Atmosphere

Human intelligence and curiosity, our persistence and resilience, our capacity for long-term planning, and our ability to collaborate have led the human race here.

In Joan’s estimation, we are not ill-suited at all. We are exactly who should be out there. We are the only intelligent life-form that we know of in our galaxy who has become aware of the universe and worked to understand it.

We are so determined to learn what lies beyond our grasp that we have figured out how to ride a rocket out of the atmosphere. A thrilling ability that seems ripe to attract cowboys, but is best done by people like her. Nerds.

Everything about space exploration is about preparedness over impulsivity, calmness over boldness. For such an adventurous job, it can be achingly routine. All risks are carefully managed; no corners are cut. There are no cowboys here.

This is how NASA keeps everyone safe. Predictable models, prepared for every scenario.

When the airlock completes depressurization, Jack gives Joan the go-ahead and Joan punches in on the shuttle loop.

And now Joan is aware of her own breath, her own heart rate. Not because she is afraid of what this mission entails—there is no logical reason to be afraid yet—but because she gets nervous every time she talks to Vanessa Ford.

“Navigator, this is Houston,” Joan says.

“Houston, we read you,” Steve Hagen says.

Hank Redmond chimes in with his gruff Texan accent: “Good mornin’, Goodwin.”

“Exciting day today,” Lydia Danes says.

“Indeed it is,” Joan responds. “With a lot on the agenda, which is why I am happy to tell you, Griff and Ford, that you are cleared for the spacewalk.”

“Roger that,” Ford says.

“Yes, roger that, Goodwin,” Griff says. “Nice to hear your voice.”

These are the last forty-five minutes before.

VANESSA FORD HAS HAD BIOMEDICAL SENSORS ALL OVER HER BODY FOR hours. They have been sending her vitals down to the flight surgeon, who monitors every breath she takes. But even well before the electrodes were placed on her body, Vanessa has been aware that someone on the ground is always watching.

Mission Control knows everything that happens on the shuttle—every temperature, every coordinate, the status of every switch. Everywhere Vanessa turns, there is Houston, hearing and sensing everything around her.

This does not seem to bother anyone else on the crew as much as it bothers her. But knowing that everyone can see her heart rate—that they can see how her body reacts every time Houston speaks up—makes her feel like she has nowhere to hide.

“Nice to hear your voice, too, Griff,” Joan says. “Good start to the day here.”

She can hear Joan smiling. She can hear it in the lilt of her voice.

Vanessa reaches out and puts her gloved hands on the airlock hatch to the payload bay. She feels a vibration in her chest. With the payload bay doors already open, this is all that stands between her and space.

There’s no data on the airlock hatch. It is one of the few things on the shuttle that doesn’t send its own signal. Which means one of them has to notify Houston that they are about to open it.

Vanessa looks at Griff. She’s glad she’s doing this alongside him. She’s always liked him. Not just because they are both from New England, although it helps.

“Houston, we are opening the airlock,” Griff says.

Vanessa begins to open the hatch. She tries to keep her heart rate steady. She’s been working toward this moment for five years, dreaming of it most of her life.

Space.

She and Griff both inhale when they can see through the hatch.

They’ve looked through the window, but nothing quite prepares them for the sight of it now.

Vanessa’s mind goes blank. There are bright lights from the ship, but beyond that everything is black. There is no horizon, only the edge of Navigator and then nothingness with the brilliant colors of Earth in the distance.

“Wow,” Vanessa says. She looks to Griff. He’s lost in the vision of it himself.

She lets go of the ship and moves through the hatch, to take her first step into space. Her legs feel steady as she wades into the darkness. Her eyes widen at the intensity of it, a void unlike anything she’s ever seen.

She looks up, past the payload bay doors, to see Earth in the distance. Clouds streak across the deserts of North Africa. For a moment, Vanessa stops and looks at the Indian Ocean.

For so long, she has loved to be above the clouds. But to be this far above them knocks her breath from her chest.

“My God,” Griff says.

Vanessa turns toward him. They are both tethered to the ship, and Griff pushes away.

She follows, headed straight for the payload. The view is spectacular, but the real reason she’s here is because she wants nothing more than to tinker with a machine two hundred and eighteen miles above Earth’s atmosphere.

