on top of a controlled bomb in a way. This is not a joyride. This is not bungee jumping or skydiving. We are participating in the very risky, very dangerous endeavor of human space flight. And you have to know that going in. You have to really, really want this. 

And so we go through all of that informed consent before we get to the astronaut training facility. But once we're there, we have three days of training where we run through a mission simulator. They have a mock-up of the capsule there, and we go through all of the nominal scenarios, what to expect and how to get in and out of your seat, but also all of the emergency scenarios. I was in one of the seats that you might consider the emergency exit row, and it was me in one of the seat that was responsible for the fire suppression system. And then myself and another seat was also responsible for opening the hatch in case of an emergency egress where we would need to very quickly exit the vehicle. 

And of course, if there's anything where the air is compromised in the cabin, we each have masks to don, and they're very, very cool masks that you can put on with one hand and there's a special way you're supposed to put it on. So we practice everything to make sure that there's muscle memory in case there's an emergency scenario. But then after that, on the day of launch, you get in your seat and you feel really prepared because you not only do you know what to expect, but you know what to do if there's something that comes up that is unexpected.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: This is one of those moments that you look forward to and you prepare for. But as you said, you're basically strapping yourself to a controlled bomb. Any moment you go to space is there's a great deal of risk in it. Did you feel that bit of tension or fear before it happened, or did it hit you at any point? Or was the excitement just to be able to go to space enough to overpower that feeling?

Emily Calandrelli: Oh no, I was fearful the entire time until I touched back down on land. I am not someone who doesn't feel fear. I am not someone who prepares so much that I'm just focused on the mission. I feel fear, I feel it, and then I do it anyway. And I think that's just my normal human survival instinct kicking in, but my heart was pounding a mile a minute. But also there's this emotion in your head where you're just like, "I've dreamed of this moment for decades and now I'm here and now it's happening." And now the other part of my fear was that the launch was going to get delayed or scrubbed, and all of a sudden I wouldn't be the 100th woman in space because when Sirisha told me that that was going to be my number, all of a sudden that became very important to me. I really want that number now. And so when we get on the launch pad, I'm just looking at the countdown clock. I'm like, "Please, no delays, no holds, no delays, no delays. Come on." And then once it gets to I think two minutes and 20 seconds, T minus two minutes and 20 seconds, that's when the vehicle is fully autonomous. So at that point, things can still go awry, but at that point it's mostly on. The rocket is going to go. 

And so once we got to that two minutes and 20 seconds, I had this sigh of relief of like, "All right, it's happening. We're going to at least head to space, towards space today. Hopefully everything goes right and we actually get there." But that point, I wasn't worried about any delays or holds anymore. But when I was sitting on that launch pad, I was running through all of the different people in my life that I wanted to be grateful for and think about. 

And I thought about myself as a younger kid and I thought, "Man. Girl, you did it. You freaking did it. You're here, you did it." And I was thinking of my younger self and I was thinking of my parents and feeling gratitude for everything that they did that allowed me to be there. And I was thinking of my husband and my kids and just gratitude that I found a support system of people who never made me feel guilty for having these big dreams, but instead worked with me to find a way to make it happen. And I knew that all of my friends and family were really nervous right now. But yeah, it was just a very surreal moment.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Now, in those moments where you're going through something really intense, I think thinking about all the people that supported you along the way and the people that are most important to you and how much it took to accomplish that dream is a great way to overcome that fear because nothing worth doing is ever easy, honestly.

Emily Calandrelli: No, yeah. And at that point it was like, "I'm going to launch to space no matter what. I might as well enjoy the ride. There's no way to get out now. There's no turning back. I might as well just have fun at this point."

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What was the ride actually like?

Emily Calandrelli: It was better than I could have imagined. It was like, I'm telling you, before I did the flight, I thought, "This is so risky. I can only do this, I'm only ever going to try to do this one time because I feel so guilty not just risking my life, but risking my kid's mother's life, risking my husband's wife's life. This is a whole, whole thing that I can only do once." And then as soon as I got touched back down on Earth, I was like, "I will do anything to do that again, the best thing I've ever done in my whole life." But basically the first couple of minutes, you're ascending, so you're accelerating really quickly and you get 2 to 3Gs. It doesn't feel too heavy, but you can feel the pressure. You can feel yourself being pushed back into your seat and then you're watching the world fall away below you. 

