All systems are ready for the Maine astronaut who will begin his 6-month mission on Wednesday

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, rides on board a Soyuz coach during the latest crew qualifying exams on August 30th at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, California. Russia. Meir, who grew up in Caribou, will launch on September 25 for a mission on the International Space Station. NASA photo by Beth Weissinger

Astronaut Jessica Meir, originally from Caribou who had been dreaming for decades of going into space, will make her maiden voyage to the International Space Station on Wednesday.

Meir, 41, and two other crew members are due to take off at 9 am 57 min from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft. They will arrive at the International Space Station after a six-hour, four-orbit flight, according to NASA.

Meir goes into history as the first Maine woman – and only the third person from Maine – to perform a space flight. Originally from York, Chris Cassidy, who visited the International Space Station in 2009 and 2013, will return to space next spring. Cassidy and Meir should be on the space station together for several weeks at the end of his six-month mission.

"It's a bit surreal. It's a lot of work and I'm very happy that this dream is coming true, "Meir said earlier this month in a telephone interview from Star City, Russia, where she had been training for her mission.

An engineer, Meir, co-pilot the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft. She will visit the space station with Oleg Skripochka from the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos and Hazzaa Ali Almansoori from the United Arab Emirates. Alamsoori is on an eight-day mission and is the first participant in space flights from the United Arab Emirates.

The launch will be broadcast live on NASA TV and on the agency's website, www.nasa.gov/nasatv. Launch coverage will start at 9 am and continue at 3 pm Crew members should stop at the Zvezda service module at the Space Station at 15:45. At 5 pm, NASA will broadcast images of the opening of the hatch.

About two hours after berthing, links between the Soyuz space station and the space station will open and new residents will be greeted by station commander Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos, NASA astronauts Christina Koch , Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan, Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov.

NASA Astronaut and Flight Engineer Expedition 61-62, Jessica Meir, at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia on June 7, 2019. GCTC crew portraits 61S

During his six months aboard the space station, Meir will work on scientific experiments ranging from studying the effects of gravity on the human body, the growth of protein crystals and the effects of radiation on humans. It will also be necessary to carry out maintenance work, which could give Meir an opportunity to make an exit in space.

"I'm really looking forward to having the opportunity to get out of the hatch," Meir said in a recent interview. "This is where you really feel like an astronaut."

Meir grew up in Caribou, where she wrote in her high-level yearbook that her goal was to make an outing in space. She says that she started talking about becoming an astronaut at the age of 5 and that she never gave up on that dream.

After graduating from the Caribou High School Valedictorian, Meir studied biology at Brown University. She earned a Master's degree from the International Space University in France and a PhD in Marine Biology from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

For his doctorate, Meir studied the oxygen depletion of the emperor penguins from Antarctica. She then studied head-raising geese at the University of British Columbia. The birds migrate twice a year to the highest mountains in the world, the Himalayas.

It took three tries for Meir to be chosen for the highly selective astronaut training program, but in 2013 she was one of eight people selected from a pool of 6,000 candidates. At the time, she worked as an assistant professor at Harvard and moved to Houston to attend a training program at the Johnson Space Center.

She has been training intensively for six years, acquiring skills ranging from toilet repair in space to navigation in a 400-pound combination on a spacewalk. She spent a good part of the past year in Russia training for her mission.

Meir documents many of his experiences on Instagram, including the last weeks spent in quarantine in Kazakhstan preparing for the launch. Meir wrote about doing a fitness test in the Soyuz probe, testing his Sokol space suit and spending time on a rotating chair to condition his neurovestibular system, which governs the spatial orientation and meaning from the balance of a person.

Last week, Meir planted a young elm tree overlooking the Kazakh steppe, a tradition that began with Yuri Gagarin, the first human to travel in space.

"The Russian space program has many traditions along the way, I cherish each one of them," Meir wrote on Instagram after planting the young tree.

"Previous

Next "

Related stories