They get to the payload, and each takes their position. There are four latches, two on each side of the satellite.

“Take it slow, Ford,” Griff says. “I’m going to be very upset if we set the record for the shortest spacewalk.”

“There’s not really much time we can milk out of this,” she says. “It’s just releasing a few clamps. But all right.”

Using a socket wrench, Vanessa cranks open one of the latches on her side, then moves to the other. Once her second latch is open, she waits a brief moment for Griff to get his second one released, too.

When he’s done, he sighs. “Houston, the clamps have been released, in no small part thanks to the brilliantly efficient Vanessa Ford.”

“Copy that, Navigator. Good job,” Joan says. And then, after a moment: “Navigator, we’ve got hours left on these suits, so better to keep you in the airlock as we deploy, in case we need you again.”

“Awww,” Griff says. “Now you’re just being nice.”

“Well,” Joan says, “we’ve got a soft spot for you down here.”

“Back at ya, Houston,” he says. “Roger that. Ford and I will stay in the airlock.”

They float back. Griff lets Vanessa in first and then joins her. He goes to shut the hatch. But then he stops and looks at Vanessa. He lifts his eyebrows.

Protocol is to close that hatch. But if they leave it open, they will be able to watch the satellite deploy.

Vanessa does not want to lie to Houston. Still, a smile escapes from her.

Griff smiles back and takes his hand off the hatch. He does not close it.

“Houston, we are in the airlock,” he says.

They both turn their attention to the open hatch. They watch as the tilt table is raised into position to release the satellite.

“Houston, we are happy with the degree of the sat,” Vanessa can hear Steve say.

She thinks about their last night before the mission, when they were quarantined at Cape Canaveral. Steve had spent an hour on the phone with Helene. Hank was annoyed because he’d been waiting to call Donna. But Steve had just stood there, leaning against the kitchen counter, making jokes with his wife, his bright blue eyes crinkling as he laughed. Vanessa had listened more than she probably should have. It seemed so easy for Steve to be both sides of himself at the same time—the man he is on the ground and the commander he has to be up here. For her, those two roles have always been in conflict. “Are we cleared to deploy?”

“Affirmative, Navigator,” Joan says. “You are cleared to deploy.”

Lydia is on the remote manipulator system, the RMS. She will release the satellite.

“Roger that, Houston,” Lydia says. “Preparing to deploy.”

“Copy that, Navigator.”

There are two explosive cords holding the Arch-6 in the payload bay. Vanessa and Griff watch as one is detonated according to plan.

But then, swiftly, the second cord explodes in a flash unlike anything Vanessa has ever seen before. It looks nothing like their simulations. The explosions tear the metal bands around the satellite into pieces. Debris goes flying in every direction.

Vanessa cannot tell what has happened. All she can see is the flash of metal, and then a grunt comes out of Griff, like the air has been knocked out of his lungs.

She turns to see a gash below the waist ring in his suit. Within seconds, the exposure will kill him. He puts his hand on his suit to cover the hole.

“I’m okay,” he says to her. They both know that his hand on his suit is enough to save him for now. But his voice is a rocky, thin whisper, as if he has spent all of his breath.

Then an alarm begins to sound, one that Vanessa recognizes but cannot place. And it is only once Steve, Hank, and Lydia all begin to shout that she understands there has been a second hit.

AS THE ALARM RINGS, JOAN BREATHES DEEPLY, TRYING TO THINK clearly. When Greg stands up, her stomach falls.

“Flight, this is EECOM. We are seeing a negative dP/dT. Pressure is dropping rapidly.”

Jack: “What are we at?”

Before Greg can answer, Hank’s voice comes through the loop, level but sharp: “Houston, this is Navigator. We have a cabin leak. We can feel the rapid depress.”

“Copy that, Navigator,” Joan says. She keeps her voice calm, but this is a choice she has to make. She looks to Jack.

Jack turns to her, eyes focused. “Tell them they have a hole. Judging from the depressure rate, it could be as big as half an inch. It’s punctured the skin somewhere on that aft wall, most likely—mid-deck or flight deck. Do they have a visual?”

Joan relays.