And then the thing that's a little bit unnerving is, and I forgot this in the moment, they told us who expect this but I forgot this in the moment, the rocket bends a little bit. It goes at an angle because of course it has this ballistic trajectory, so it goes like a rainbow motion. So there's a little bit of a tilt to the rocket, and you feel that. You feel that angled acceleration on your body. And in the moment I was like, "Oh gosh, is it tilting? Is it tilting too much? What's happening here?" Because on a previous flight, the rocket had tilted too much and then the emergency escape system ejected the capsule away from the rocket. And the whole time that's happening, I'm like, "Please don't let that happen. I want to make it to space. Please don't let the emergency escape system eject me." But that was normal. That was nominal. And then at two minutes and 18 seconds, the main engine of the rocket cuts off. So that's MECO. This is one of the biggest moments in the launch profile. This is the moment where the flight director, I asked him, I was like, "Well, at what point during the flight profile do you take a breath? When do you calm down?" And he was like, "At MECO. MECO is when I calm down because I think a lot of the risky aspects of the flight happened right before then." And so MECO happened and I'm like, "Okay, get it. We got it. We made it to MECO". And that's when you feel weightless. 

So main engine cuts off. All of a sudden you feel weightless, you're free floating inside the capsule, but your harness is still on. Ten seconds after that, that's when the capsule is ejected from the booster. That's the separation point. And you hear it and you feel it. It's like a kick in the pants and it sounds like woof. And so that's when you're allowed to unstrap from your harness and float around the capsule. And at that same moment, while you're floating in space, the rocket is coming down to land on land to be reused on a future flight. 

So at that point, you have about three and a half, four minutes to float around the capsule. We practice this over and over and over again so we knew exactly how we wanted to use those three and a half minutes. And for the first 10 seconds, we came together and we took a crew photo. And then for the last three minutes, every one of us went back to our window and we just looked out the window. This was the advice given to us by former Blue Origin astronauts. They were like, "Don't play with weightless candies. Don't try to drink water or anything. You can get a weightless experience on the ground with those parabolic flights. You don't need to go to space for that. So just spend your time looking out the window." And that's what we did. I said hello to my kids. I said hello to my husband, to my parents. And then I just went and looked out the window. 

And it's so hard to explain because it's so many extreme emotions happening at once. For one, my adrenaline is still pumping. I still have fear that's latent in the system. And then two, you're disoriented because you're weightless. Your feet are on the ceiling and your head is on the floor, and it's like your body is trying to orient itself to understand what's going on. But then I'm looking out the window and I'm seeing new things I've never seen before, new colors, new details, new contrasts, and my brain is trying to categorize everything all at once. And it's like, "What's happening? What am I seeing? What am I looking at?" But then at the same time, I'm like, "I did it. I'm here." I feel the sense of pride and gratitude and just joy, unadulterated joy. 

And so you have all of that happening at once. It's the most overwhelming feeling in the best way possible. And then the alarm starts going off, which tells you you have 30 seconds to get back into your seat and in before you descend back down to Earth, which is another pretty extreme part of the flight profile that you want to be seated. You get buckled in, and then on the way down you decelerate so quickly that you feel up to 5Gs. That was part of the flight that I was like, "Oh, this is more intense than I was expecting." This 5Gs feels like your face is melting off. It's a little bit harder to breathe. And then after a few minutes of that, the drogue shoots, the smaller parachutes deploy, and you hear them eject from the top of the capsule like a woof. 

And then those slow it down a little bit farther. And then after that, 10 seconds after that, you hear the mains, the main parachutes come out of the capsule. And then at that point you're really just floating back down to the ground. And I looked out the window and I counted one, two, and I waited for them to rotate a little bit. And I saw three mains. And I was like, "We have three. We've got three parachutes." Because a former flight only had two parachutes. And then once I saw three parachutes, I was like, "You guys, we did it. We're safe. We did it." And then you land back down on land and it's just like the most exhilarating ride of your life.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Who were some of the people that went to space with you on this journey? And did you make any friendships along the way?

Emily Calandrelli: Yes, I made so many friendships along the way. I think going through an experience like this, you were bound to be connected for life. And there was a couple, Sharon and Mark Hagle, who had gone up on a previous flight. And so they were really helpful in giving us advice for how to best use our time. And they were one of the ones who had told us to look out the window, and they even told us to flip upside down to get that perspective of your feet being in space and Earth being above you. So very grateful to them. They were like our space mom and dad who are giving us advice. 

