NASA Spotlight: Astronaut Kjell Lindgren
NASA Spotlight: Astronaut Kjell Lindgren
Kjell N. Lindgren was selected by NASA in 2009. Born in Taiwan while his family was stationed overseas, he spent most of his childhood abroad and returned to the U.S. to complete his education and earn a Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Colorado. He is board certified in emergency and aerospace medicine. After serving as the Deputy Crew Surgeon for Space Shuttle mission STS‐130 and Expedition 24, he was selected to join our astronaut corps. Dr. Lindgren flew on the International Space Station from July 2015 to December 2015 and logged 141 days in space. He participated in two spacewalks and in more than a hundred different scientific experiments. In his free time, Dr. Lindgren enjoys spending time with his family, running, reading, movies, photography and amateur astronomy.
He took some time from being a NASA astronaut to answer questions about his life and career! Enjoy:
What is one thing you would take to space that would make life easier?
A real R2 unit, of course! Just kidding, but in the future… Honestly though, life is pretty good on the International Space Station. While it is still a lot like camping (sleeping bags, no running water, rehydrated food) the space station team has really equipped us for success. As you all prepare for YOUR future spaceflight, I would say that the two most useful items I had with me on a daily basis were a pair of scissors and a spoon. The scissors were super useful for cutting plastic wrappers, tape, etc., and opening food packages (much more useful than a knife). And the spoon is the only utensil you need for eating – at least with the food system that we have right now.
Who helped get you to where you are?
Getting this opportunity, becoming an astronaut – that was a team effort for sure. I had so many people walking alongside me on this journey, helping me along the way. My parents set the bit early on – telling me that I could become whatever I wanted through hard work. They really gave me permission to dream big. Teachers and coaches, mentors, co-workers and friends all played a huge part in reaching this goal. Most of all, though, my wife, Kristi and my three kids have been an integral part of this adventure. I would not have this job, and I wouldn’t be successful in it without their love and daily support.
You and your crew mates were the first astronauts to harvest lettuce grown on orbit. How did it taste?
The lettuce tasted like…lettuce, which was a good thing, because if it hadn’t, then it meant we had made a huge mistake. It was so much fun to be a part of that experiment. The payoff, getting to eat fresh grown food on orbit was of course, a lot of fun. But just getting to take care of the lettuce plant, watch it grow in the sterile looking environment of the space station, getting to take care of this living thing on a daily basis, it was good for the soul.
How do you prepare for someone getting hurt or sick in space?
We train at least two crew members on every expedition to be Crew Medical Officers, or CMOs. They spend about 40 – 50 hours learning how to use the medical equipment and procedures on the space station, so that they can essentially serve as an extension of the flight surgeon in mission control. We have equipment and medication to deal with most minor illnesses and injuries. But because we are in low earth orbit, we can evacuate an ill crew member back to Earth in the event of a severe medical issue. This option won’t be available as we push out further from Earth, so we’ll need more rigorous training and a more comprehensive medical system.
How many times did you apply to be an astronaut?
I was very fortunate and got selected on my first try. I have several friends in the office though, who applied 4 or 5 times before being selected. It is amazing to go through the selection process and to meet others who share your dream. Enjoy the experience and keep applying – it is worth it!
How can I improve my chances of being selected to become an astronaut?
I recommend continuing to do things that you enjoy, continue to build experience at work and maybe look for new opportunities in your job that will grow you in your career and grow you as a leader. But choose opportunities because YOU want to do them, not based on what you think NASA is looking for. There is no one path or experience that leads to becoming an astronaut. We have an amazing diversity of experience and background in the astronaut office.
What advice do you have for the newest astronauts?
Enjoy the journey! Spaceflight is amazing, but even as astronauts, most of us spend 95% of our career on the ground. Enjoy every part of the job, supporting missions as a Spacecraft Communicator (CapCom), verifying procedures for a repair or training for a spacewalk. It is amazing to be a part of the team that launches and supports humans living and working in space. It is an amazing thing.
Which is more exciting: spacewalking or skydiving?
Skydiving was pretty amazing. I got to do quite a bit of it as a member of the Air Force Academy parachute team. But there is nothing quite like doing a spacewalk. It is an indescribable experience, putting hundreds of hours of training to work, the physical and mental challenge of operating in that harsh environment. But the view outside the space station, of the Earth, the stars, the structure of the space station – it was a highlight of my time in space and something I will never forget.
What's the most interesting part about training with the Dragon capsule?