“Negative, Houston,” Hank says. “We see no hole.”

Jack: “Tell them to pull everything off the walls, lockers, close-out panels, anything they can get off to expose the skin—pull it all off!”

“Roger that,” Joan says.

Jack continues: “Keep Ford and Griff in the airlock but start pressurizing as quick as possible. Tell Navigator they need to flow in oxygen and open up nitrogen systems 1 and 2 to the cabin to feed the leak until we find that hole!”

Joan updates the crew. Clear, concise, calm. This is NASA. We have a plan for this.

“Roger that,” Hank says as the crew gets to work. “Already on it.”

Greg: “Flight, EECOM—we aren’t seeing a positive change in the leak rate. Pressure is still dropping.”

Joan knows that Hank is the one most likely feeding the oxygen and nitrogen while Steve and Lydia are pulling everything off the walls—the layers of wires, the sleeping bags—as fast as they can. There is so much lining the limited space of the orbiter, and they are tearing it all away, looking for that hole. Each second that goes by stuns her.

She looks at Jack. But Jack is looking at Greg.

“It’s not in the aft of the flight deck!” Steve says.

“I’m pulling the lockers off the mid-deck!” Lydia calls.

Greg looks up at Jack and shakes his head.

Jack slams his hand onto the top of the console and looks at Sean Gutterson, who is in charge of the mechanical systems. “RMU, what do you have? What are they not seeing? I need something! We have seconds!”

Everyone is up out of their seats. Joan can barely hear herself think.

She has been through simulations like this, with the pressure dropping rapidly and no way to stabilize it.

They have ended only when the leak is found.

Or the crew dies.

This is NASA. We have a plan for this.

VANESSA HAS CLOSED THE HATCH, AND THE AIRLOCK IS PRESSURIZING.

But as Vanessa watches Griff, she can see that he is losing consciousness. She slips her hand under his, presses it against the hole in his suit, and applies pressure to his lower stomach.

“Griff, Griff,” she says. No response. “John Griffin, do you hear me?”

When he blinks, she cannot tell if it is purposeful. “I’ve got it,” she says to him. “I’ve got you.”

She cannot pinpoint the exact moment he passes out. Only that soon, his hand falls away and now her hand is the only thing keeping him alive until the cabin pressure in the airlock returns. She checks for any indication of blood under his suit. She sees none.

She can hear the commotion and the voices of her crewmates as they try to coordinate. Steve’s voice calms her, but Lydia’s is starting to rise in pitch.

She realizes she has not heard Hank speak in at least thirty seconds.

That moment grows longer and longer. And Vanessa gets a sinking feeling.

When she was six years old, her mother told her that her father died. Vanessa does not remember what her mother said. She only remembers that before her mother said anything, her mother looked at her but could not speak. It was a brief moment, no more than a second. But Vanessa knew something bad had happened. And it was not by what her mother had said, but the silence that had preceded it.

Vanessa thinks of that silence now.

RAY STANDS UP. “FLIGHT, THIS IS SURGEON. JOHN GRIFFIN’S HEART RATE is dropping.”

Joan has been working to slow down her breathing.

“Hank has lost consciousness,” Lydia says through the loop. And then: “I think Steve has, too.”

Jack goes pale. He looks to Joan. “Stay on Danes.”

“Copy that, Navigator,” Joan says on the loop, each word feeling heavy in her mouth. “We read you.”

Jack: “Keep Danes on the leak. But she also has to make sure the N2 is all the way up. Keep Ford on Griff in the airlock.”

“Roger,” Joan says, and then she gets back on the loop. “Navigator, Houston. Danes, we need you to find that leak as soon as possible. We are reading that the N2 is funneling in, but we are not seeing an increase in cabin pressure.”

“I think I—” Lydia’s voice cuts out.

“Navigator? Navigator, this is Houston, do you read?” Joan says.

Nothing.

“Lydia Danes, do you read me?”

There is no answer. This feels inevitable to Joan now, even though just one second ago she would have said it was nearly impossible. Losing all three in the cabin was something to pretend was a real fear, but it would never actually happen.

Joan leans forward. “Navigator, this is Houston, come in.”

