From NASA’s Mars mission to the European Astronaut Centre, Australian female astronauts are exploring outer space, reaching for the stars and changing life on Earth along the way.
Lauren Fell, Quantum cognition researcher
As a kid, Lauren Fell dreamed of being an astronaut, and “read quite a lot of Einstein and came up with my own theories of the universe and presented them to my poor teachers”.
Her grandfather sparked her interest in science. “He’d give my brother and me science riddles and we’d have to figure them out. It was really fun.” It also prepared her to enter (and win) a series of NASA challenges later in life that propelled her academic fascination with space.
Last year, Lauren spent two weeks with three other scientists living in a dome set amongst the volcanic rubble of the Mauna Loa volcano, 2500 metres above sea level on the island of Hawai‘i. The isolated Mars/Moon simulation habitat, called HI-SEAS, was the perfect place for her to research what she calls ‘quantum models of trust’.
Lauren was learning about the importance of trust in an astronaut’s life and how they make decisions about who and what they can trust: Fellow space travellers, their team on Earth, their equipment and even themselves. She uses physics to decipher how those decisions are made, “and they’re not always rational,” she explains.
Among the elements that put Lauren’s trust on HI-SEAS was the terrain. “It was rocky and precarious,” she remembers. “You can’t rely on your intuition or natural way of climbing because you’re in cumbersome space suits. The terrain might slip away at any moment, and do you trust that someone will grab you if you fall?”
She also learnt the importance of trusting in friends and family. “You’re really reliant up there and quite vulnerable,” she says. “So, having people you can trust back home, and thinking of that to keep you calm and positive, is really important.”
Whenever the team left the dome, they had to wear space suits, backpacks and helmets, and exit via an airlock. Their only contact with the outside world was with a ‘ground control’ team via radio.
While on the HI-SEAS mission, Lauren also worked on ALEPH-1 (Australian Lunar Experiment Promoting Horticulture), a project which aims to grow plants on the moon. She’s part of a team choosing a hardy contingent of plants, then developing a device to protect them during space flight and revive them when they arrive on the lunar surface. Lift-off is planned for 2026.
“There are exciting scientific and engineering goals on this challenge,” says Lauren. But what she likes best is the outreach.
The idea was suggested by an Aussie child, and Lauren says the goal has been “to engage people who wouldn’t traditionally think they could be involved in space. Like me who, as a young girl, didn’t think she had what it took to do anything like this.”
Lauren’s core message, she adds, is that “space is for everyone”.
Katherine Bennell-Pegg, Astronaut
In April this year, Katherine Bennell-Pegg became the first astronaut to graduate with an Australian flag stitched onto her flying suit. The 39-year-old space engineer had spent the past year in Germany being put through the European Space Agency’s rigorous astronaut training program. “But that moment, when I received the blue flight suit with the Australian flag on the shoulder, was really special,” she tells The Weekly. “That’s when it became very real to me … To be the first person officially representing Australia as an astronaut is such an honour.”
It’s an honour Katherine had been steadily working towards since she was a starry-eyed schoolgirl growing up on Sydney’s northern beaches.
“I loved the outdoors, I loved the massive expanse of the ocean,” she says. “The sky was bright with stars, and then I learned that those stars were in some cases planets. Once I got a telescope I could see nearby galaxies, and that made me realise how large the universe is.”
“My mother had studied physics at university and my father was into hiking and the outdoors. So I think the combination of that desire to explore nature and also that scientific curiosity lend themselves well to an astronaut dream.”
After school, Katherine did a double degree in science and space engineering and took up a checklist of astronaut-ready hobbies, including aerobatic flying, amateur astronomy, and volunteering for the Army Reserve and the SES.
Katherine moved to Europe for postgraduate study and found work as a space engineer. “I worked on some of the coolest missions I could have hoped for,” she says. “Exploration missions to Mars; the vehicle that’s going to fly humans back around the moon; lunar space stations … ”
In 2018 the Australian Space Agency was established, and Katherine and her fellow space engineer husband, Campbell Pegg, were invited home “to help grow Australia’s space industry”. They were both working for the agency and raising their two daughters in Adelaide, when Katherine was accepted as one of six students (out of 22,500 applicants) to train at the European Astronaut Centre.
Even beyond ticking off the childhood dream, it was an exciting year. The greatest challenge, she says, was learning Russian: “Languages are not a strength of mine.” But there was also so much to love.