It has been awesome working with the NASA and SpaceX teams as we are preparing to launch in the Crew Dragon capsule. My favorite part of the experience has always been and continues to be the people. Safely sending humans to space and back is one of the most difficult things humanity has ever done. That challenge attracts the best and brightest people from across our country. Getting to work with those folks at NASA and at SpaceX, to experience their enthusiasm, dedication and ingenuity on a daily basis is a gift. It has also been a lot of fun seeing a different approach to human spaceflight. I’m very familiar with how NASA and the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos operate. It has been fun seeing a different perspective and approach.
Can you share your favorite photo or video that you took in space?
Yes! This is my favorite photo of the Milky Way, with a lightning strike illuminating a solar array.
Thanks Dr. Lindgren, and good luck on your next spaceflight!
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How to Connect with NASA
We're the nation’s space agency, but that doesn’t mean you have to travel to the depths of the universe to stay connected with the awesome stuff we’re doing. There are actually some really easy ways to stay updated on all things space. Check them out:
Apps
We have lots of apps for smartphones and tablets that will make it easier than ever to stay connected to space. Here are a few to pique your interest:
NASA App: Showcases a huge collection of the latest content, including images, videos, mission information, stories, space station sighting opportunities and more! Download: Apple/Android
NASA Spinoff App: This application profiles the best examples of technology that have been transferred from NASA research and missions into commercial products. From life-saving satellite systems to hospital robots, our technologies benefit society. Download: Apple
NASA 3DV App: The 3DV mobile app allows you to examine several of our Deep Space Exploration projects that will take our space program to asteroids, Mars and beyond! Download: Apple/Android
Spacecraft 3D: This augmented reality (AR) application lets you learn about and interact with a variety of spacecraft that are used to explore our solar system, study Earth and observe the universe. Download: Apple/Android
Competitions and Challenges
NASA Solve is an invitation to members of the public to contribute their time and expertise to solving problems and potentially winning prizes as a result of their work. This is a great way for individual members of the public to be a part of the nation’s space program. For a complete list of current challenges and competitions, visit THIS page.
Citizen Science
You don’t have to be a NASA employee to engage in the fun of interpreting scientific data and imagery from our many spacecraft and missions. As part of our Open Government plan, our goal is to promote transparency, participation and collaboration. By expanding the research base and using open innovation, we are all able to benefit from the accumulated findings. You can find data from our missions, research and activities HERE.
Email and Social Media
We have a wide-range of social media accounts here at NASA. Everything from Earth Science to the Mars Curiosity Rover, you can stay updated on many of our missions on many popular social media sites. For a full list of our accounts, visit THIS page.
If you’d like to get space news delivered straight to your inbox, you can sign up for updates and manage preferences HERE.
NASA Socials
What is a NASA Social? We’re glad you asked! These programs provide opportunities for our social media followers to learn and share information about our missions, people and programs. NASA Social includes both special in-person events and social media credentials for individuals who share the news in a significant way. Social events provide the participants with the opportunity to go behind-the-scenes at our facilities and events and speak with scientists engineers, astronauts and managers. Visit THIS page for a list of upcoming NASA Social opportunities.
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It was a dark and stormy flyby...
Our @NASAJuno spacecraft's JunoCam captured images of the chaotic, stormy northern hemisphere of Jupiter during its 24th close pass of the giant planet on Dec. 26, 2019. Using data from the flyby, citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this color-enhanced image. At the time, the spacecraft was about 14,600 miles (23,500 kilometers) from the tops of Jupiter’s clouds, at a latitude of about 69 degrees north.
Image Credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Image processing by Kevin M. Gill, © CC BY
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The Beauty of Webb Telescope’s Mirrors
The James Webb Space Telescope’s gold-plated, beryllium mirrors are beautiful feats of engineering. From the 18 hexagonal primary mirror segments, to the perfectly circular secondary mirror, and even the slightly trapezoidal tertiary mirror and the intricate fine-steering mirror, each reflector went through a rigorous refinement process before it was ready to mount on the telescope. This flawless formation process was critical for Webb, which will use the mirrors to peer far back in time to capture the light from the first stars and galaxies.
The James Webb Space Telescope, or Webb, is our upcoming infrared space observatory, which will launch in 2019. It will spy the first luminous objects that formed in the universe and shed light on how galaxies evolve, how stars and planetary systems are born, and how life could form on other planets.
A polish and shine that would make your car jealous
All of the Webb telescope’s mirrors were polished to accuracies of approximately one millionth of an inch. The beryllium mirrors were polished at room temperature with slight imperfections, so as they change shape ever so slightly while cooling to their operating temperatures in space, they achieve their perfect shape for operations.
The Midas touch
Engineers used a process called vacuum vapor deposition to coat Webb’s mirrors with an ultra-thin layer of gold. Each mirror only required about 3 grams (about 0.11 ounces) of gold. It only took about a golf ball-sized amount of gold to paint the entire main mirror!