Ray: “Flight, this is Surgeon. Given the rate the pressure has been dropping, Hagen, Redmond, and Danes are certainly unconscious, suffering from the bends. But, given the length of exposure, I believe they may be dead.”

Joan can feel the mass of this moment as it takes hold in her brain stem, making her neck stiff, her head heavy.

Greg: “Flight, EECOM—the cabin pressure is rising.”

Jack: “Rising? Confirm you said rising.”

“Rising, sir. PSIA returning to normal levels.”

“Danes found the hole,” Jack mutters.

Joan gets back on the loop. “Navigator, this is Houston. Can you confirm you have found the hole and patched it?”

Ray: “She’s not going to be able to answer.”

“Lydia, come in,” Joan says again.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

And then Vanessa’s voice.

“Houston,” she says. “I think I am the only one left.”

Seven Years Earlier

JOAN’S YOUNGER SISTER, BARBARA, HAD CALLED HER ONE MORNING TO tell her about a commercial she’d seen on TV late the previous night.

“It said, ‘This is your NASA.’”

“What?” Joan said. She was in her kitchen, pouring herself a cup of coffee, the phone held between her shoulder and her ear. She was about to head to the car. Her first class of the day at Rice University was a survey course on the cosmos, offered to freshmen of all majors. Although she had a PhD focusing on an analysis of magnetic structures in the solar corona, she was spending her expertise teaching eighteen-year-olds the definition of a parsec. But, as her department chair had pointed out when she’d gently asked for a different assignment, “someone has to do it.” Apparently that someone just so happened to be the only woman in the department.

“What do you mean, ‘This is your NASA?’”

“That’s what she said, the woman from Star Trek. Hold on, I wrote it down somewhere. I saw the commercial just before putting Frances to bed, but I was able to grab a pen before it was over. Here it is: ‘This is your NASA, a space agency embarked on a mission to improve the quality of life on planet Earth right now.’ It was Nichelle Nichols—that’s her name! That was driving me crazy. They are recruiting astronauts. Scientists. To go up into space. They specifically said they wanted women.”

Joan put the lid on her coffee. “They said female scientists?”

When Joan was twelve, she had read a newspaper article mentioning the FLATs—First Lady Astronaut Trainees, involved in what was known as the Women in Space Program. That group of thirteen women had been privately tested and trained by William Randolph Lovelace II, the same physician who had helped select the Mercury program astronauts. He’d done it on his own, outside of NASA, in hopes that the organization might recognize the potential of female candidates.

But the article where Joan first read about the program was the same article in which she learned of its demise. The FLATs needed NASA’s approval in order to be granted permission to complete their testing at the Naval School of Aviation Medicine. Days before they were scheduled to arrive, they were notified that NASA would not approve the request.

A congressional hearing in which many of the women testified about gender discrimination did nothing to change the NASA administrator’s mind. John Glenn had even been quoted as saying that women not being accepted as astronauts was “a fact of our social order.”

Joan had spent a lifetime of looking up at the stars, but had not imagined herself in a space suit in a very long time.

“They definitely said ‘scientist’ and they definitely said ‘women,’” Barbara told her.

Joan put down her coffee and took the phone from her shoulder into her hand. “You really think I could be an astronaut?” Joan said.

“You study the stars. Who else could they possibly be asking for?”

“I don’t know. I … You really think I should apply?” Joan asked.

Barbara sighed. “Oh, forget it. You’ve zapped all the fun out of it,” she said and hung up.

As the dial tone kicked in, Joan took the phone from her ear, slowly put it in its cradle, and kept her hand on it for a moment, staring at the receiver.

Two weeks later, without telling Barbara, she requested an application.

As she filled it out, she could barely look at it directly. Me, an astronaut. And yet. She went to the library to xerox her documentation, then stuffed it all into a nine-by-twelve envelope—a summary, thus far, of everything she’d accomplished on Earth.

She walked to the post office and, without allowing herself to agonize any further, dropped it into the mail slot.

That January, Joan walked out her front door on the way to teach another introductory-level course and saw a newspaper in the apartment complex’s driveway. She picked it up and noticed the headline below the fold.

“NASA CHOOSES 35 NEW ASTRONAUT CANDIDATES, INCLUDING SIX WOMEN.”