“I loved the team spirit. Everyone was there to lift each other up and help each other move forward,” she explains. “A lot of our training was about building trust quickly, and about psychological safety, and leadership and fellowship.
“We did winter survival training, ocean survival, firefighting and rescues. I loved the operational training which involves learning to do spacewalks underwater in scuba gear around life-size mock-ups of the space station. You learn how to manoeuvre around, how to clip on, how to maintain the space station and work in pairs. We did robotics training and some medical training. We learnt how to put in drips, take blood and stitch wounds.”
Now she’s graduated, it will be up to the Australian government whether Katherine puts all that training into practice in space, but she feels prepared, even for a long mission.
“Astronauts go to the space station usually for six months – some for a year or more,” she explains. “I think the hardest part would be your family being on Earth and you not being there, but that’s how it is for any job that involves a long deployment, like the military or going to Antarctica.”
The reasons Katherine has wanted to work in space have changed over the years, from the longing for adventure as a starry-eyed kid, to a desire to contribute to human knowledge now.
“I’ve realised space can have a much bigger role in society than I imagined when I was younger,” she explains. “Australia’s a super-remote land, very vast, and remote communities and industries can really benefit from space. It’s basically a high point from which you can see different phenomena around the world – bushfires, floods and weather. You can connect and transmit information to remote communities or industries.”
Becoming an astronaut has been the next step in the evolution of Katherine’s understanding of space, “and so far, it’s been better than I could have hoped for,” she says. “It combines a sense of adventure and inspiration with helping our society through the scientific discoveries we can make up there. There’s nothing I’d rather do.”
Abigail Allwood, Geologist and astrobiologist
Is there life on Mars? If anyone knows the answer it’s Dr Abigail Allwood, but for the moment, she’s not telling. The first Australian – and first woman – to take on the role of principal investigator on a NASA mission, Abigail and her team developed “a cunning but beautiful beast” called PIXL to help analyse rock and regolith (soil, dust and rubble) from the Martian landscape, looking for microscopic signs of life.
PIXL is attached to the Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in February 2021, and is still scuttling about the Jezero Crater collecting samples. For three years Abigail and her team have been studying both the images and the data it’s beamed back to Earth. And the results, she tells The Weekly, have been “mind-blowing”.
“This is my first experience of doing geology on another world,” says the woman responsible for identifying the oldest evidence of life on Earth, “and it’s been an incredible learning curve.”
Perseverance landed in the Jezero Crater because it appeared to be home to an ancient river delta – a likely habitat for life and sedimentary geological material. There was, however, a surprise in store.
“The hardest part would be your family on Earth and you not being there.
Katherine Bennell-Pegg
“We’ve showed, absolutely and unequivocally,” Abigail says with more than a hint of genuine excitement, “that all the rocks on the crater floor are made from slow-cooled igneous (or volcanic) rock … And that one piece of information has completely turned on its head our understanding of Mars as a planet.
“I always used to make fun of this idea that geochemists could take one grain of sand and extract information that would somehow be relevant to the universe, but that’s the kind of thing that’s been achieved here.”
Right now, Abigail is preparing a research paper which, on publication, should give clues about the “life on Mars” proposition. But for the moment, she says, there will be no spoilers.
After the paper is complete she and her systems engineer husband, Ian Burch, and their 11-year-old daughter, Sophia, will pack up their life in California and return to Australia. The plan is to kick back at their property on the Atherton Tablelands and watch the trees grow (they’re rewilding rainforests on the border of the Wooroonooran National Park).
“The trees have been in the ground for about 25 years, so they’re pretty big. There’s a forest under the canopy now,” she says, adding with a laugh: “The day we get a cassowary up at the house we’ll break out the Grange Hermitage.”
It sounds like an early retirement, but Abigail insists she will “keep a toe in the team”. It would be hard to let go entirely of a project that she believes is immeasurably important.
“We’re on the brink of some amazing discoveries,” Abigail admits. “It might not be immediately apparent what their significance is but over years, decades – even centuries – you’ll see it sinking into the human psyche, our understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe. We might discover life arose somewhere else other than Earth, and if that’s the case, it will fundamentally change the way we look at ourselves.”
This article originally appeared in the July 2024 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Pick up the latest issue from your local newsagent, or subscribe so you never miss an issue.