Before the deposition process began, engineers had to be absolutely sure the mirror surfaces were free from contaminants.
The engineers thoroughly wiped down each mirror, then checked it in low light conditions to ensure there was no residue on the surface.
Inside the vacuum deposition chamber, the tiny amount of gold is turned into a vapor and deposited to cover the entire surface of each mirror.
Primary, secondary, and tertiary mirrors, oh my!
Each of Webb’s primary mirror segments is hexagonally shaped. The entire 6.5-meter (21.3-foot) primary mirror is slightly curved (concave), so each approximately 1.3-meter (4.3-foot) piece has a slight curve to it.
Those curves repeat themselves among the segments, so there are only three different shapes — 6 of each type. In the image below, those different shapes are labeled as A, B, and C.
Webb’s perfectly circular secondary mirror captures light from the 18 primary mirror segments and relays those images to the telescope's tertiary mirror.
The secondary mirror is convex, so the reflective surface bulges toward a light source. It looks much like a curved mirror that you see on the wall near the exit of a parking garage that lets motorists see around a corner.
Webb’s trapezoidal tertiary mirror captures light from the secondary mirror and relays it to the fine-steering mirror and science instruments. The tertiary mirror sits at the center of the telescope’s primary mirror. The tertiary mirror is the only fixed mirror in the system — all of the other mirrors align to it.
All of the mirrors working together will provide Webb with the most advanced infrared vision of any space observatory we’ve ever launched!
Who is the fairest of them all?
The beauty of Webb’s primary mirror was apparent as it rotated past a cleanroom observation window at our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. If you look closely in the reflection, you will see none other than James Webb Space Telescope senior project scientist and Nobel Laureate John Mather!
Learn more about the James Webb Space Telescope HERE, or follow the mission on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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Happy #MoonDay! To celebrate the 49th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, we present you with “Moonlight,” a video by our Goddard science visualizer Ernie Wright set to Debussy’s Clair de Lune. The Apollo missions were a landmark in lunar exploration. The visit and the samples that our Moon walkers collected transformed our understanding of the Moon and the solar system. Now, our Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s high-resolution data gives an incredibly detailed view of our closest neighbor.
This visualization captures the mood of Claude Debussy's best-known composition, Clair de Lune (which means moonlight in French). The piece was published in 1905 as the third of four movements in the composer's Suite Bergamasque, and unlike the other parts of this work, Clair is quiet, contemplative, and slightly melancholy, evoking the feeling of a solitary walk through a moonlit garden.
“Moonlight” uses a digital 3D model of the Moon built from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter global elevation maps and image mosaics. The lighting is derived from actual Sun angles during lunar days in 2018. Enjoy and read more HERE.
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Is it at all possible to send a drone into a black hole and collect the data of what it’s like inside? If not, how close do you we are to possibly achieving that?
Of course Saturn brought its ring light.
On June 25, 2023, our James Webb Space Telescope made its first near-infrared observations of Saturn. The planet itself appears extremely dark at this infrared wavelength, since methane gas absorbs almost all the sunlight falling on the atmosphere. The icy rings, however, stay relatively bright, leading to Saturn’s unusual appearance in this image.
This new image of Saturn clearly shows details within the planet’s ring system, several of the planet’s moons (Dione, Enceladus, and Tethys), and even Saturn’s atmosphere in surprising and unexpected detail.
These observations from Webb are just a hint at what this observatory will add to Saturn’s story in the coming years as the science team delves deep into the data to prepare peer-reviewed results.
Download the full-resolution image, both labeled and unlabeled, from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
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'Space Butterfly' Is Home to Hundreds of Baby Stars
What looks like a red butterfly in space is in reality a nursery for hundreds of baby stars, revealed in this infrared image from our Spitzer Space Telescope. Officially named Westerhout 40 (W40), the butterfly is a nebula — a giant cloud of gas and dust in space where new stars may form. The butterfly's two "wings" are giant bubbles of hot, interstellar gas blowing from the hottest, most massive stars in this region.
Besides being beautiful, W40 exemplifies how the formation of stars results in the destruction of the very clouds that helped create them. Inside giant clouds of gas and dust in space, the force of gravity pulls material together into dense clumps. Sometimes these clumps reach a critical density that allows stars to form at their cores. Radiation and winds coming from the most massive stars in those clouds — combined with the material spewed into space when those stars eventually explode — sometimes form bubbles like those in W40. But these processes also disperse the gas and dust, breaking up dense clumps and reducing or halting new star formation.
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Space toilet, Radishes, and a Spacewalk in Virtual Reality
A rocket is launching to the International Space Station next week, carrying tons of science and supplies to the orbiting laboratory. It’s Northrop Grumman’s 14th (NG-14) commercial resupply cargo mission, and includes plant research, a new space toilet, and a special virtual reality camera designed to immerse you in a spacewalk. Let’s take a closer look at what’s on board, and how you can ask some of the scientists anything.