Joan swallowed hard as her eyes began to sting. She got into her car, threw the newspaper onto the passenger seat, and stared at the steering wheel for seventeen minutes.

It was the only time in her career she had been late to a class.

A YEAR LATER, IN 1979, Joan was walking into the lounge when she overheard Dr. Siskin, her department chair, mention to a fellow professor that NASA had opened up its astronaut applications again—and that they were specifically looking for astronomers and astrophysicists.

She pretended to be searching in the refrigerator for her lunch but, instead, considered her options. Ten minutes later, she was at her desk, writing to request another application.

That year, one hundred and twenty-one applicants were invited—in groups of twenty—for a week of interviews at the Johnson Space Center.

This time, one of them was Joan.

The first night, Joan checked into the Sheraton Kings Inn and got settled in her room. She was ten minutes early for the evening orientation.

She was the third person to sit down. The two already seated were men, and both looked to be military. Then, just behind Joan, another woman walked into the room.

The woman had curly brown hair and light brown eyes, which looked especially striking with the olive-green button-up shirt she was wearing. There was a thin gold chain around her neck.

She sat down just a few seats away from Joan. This woman did not smile or say hello. Joan had no particular reason to feel a connection to her except that, now, Joan was no longer the only woman in the room.

Joan watched as more people filed in. Soon a set of classifications emerged in her mind: scientist and military. Later, Steve Hagen would make it even simpler: “The astronaut corps has two types: dorks and soldiers.” Still, that evening, Joan could not classify the woman in the olive-green shirt.

A man at the front cleared his throat. He had salt-and-pepper hair, closely cropped and combed to the side, with a mustache that was beginning to gray as well.

“I am Antonio Lima, the director of flight at the Astronaut Office,” he said. “Welcome, everyone.”

Joan looked around, seeing them all from what she imagined of his perspective. They all must seem so green.

“If you made it here today, you are one of the select few applicants who we believe may be an asset to NASA and to this nation. Over the course of the next week, you will be assessed in terms of your unique abilities and how they may be a benefit to the larger astronaut corps. Our astronaut candidates—those of you who are fortunate enough to be chosen to join the training here at NASA—must be physically fit and mentally sound, as well as superlatively prepared for the task that lies ahead.”

Just then, a man snuck into the room, taking the chair closest to the door. Joan looked at her watch. He was two minutes late. Certainly this man knew that he was done for.

“You are here,” Antonio continued, “because NASA is about to embark on its greatest and most groundbreaking enterprise yet: the space shuttle program. Until now, space exploration has been exceptional. It has been rare. Soon it will become routine.”

Antonio lifted the cover off the easel and showed a blueprint of a spacecraft. Everyone in the room leaned forward. Joan was familiar with the concept of the shuttle, but learning this level of detail about how it would work made her pulse quicken.

“The shuttles are the first spacecraft in NASA history designed to be reusable,” he said. “With a fleet of shuttles, we can fly into low space orbit over and over again. Launches will happen monthly, even weekly. We will carry cargo to deploy to space. We will perform experiments. Eventually, we believe, we will establish a permanent presence in space, including a space station and manned flights to Mars, built by the shuttle missions we are developing today.”

Antonio grabbed the pointer from the easel.

“This is the orbiter,” he said, pointing to the bulk of the shuttle. “It will launch with an external tank and two solid rocket boosters, one on each side.” He removed the top diagram to show another, more complex one.

“Once the shuttle is launched, the external gas tank and the solid rocket boosters will fall away. And the orbiter will enter low-Earth orbit. As for the crew …” He pointed to the nose of the orbiter. “They will occupy the flight deck here and the mid-deck here.”

The flight and mid-decks were tiny compared to the rest of the orbiter. Joan was starting to get a sense of scale, and she could not keep a smile from escaping.

“Once in orbit, the shuttle will be traveling at approximately five miles a second at a typical altitude of around two hundred miles, circling Earth every ninety minutes. After the astronauts have completed their mission, they will return to Earth. Unlike previous programs here at NASA, we will not be using a splashdown landing in the water. Instead, upon successful reentry into the atmosphere, the shuttle will fly—much like an airplane—and land, wheels down, at one of our bases.”