Austin won a raffle to be on the space flight. He said he felt like the luckiest person in the room, and he shared a lot of philosophical wisdom. I feel like he was very good at sharing wisdom throughout the flight. And then JD, who was a police officer turned serial entrepreneur, was there. And we also had Hank who was a pilot. And they all just had a wealth of expertise. They each had different personalities, and we just all bonded in this really beautiful experience that we were lucky enough to share together.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Those are the kinds of friends of chance that you make and somehow become just deeply embedded in your life. I'm sure no matter how separated you get, you'll probably have a reunion in 10, 20 years.

Emily Calandrelli: 100%. Yeah, exactly. And they all had kids, and so I would be making videos for their kids saying hello. And yeah, we feel like not only are we connected, but our families are connected because we brought girlfriends and wives and husbands were there, and they were all interacting. And the kids were there, and it was just, it was very mutual.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And I felt it. Watching the videos of you in space, your reaction was... I mean, anybody's reaction in that moment is always very poignant and makes me very emotional. But your reaction was so, so beautiful, so genuine. And then listening to the interviews of you after the fact, you explained that essentially it was the reaction that you felt after having your children.

Emily Calandrelli: Yes.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Could you talk a little bit about that? Because I found that that was a whole different context that it only occurred to me could only be provided by a mom going to space. Not that you're the first, but there haven't been that many.

Emily Calandrelli: There haven't been that many. There's only been 100 women in total that have gone to space. And so with childbirth, you have that same feeling of adrenaline and fear, so you have those emotions going on as well. It's also a very physical thing that you're going through, but also there's this immense joy and this gratitude and this idea of like, "Oh my God, I did it." When I was pregnant, the idea of birth was very scary. Giving birth to a child is like, "How is my body going to do that? That's so scary." And I thought the same thing with space flight like, "This is scary. How am I going to do this?" And there's also this moment of this thing that I've thought about, maybe I've seen pictures of like on a sonogram, this thing that I've loved for a long time, that I've known for a long time, but finally being able to see it with your own eyes. It's this like, "Hello, I see you. I love you. This is the first time I get to see you," and you're memorizing all of the details of their nose and eyes and fingers. And I felt the same feeling when I looked at our planet. I'm trying to memorize every single detail because this is the first time I feel like I'm meeting you. 

And so it was that overwhelming sense of fear and gratitude and love, and just it was very physical as well. So all of those things were going on at once, and it was wild to me. I didn't expect that. When I was coming down, I was trying to understand all the feelings that I was having, and that was the closest thing that I could compare it to. And I was talking to some women in my life and I was like, "Going to space is the most magical thing I've ever done, but it's the same magic that so many women have known for centuries. This magic is something that women have had ever since we've been around." And I was like, "Maybe that's why the universe sent men first so that they could feel this magic too."

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Talk about overview effect, right? That's a beautiful way to put it. The other side of that though is not just the experience of the Earth and seeing for the first time, but truly grappling with the darkness around it. I've heard so many people express that they knew space was big and dark, but it wasn't until they were actually staring at the blackness that they fully contextualize what that was.

Emily Calandrelli: Exactly. So the first thing that I did when I got to the window is I flipped upside down. So my feet were on the ceiling and my head was on the floor, and so my feet were in space. And when I looked up, that's when I saw the Earth. And that's when you really get that off-planet feel. And when I looked down, I was like, "That's space?" You can hear it in my reaction. I'm like, "That's our planet." And I was like, "Oh my God, that's space." Because it was so immense and so black. I wasn't expecting to see so much space. I think I just thought my entire purview would be filled with the Earth, but it was like 80% space. And I think that is something that really threw me off because I was like, "Ooh, that's spooky. That's so much space." And it's so dark, it's so empty, and it's a color that can't be replicated in paint or in a crayon or on a screen or anything. And it felt like very, very spooky.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I could absolutely see that. We think we're so big, but then you take a step back and it really is that pale blue dot feeling even just in one parabolic arc off of the Earth. We are so small and so precious. And space is infinite. It's terrifying, and I haven't even personally experienced it yet.

Emily Calandrelli: Yes, exactly. Yep.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Our fingers crossed. We'll be right back with the rest of my interview with Emily Calandrelli after the short break.

Asa Stahl: Hi, I'm Asa Stahl, science editor from The Planetary Society. 

