Astronaut Who Spent Year in Space Adjusting to Life on Earth

In the future, astronauts could be sent on years long missions to the moon and Mars, but living in space that long poses all kinds of physical and physiological challenges. So NASA is trying to learn as much as it can from astronauts who’ve spent the most time in space science. Correspondent Miles O’Brien spoke with the American who has set the record for longest single space mission.

Touchdown. Touchdown confirmed at 6:17 AM Central Time. Rubio’s record ride comes to an end.

NASA astronaut, Frank Rubio finally returned to terra firma in September 371 days after he launched to the International Space Station aboard of Russian Soyuz rocket. It was a record-breaking mission for a US space fairer that was not planned. About three months after he and his two Russian crew mates arrived at the station, their Soyuz capsule sprung a coolant leak, apparently after a micrometeoroid strike. They would have to wait for the Russian Space Agency to build and launch them a new ride home. It more than doubled their time in space. I caught up with Frank Rubio toward the end of his reclamation to life on earth.

(01:19)
How are things going? What are you experiencing right now?

Yeah, it’s been an awesome four months at home getting reintegrated back into the family and that’s gone well and smoothly, which has been a blessing. And then a lot of physical training. So yeah, it’s a matter of getting the muscles and bones back into shape.

You’re a physician and also a test subject. I’m curious what you have experienced and what the road to normalcy has been like?

Yeah, so one of the good things is that we have been doing this for 23 years and so astronauts early on would lose up to 20% of their bone density and that’s just because you’re not getting the day-to-day pounding on the bones that standing and walking provide. And that stressor actually is really good for your bone density. And so when you’re missing that floating around for a year especially, that can be hard. The good thing is that we have a lot of resistance training that we do almost two hours a day and I actually lost very little bone density because of that. Because I was able to stay diligent and consistent on that exercise. I actually lost a little bit less than a lot of six month mission people do and that’s been great.

Would you say you’re 100% now four months later?

Not 100%, but I bet I’m pretty close to 90% to 95%, so I’m feeling really good.

So 23 plus years into the space station, a lot of lessons have been learned, including all that resistance training that you mentioned. Is NASA ready to send astronauts on long duration missions ultimately to Mars?

Yeah, so I think from a human perspective, we definitely understand what would need to happen and essentially that’s, like I said, just consistent stressors applied to the body there and back. I think we could certainly do it. Obviously we’re not quite there yet from a technology point of view as far as safely getting us there and back. But I think we could, it would be challenging, but I also think the motivation for mission success would be incredibly high for a mission like that. And so the humans that you put on that mission I think could make it happen, for sure.

All right, let’s talk a little bit about the psychology of being up there. You expected to see your family after six months. Walk us through how you came to terms with all of this.

Yeah, Miles, that’s a great question. Fortunately, my background had sort of prepared me for it, I am an Army officer in my previous career, and so I’ve had deployments and the family’s kind of been through that adjustment of ramping up to the deployment, having the fortitude to make it through it. And then as you know, a lot of our military often get told, “Hey, you’re staying a little bit longer than anticipated.” I never got extended much longer than about a month. But psychologically it’s really not too different whether it’s a month or six months. And you definitely have a little bit of an adjustment period, it was hard for a few days or maybe a week. And then after that you kind of settle in, you realize that we can do this and the mission has to happen and you just kind of set your mind to it.

And I know astronauts have an opportunity on a regular basis to have private teleconferences with their families. How important was that for you?

Incredibly important, yeah. And that’s something that I think as we transition to longer distance, longer duration missions, that’s something that we’re going to have to make sure that is present. Honestly. It makes you feel like you’re still part of the family and as long as your family’s doing well, I think most of us can do just about anything for as long as it’s needed.

So aside from family, one of the things people always say they miss when they’re on the space station is fresh food. And you became quite a gardener in space, famously growing tomatoes. I’m curious how the vegetables you grow in space, how do they taste? I mean, after all, you’re not using soil.

We were supposed to get half the crop to eat ourselves and then send half back for science. Unfortunately, because of things not going as expected, we were supposed to send everything back. So I really didn’t get a chance to taste any of the food that we grew up there.

In March when he was harvesting some of those tomatoes, he put two in a Ziploc bag and thought he’d velcroed it firmly in place, but it floated away. He says he searched for it for hours. His fellow crew mates jokingly accused him of eating the produce. But in December of this year, about three months after he left the station.

We might have found something that someone had been looking for for quite a while.

The current crew found the floating fruit, solving the mystery. I assume that was a nice moment of exoneration?

Yeah, it was. And again, we’re all friends here and my crew mates are going to take every opportunity to make fun of me possible, so they sure as heck weren’t going to get me out of it by making up that they found it. And they were cherry sized tomatoes, and so if we were going to eat it, we would’ve had to split it between seven people, so it really wouldn’t have been worth it in the first place. But yeah, no, I’m glad they found it. I don’t know that they’re going to be able to use them for science, but hopefully they can use them for something.

Let’s talk about the Russian partnership here. It’s a complex situation, of course, with the invasion of Ukraine, which has cast the partnership in a different light. Is there much concern about the reliability of the Russian partnership at this stage of the game?

Well, our job as a crew, really, again, is to focus on the mission. And so my focus was on my two crew mates and they are a fantastic human beings on an individual level. We really meshed well. We supported each other well. Ultimately, we’re on a mission that it’s an incredibly dangerous environment and our lives depend on each other. And so you have to have that trust and you have to have that relationship built before anything were to happen. And so again, despite the differences, I think it’s incredibly important to just nurture that relationship as much as possible. And I think we successfully were able to do that.

All right, Frank Rubio, thank you so much for your time.

Thanks so much, Miles. Take care. Good talking to you.

Bye-bye.