A new way to “boldly go” in space
A new space toilet is heading to the space station. It’s smaller than the current toilets aboard the station, and includes a 3D printed titanium cover for its dual fan separator. These are just some of the upgrades that make it better suited for our deep space exploration missions. Engineers also gathered feedback from astronauts and set out to design more comfortable attachments that would make “boldly going” in space a more enjoyable experience. The toilet is being tested on the space station, and will also be used on a future Artemis mission. The new design will allow us to increase how much water we recover for use, because yep … yesterday’s coffee becomes tomorrow’s drinking water. See below for an opportunity to speak with the folks who made the new space toilet happen.
Space plants are rad(ish)!
Astronauts traveling to the Moon and Mars will need to grow food to supplement their diets. The latest in plant studies aboard the space station hopes to pack a crunch in that research. We’ll be growing radishes in a special plant chamber, and learning how light, water, atmosphere, and soil conditions affect the bulbous vegetables. Radishes are nutritious, grow quickly (roughly four weeks from sowing to harvest), and are genetically similar to Arabidopsis, a plant frequently studied in microgravity. What we learn could help optimize growth of the plants in space as well as provide an assessment of their nutrition and taste. See below for an opportunity to ask anything of the scientist and engineer behind this new crop.
Immerse yourself in a spacewalk
If going to space is on your bucket list, you might be closer than you think to checking that box. Felix & Paul Studios is creating an immersive 360 virtual reality film of a spacewalk that will put you right next to the astronauts as they go about their work on the outside of the space station … at 17,500 miles per hour. The new camera, specially designed to withstand the incredibly harsh environment of space, will be mounted on the station’s robotic arm so it can be maneuvered around the outside of the space station. Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël are the co-founders of the immersive entertainment studio, and have been producing a film aboard the space station – from Earth – for more than a year already. See below for a chance to ask them anything about what filming in space takes.
You can join in the NG-14 Reddit Ask Me Anything on Friday, Sept. 25 to ask anything of these folks and their projects. Here’s the schedule:
Space toilet (a.k.a the Universal Waste Management System): Melissa McKinley with NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems and Jim Fuller of Collins Aerospace, and program manager for UWMS at 12 p.m. EDT at https://www.reddit.com/r/space.
Radishes in space (a.k.a. Plant Habitat-02): Dr. Karl Hasenstein is the scientist behind the Plant Habitat-02, and Dave Reed knows the ins and outs of the Advanced Plant Habitat of the space station. Their Reddit AMA begins at 3 p.m. EDT at https://www.reddit.com/r/gardening.
Virtual reality spacewalk camera: Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël co-founders and creative directors of Felix & Paul Studios will be taking questions at 5 p.m. EDT on https://www.reddit.com/r/filmmakers.
These are just a few of the payloads launching aboard the NG-14 Cygnus cargo vehicle to the space station next week. Read about the cancer research, and new commercial products also heading to space and watch the video above to learn more. Launch is targeted for Tuesday, Sept. 29, with a five-minute launch window opening at approximately 10:26 p.m. EDT. Live coverage begins on NASA TV at 10 p.m. EDT.
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Game Time: Final Voting for Tournament Earth
The moment has arrived- it's time to decide the NASA Earth Observatory's all-time best image. After four grueling rounds of voting, two contenders remain: Ocean Sand, Bahamas (#5 seed) versus Raikoke Erupts (#6 seed).
The road to the finals has been full of surprises. All top seeds have been knocked out. In one semifinal, Ocean Sand garnered 50.6 percent of the votes to squeak out a win over the overall favorite, Twin Blue Marbles. In the other matchup, Raikoke Erupts trounced Where the Dunes End, 66.5 to 33.5 percent.
Now you have to pick a champion. Will it be a gorgeous, artistic image from the very early years of Earth Observatory or stunning natural-color views of an explosive event from 2019? Which image will you crown as the best in the EO archives: Ocean Sand, Bahamas or Raikoke Erupts? Voting ends on April 28 at 9 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time.
Thank you for helping us celebrate Earth Observatory’s 20th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of Earth Day!
Vote here: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/tournament-earth
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"A classic that I never get tired of: the orange solar panel in front of the blue–white background and the curvature of Earth" wrote astronaut Thomas Pesquet (@thom_astro) of the European Space Agency from aboard the International Space Station.
The space station serves as the world's leading laboratory for conducting cutting-edge microgravity research, and is the primary platform for technology development and testing in space to enable human and robotic exploration of destinations beyond low-Earth orbit, including Mars.
Credit: NASA/ESA
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