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Sarah Al-Ahmed: You spoke a little bit about this earlier, about the image you took to space of the other 99 women that have been there before you, and that was a really beautiful moment. But you also took so many other things up there with you that you put so much thought and effort into. So I want to discuss a little bit about those starting off with your father's college ring. Why did you choose to take that with you to space?

Emily Calandrelli: Yeah. So I'm from West Virginia and my dad is also from West Virginia. He grew up in poverty, and poverty in West Virginia is a different level of poverty. He just had a really, really rough childhood. And he was the youngest of four kids to a single mom, but he was the first person in his family to go to college. At the age of 18, he bought his family their very first car, and he talked about how that car provided freedom because before they could only go to places they could walk or take a bus to, but that car allowed them to travel to wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and it opened up their world. And then when he went to college, that world expanded a little bit more. And it was his way of creating his own dream for himself that wasn't given to him when he was a child. 

And in many ways, I feel like my dad ran so that I could fly, so that I could soar, so that I could pursue my dreams because his biggest dream when he was a kid was to not be poor, to be able to afford cereal. He didn't have these dreams of becoming anything in particular because that is a privilege afforded to those who have their basic needs covered. And so for him, his college ring is his most prized possession. It's something that is this physical manifestation of all of his hard work, of him believing in himself that he could get himself to a better place, and he did. And so I wanted to bring that up with me to space to be like, "We made our world even bigger. Look at the world that we've been given now." And so that was something that was meaningful to him and meaningful to me, meaningful to our family. Ever since I've ever wanted to go to space, I've known that that was going to be at least the one thing that I was going to bring with me.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: His reaction when you told him was so heartwarming, you could just see it, right?

Emily Calandrelli: Yeah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And that realization of not just the creation of your own dreams and safety, but the way that he has enabled you and the rest of your family to go out and live these dreams all the way to going to space. Sometimes we don't get to accomplish our dreams, but we get to make better lives for other people. So it was beautiful to see. The other thing that I found really meaningful was the bag of pearls or disruptors as you called them. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Emily Calandrelli: Yeah. So I wanted to take up something to give away to the women in my life because I feel like I've been lucky enough to be surrounded by so many women who just break down barriers in their own life and are often the only women in the rooms that they occupy. And so I was like, "Well, what do I want to bring?" And I was at a West Virginia jeweler because one of my missions for my space flight was to shine a spotlight on West Virginia, and I was at this local West Virginia jeweler and I was looking at everything that they had and they were showing me these pearls. I was like, "Oh, these pearls are really pretty." And I got to thinking. I was like, "Well, what is a pearl really?" A pearl is really the result of a disruptor of a system, something that normally shouldn't be there, something that's often thought of as an outsider that is disrupting the system but creating something beautiful in the process. 

And I was like, "A lot of the women in my life are like that. They are the disruptors in their own industries and their own workplaces." And so I just picked out a bunch of pearls to be able to bring them. And so now I'll go back to that West Virginia jeweler and put them on necklaces, and that'll be my gift to the disruptors in my life. And then the beautiful part is that this jeweler in West Virginia is going to make that pearl necklace. They're going to make a replica of it so that anybody who wants to buy it can buy one for the disruptors in their life as well. So yeah, it was just basically a gift for a lot of the women in my life.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's such a beautiful imagery, and it's so true. And here's to all of the disruptors, the women that are integrating into spaces that are classically not welcoming to us, but all of the underrepresented people in all of these spaces. I'm looking forward to a day where we can celebrate these 100th milestones for everyone that feels-

Emily Calandrelli: Everybody.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: ... underrepresented. But in order to do that, we have to increase space accessibility, which is what commercial space is seeking to do.

Emily Calandrelli: Yeah, I think so.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah, fingers crossed anyway. The last thing I did want to bring up that you took to space with you and relates to something you said earlier was this beautiful piece of artwork that you didn't get to take the entire painting up with you obviously because you only had, what was it, three pounds you could put in the bag with you.

Emily Calandrelli: Three pounds in a little bag, yep.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. But you spoke a little bit about thinking about that childhood self that you envisioned on your way going to space and how that plays into who you are today. And this painting very much reflected that.

Emily Calandrelli: Yes, absolutely. So there's this artist that I follow online, Chilu. She's @hellochilu on Instagram, and she just creates the most beautiful, effervescent, iridescent star cloud paintings that's so beautiful. She's so talented. And I talked to her. I was like, "Hey, I would love to bring your art to space with me. Would that be okay? Do you have something that you would like me to bring?" And she was so excited about the idea so she was like, "What if I just created an entire custom piece of artwork for you?" I was like, "Well, sure."

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Sure.

Emily Calandrelli: "That sounds great." And so she asked me to take pictures of my daughter in a space suit, reaching. And so I took pictures of my daughter reaching upward, and she painted this child in an astronaut holding a bunch of iridescent star and heart balloons that are slightly deflated amidst the background of these cotton candy clouds. And above it, there's this star-studded sky and you see the New Shepard capsule in the upper right-hand corner, and the child represents our inner child always reaching toward our dreams. The balloons are slightly deflated to show that the path toward our dreams is not often easy or perfect, but we've reached for them anyways. And then the capsule in the upper right is to show that vehicle that brought me to my dreams, that brought me to my stars. And it's the most beautiful painting I've ever seen in my whole life, and now we're selling the prints to raise money for charity.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's fantastic. What charity does the money go to?

Emily Calandrelli: The charity is going to the National Network of Abortion Funds in the United States, and then also because the artist is from Sydney. It's going to a children's hospital in Sydney as well.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's beautiful. You got to involve your children in a lot of these steps. A lot of the things you took up to space were for them, and you got to speak with them about this moment. What has been their reaction to you going to space?

Emily Calandrelli: Oh, they will not stop talking about the fact that mommy rode a rocket to space. They think it's very cool, but also very normal. The other day, I dropped my daughter off at school and a couple of kids came up asking for an autograph, and my daughter looked at me like I was crazy. And she was like, "What are they asking you for? What's an autograph? What's that?" And I was like, "Well, they want me to write my name on this paper." They're like, "They want you to write Emily? Why?" I think she assumes that all mommies go to space and that this week her mommy went to space and the next week their mommies will go to space and that it's just this totally normal thing in the world. And I'm excited to see when they get older what they think of it, because right now they're just two and five. They're still so little. And I love that they think it's so normal, but I hope eventually they think it's really cool.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: May it someday be normal for everyone's mommies to go to space, honestly.

Emily Calandrelli: Yeah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What about the other kids you come in contact with? Because you've inspired a whole generation of young people through your television shows.

Emily Calandrelli: I saw some videos of a few families, especially the ones with little girls watching the rocket launch, and there was one in particular that stood out. There was two little girls that were wearing astronaut suits and they were screaming the countdown towards the TV. They were like, "5, 4, 3, 2, 1." And I was like, what a beautiful sight this is, is to see two little girls sharing girlhood together, watching a woman fly to space. This is so incredibly beautiful, and so I hope this becomes more normal and that we see more things like that, that they have more women to look up to, that anybody, any child who sees themselves in the stars can find somebody who looks like them to cheer on when they're still growing up because it's just, oh gosh, it's so impactful. I want to check in on those kids in 10, 15 years to see what they're doing because I just have to. I hope to imagine that this moment sticks with them.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I'm sure it will, honestly, and it's such a beautiful moment for you and for your family and for all the other people that have been following along on your journey. But then in the aftermath of all of this, they put the videos up online. Your beautiful, passionate, just very real reaction to going to space goes up online and suddenly you have to grapple with the negativity of the internet. What happened in the aftermath of those videos going up online and how have you been doing?

Emily Calandrelli: Yeah. It's so funny because when they showed me... We saw all the videos before they had released them and we all approved of what videos were put out there, and there was not a dry eye in the house when we all watched those videos back because this was the realest. This was our real unfiltered emotion, and I was so proud of it because I was like, "This is my dream. You guys are seeing my dream in action." And no wonder I had an emotional reaction to it because it was something that I had worked toward for two decades. And the way that I think about it is we saw something that fewer than 700 humans out of the 100 billion plus humans that have been alive on this planet have seen. If somebody wants to make fun of that, their opinion is irrelevant because they didn't see what I saw. 

And so that's the way that I'm framing this because I'm like, I talked to the other people who have seen it and they're like, "No, that's our reaction too." If you go back and listen to many of the other videos, especially of women seeing this for the first time, you just don't often get the full video of people's reactions and it's just a very normal reaction to seeing what we saw. And so what's funny and what's beautiful is that those comments, the negative ones, are completely buried by all of the positive ones, and that's the part that I find the most beautiful, is that the positive always outweighs the negative a hundred to one.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, I'm sure a million people have told you this in the last weeks, but from another woman who's been told many, many times that I'm way too enthusiastic about space, I think your reaction was absolutely valid. And I'm really glad that it hasn't in any way dimmed your light.

Emily Calandrelli: Blue Origin has been so wonderful throughout this, and it is my hope that I could find another sponsor to fly with MHN at any point in time and give the trolls another reaction to react to because that's just, I will be enthusiastic about space all day long and nobody can prevent that.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. But it also points to a really unfortunate reality, which is that when people who are frequently left out of the conversations around space or anything really enter these spaces, you end up with negative reactions. And this, while it has been getting better within the space field, this is something that I have to be honest with other women in my life when they get into space. You're going to deal with misogyny. You're going to deal with professors that might not be ethical. You're going to deal with backlash online if you're too excited. I hope that doesn't stop people from going into it. And I have my own personal advice for it, but what would you say to women who are reticent to enter these spaces because they're afraid of that kind of backlash?

Emily Calandrelli: Well, for one, delete Twitter. Honestly, staying off of Twitter removed 90% of the harassment. So I would say the most negative harassment and the people who are likely to harass exist on X. So that helps a lot. But then in addition to that, in normal day-to-day, non-internet life, creating a community of people who you resonate with, like for women, creating a community of women around you, because that will give you some sanity to show that you are not the crazy one. They are being awful and you are valid in whatever you're experiencing. And then they'll also give you tips and tricks on what they did when this has happened to them in the past because it probably has. And so creating that community of people who are in your field who share whatever community you feel like you're a part of, that helps immensely.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It really does. There are so many conversations I've had with people over the years that I've been doing this show that I haven't had time to share online. They're not pertinent to the conversation necessarily, but I tell you, almost every woman I've brought onto this show has had the same conversation. Join these spaces. There is a support network there for you. All of us women are in it together. All of us are in it together. You just have to find those people that are going to bolster you.

Emily Calandrelli: Exactly.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. You've been through so much, but what's next? Some people might interpret this as the end of a journey, but honestly, this is a whole new beginning. Now, you get to share this with everybody else.

Emily Calandrelli: Oh, absolutely. I feel like the mission for me, because of course this is commercial spaceflight. People can either do this and have it be one and done and just never think of it again, or you can create something really special out of it. And so I feel like my mission begins now, and it's my goal to share this with as many people as possible. I filmed my entire journey for my show Xploration Outer Space, and so that will be airing this coming year, but also through social media. 

And then my personal goal is to bring this to as many kids in West Virginia as I can, because as a West Virginia girl who made it to the stars, I was able to do that in part thanks to a sponsorship from Marshall University, which is a university in West Virginia, that has this incredible aviation program that's pumping out the next generation of pilots, potentially astronauts as well. And so I want to go back to them and be like, "This is what's possible. I sat in those seats, I am from West Virginia myself. This is what is possible for you too." And just be able to try to uplift those communities who maybe don't often see themselves in these spaces very often. And so yeah, basically I have a lot of work to do.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: You do, but you're always crushing it in this respect. Now, you just have more fuel in your engine to go do that.

Emily Calandrelli: That's right. Yep, more visuals for the presentation.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Has this trip in any way changed the way that you talk about commercial space to people? Because I know there are a lot of negative perceptions of this idea that space is only accessible to those who have the money to do so.

Emily Calandrelli: Yeah. And in many ways, that can be true, right? It's not like this is a cheap endeavor. The only way that someone like me was able to do it was with sponsorships from 20 to 30 different companies who saw value and having me talk about their science and technology while I'm on this journey to spaceflight. But that's the way of many of the technologies that we've seen in history, from personal computers to aviation. It is something that is very expensive at first, and we need the wealthy to buy into it in order for that innovation to be further innovated upon, made more efficient, made cheaper for the rest of us. 

And so I think that there is a lot of negativity toward commercial spaceflight, but I think that's more of an indicator of the inequality that currently exists in our country, not necessarily the inherent devaluation of commercial spaceflight. And I think we need to be very thoughtful about separating the two because inequality is an enormously challenging issue that needs to be addressed. Ending commercial spaceflight would not solve inequality. And so trying to separate those two, I think, can be very important. 

But when you see someone like myself, when you see many of the women that I know from Kellie Gerardi or Katya or Sara Sabry, Sirisha Bandla, these people who have flown on Virgin or Blue Origin, they're bringing this experience down to kids, down to girls who see themselves in them and inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers. So I think it can be what you make of it, and that's up to us. We have to figure out what we want to make of this experience. But I think valuing it at that is very important and trying to separate that from the very important, very problematic issue that is inequality in this country.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well said. I'm so glad that you got to have this experience and that we got to go along on the journey with you. So often, people get go to space and they don't have as much of a social media presence as you do, so you get to see their reactions here and there. But I really feel like those of us that follow you online have been on this journey with you for years and your triumph feels like in part our triumph as well.

Emily Calandrelli: Ah, that's music to my ears. That's what I hope to do because I feel like in many ways, my dream is only possible because of all those people who have followed me. I would not have been able to get this flight without all of those people. And so they are very much a part of my journey. I'm very grateful to them. I'm grateful to you all for following me because my dreams would not be possible without them. So again, I feel like a responsibility to share them with everybody because it's in part theirs too.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: People also ask me frequently, "How do you end up with a career in space? How do you shape the career that you want?" And something I often tell them is, "Be loud about your dreams. No one is going to help you get to your dreams unless you are loud about it." And I feel like that has really helped on your journey.

Emily Calandrelli: 100%. I think for so many people, we have these big, bold dreams, but we're not often sure the exact path to get there. And when you are vocal about what you want, then other people can reveal the paths that other people have taken. Yours might be a little bit different. Yours might be start somewhere and then end somewhere else on a different path. But by sharing your end goal with more people, then the paths start to reveal themselves along the way because it's hard. You shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel every time or pave the way for yourself every time. Because for someone like me, I'm not the first female commercial astronaut. I'm not the first female social media commercial astronaut. There have been other people before me that have laid the ground for me to be able to do this as well. So just that's it. 

I have a group of nine of us, female astronauts who are in the commercial space, and we share so much knowledge in our little group chat. They're like my board of directors. And it has been so useful to have that because sometimes it feels like if you want to do something big, you've got to do it by yourself or there's some sort of competition involved with other people who are similar to you. But if you are open to creating that community and sharing knowledge, everything will happen much easier. So that's something that's been really useful to me in my journey too.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: None of us do this alone. And it's beautiful seeing that legacy of everyone that's gone to space and all of the women that have fought to be in those spaces culminate in this moment, which hopefully is just the beginning of a whole new age as space becomes more accessible to everyone. And with all these dreams of returning to the moon, hopefully one of these days we'll get a reaction video of you and all the other women watching as the first woman steps foot on the moon.

Emily Calandrelli: Oh, gosh. Please let that happen still.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Fingers crossed. Yeah, I'm a little nervous too. But whether or not it happens now or in the future, this is a legacy we're all building together for the rest of humanity. So maybe we won't see it, but someone will.

Emily Calandrelli: Somebody will.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Somebody will.

Emily Calandrelli: Dear God, please let somebody.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Right? Imagine how many people that would inspire. Well, thank you for joining us to share this journey and everything around it. You've been so candid and vulnerable, and I think a lot of people would find this very relatable. And as someone who hopes to go to space someday, lots of good tidbits for how to make it happen.

Emily Calandrelli: Absolutely. Would love to see it.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, thanks so much, Emily.

Emily Calandrelli: Thank you for having me.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Here's to the next 100 women in space and all of the other trailblazers that are marking firsts for themselves and others. And if you happen to have any young people in your life who might want to go to space someday, Emily's YouTube show, Emily's Science Lab, just got approved for YouTube Kids. Now it's time for What's Up? with our chief scientist, Dr. Bruce Betts. 

Hey, Bruce.

Bruce Betts: Hey, Sarah. How's your new year?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's been pretty good so far, pretty eventful. New Year's by itself was awesome, but then getting the news recently that our CEO Bill Nye got the Presidential Medal of Freedom, that was a big moment this weekend.

Bruce Betts: Yeah, that's pretty darn impressive.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Right? And I got to talk to Emily Calandrelli, who I've been following on social media for years. So that was memorable.

Bruce Betts: Stalking, I believe, is the technical term.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Stalking. Is it stalking if you follow them on social media? These are the questions.

Bruce Betts: No, it's not. It's the other things I'm... Anyway, never mind. Go ahead. I'm glad you got to talk to her. That's great.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah, it was really cool because I've been following her experiences. And so many of these things that she said during our interview really resonated with me in ways that I haven't heard them expressed in other interviews from people who have gone to space, which just really shows how powerful it is to have people from so many different walks of life now have access to space. And still really weird that after all of these decades of people going to space, only 100 women have done so. So this is probably an interview I'll remember for a while. 

She was telling me, basically they had such a little amount of time and space that they really had to strategize what they were going to be doing during that time. And they were told that they should basically not do any of the fun little physics experiments that you can do in 0G because you could accomplish that on a 0G flight. So you don't want to use your three minutes in space not doing exactly what you want with it. 

But there are so many things I would love to do in 0G. So I wanted to ask you, what are some of the cool things that you can do in 0G? Maybe not on a suborbital flight, you won't have time, but if given infinite time, what could you do?

Bruce Betts: Oh my gosh, don't give me infinite time. I'll give you an infinite answer. I would play with all those physics experiments that I would just... Toys, toys are fun. And liquids, which would just make a mess, but maybe water, floating balls, water, spherical flames, just recreationally that would make the ground controllers probably nervous, but liquids have held together by surface tension is super cool. Of course, just odd little paper airplanes. What else? I thought of Jello. Yeah, Jello, floating block of Jello.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Floating Jello.

Bruce Betts: Yeah, and then you poke it.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I could see that being a lot of fun. There's so many weird physics things that you can read about in textbooks, but you can't really play around with until you're in that environment. I know there's a lot of emotional complications and a lot of valid criticism of commercial space, and it's all very important. But when I look at the log of people that have gone to space and just how much this new realm of space exploration has opened up to people, it is cool seeing how much more opportunity there is for people to just adventure and have those moments of just looking out at the Earth.

Bruce Betts: Pretty cool.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Right?

Bruce Betts: Hey.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, on that note.

Bruce Betts: We're going to do a... And it's somewhat unusual.

Speaker 5: Random Space Fact.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Aren't they all unusual? What is it this time?

Bruce Betts: Well, what's interesting is it's the most usual thing, truly mundane, it's about Earth. Earth, a planet with a planetary process of magnetic field. And a lot of people probably know this, but I got reminded again how wild it is that our north magnetic pole of the Earth has just been looking across the Earth in recent decades, whereas it really wasn't moving around much a couple of hundred years ago. But then especially in the crazy '70s about when I came on the scene, maybe that's related, it started running away from me. Huh?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Huh?

Bruce Betts: Anyway, it moves like 50 kilometers a year. It slowed down some on average to maybe 25 kilometers a year, but it's just headed out. Spent a long time in Canada, had a great time, and now it's just for some reason booking it across the Arctic Ocean. That's the technical term for magnetic field pole movement is booking it. It's booking it across past the actual rotational pole of the Earth and headed for Siberia because they've heard good things.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah, that is really interesting and weird. And the more we learn about Earth's magnetic field, the more fascinated I am.

Bruce Betts: Yeah, it's shockingly something generated in the outer core of the Earth is complex. The people who seriously have to think about these things have to keep updating their magnetic models quite frequently of what the heck's going on.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I'm so glad we live in a modern day where we understand what's going on there so we can account for it in our navigation. Because imagine, you're on Earth during a time where you have to navigate using magnetic fields and stars, and you have no idea that the magnetic pole moves. Oh, no.

Bruce Betts: Yeah, it matters, man. It matters.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: So cool.

Bruce Betts: All right. Everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about what you would do with magnets in 0G. Thank you and good night.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week with a heartfelt story from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab as they honor a colleague with the new Ed Stone Trail. If you love the show, you can get Planetary Radio t-shirts at planetary.org/shop, along with lots of other cool spacey merchandise. Help others discover the passion, beauty, and joy of space science and exploration by leaving your review or a rating on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback not only brightens our day, but helps other curious minds find their place in space through Planetary radio. You can also send us your space thoughts, questions, and poetry at our email at [email protected]. Or if you're a Planetary Society member, leave a comment in the Planetary Radio space in our member community app. 

Planetary Radio is produced by The Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by our members who have spent decades uplifting the space dreams of people all over the world. You can join us and celebrate each new space milestone at planetary.org/join. Mark Hilverda and Rae Paoletta are our associate producers. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Pieter Schlosser. And until next week, ad astra.