Katherine Bennell-Pegg: Inside mum-of-two’s tough journey to becoming Australia’s first astronaut

Even Australia’s first astronaut is daunted by the thought of participating in a future Mars mission. Katherine Bennell-Pegg is in the pre-mission assignment phase having just graduated from an intense 13-month European Space Agency training program in Cologne, Germany. The astronaut mum — she has two young daughters — might have to wait years before she gets an opportunity to launch towards the stars, but will maintain her qualifications and readiness in the hope of getting the call up. Visiting Perth this week, the 39-year-old has been bowled heaps of questions from students, science nerds, space fanatics and journalists. The Sunday Times asked how she’d react to an opportunity to make the first 450 million km round trip to Mars, which NASA says will likely be a three-year mission. “I think you’d have an instant emotional response,” Ms Bennell-Pegg said. “Wow, what a conversation. To have the honour to be selected to represent humans on another planet for the first time, that’s quite something.” “I don’t think that offer would be made unless it was in alignment with the astronauts’ training and their capabilities as the best people for the job ... You’re trained to contribute your service to your country and your country to contribute your service globally, so I expect most astronauts would respond positively. “But you know, being away from home for that long, being exposed to those risks, that’s nothing to sniff at. Spaceflight, even with, you know, mature operational vehicles has a lot of risks, even if everything goes right in your mission ... There’s a one in 200 designed fatality risk that you accept when you go to space today. “In a new vehicle, on a new planet, on a new mission, I expect that would be far more risky. For me, it would depend on my situation at that time. But you trained to be an astronaut, knowing that it’s your role to help push the boundaries, the frontiers for science and exploration.” Ms Bennell-Pegg, who works for the Australian Space Agency, said Australia was involved in supporting the United States on its Artemis campaign to return to the Moon and establish a long-term presence there, before taking the bigger leap to Mars in the 2030s. China and companies like SpaceX also have their sights on the planet. “It’s not just US astronauts going to the moon, it’s astronauts from a group of nations going there together,” she said. Ms Bennell-Pegg, who holds four degrees across science, space and aeronautical engineering, said there were several obstacles to be surmounted before a Mars mission becomes feasible, like how astronauts can survive long-term exposure to microgravity and radiation. “It was only recently we’ve started to understand better the cause behind astronauts’ vision degrading over time in space, and that’s a huge challenge. “You don’t want an astronaut to arrive on Mars without the ability to see or read procedures. It’s thought that some of the technologies to address that might actually help with glaucoma on Earth. “An astronaut’s dose of radiation today in Europe, where I was training, is one sievert over their career in space, when one milliSievert is like three chest X rays. “That’s quite a lot of radiation exposure, and there’d be more exposure should we go to Mars unless we learn how to shield better, or how to block it and mitigate the effects. “We need to know how to land on Mars and get off again, sustainably, in a more reliable way. It’s very hard to land heavy things on Mars. “They call it the seven minutes of terror when you’re dropping a large rover on Mars, because just the nature of the atmosphere ... you can’t slow down so much. And that’s not really the right risk profile for landing astronauts. “The list of challenges goes on and on, but it’s the unknown challenges that we have to uncover as well before we go.” She said the hardest part of her astronaut training course was learning Russian. “We had eight intense weeks of lessons spread over four months, amongst other activities, and we had to go from learning the alphabet to speaking advanced Russian in that time. And languages are not my strength, so knowing that they weren’t, I put in some extra effort from the beginning, and that paid off. And once I got through that part of the course, I felt more confident I’d get through the rest. “The other hardest part was pacing myself, knowing that this is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to save energy for the next activity, for the next day, and also for your home life as well. “We had 323 instructors involved over the 13 months, and all of them are world experts ... we also did winter survival, ocean survival, rescue from confined spaces and firefighting. Winter survival was very cold. We had to do immersions in a semi frozen lake and rescue each other. “We went in zero G planes, where we experienced weightlessness for 22 seconds at a time .... And we use that to learn how to use drills and other tools in microgravity, or how to do CPR by doing a handstand on the person and doing squats on the roof. “We also went in the centrifuge to experience the G Force profile of a launch and a re-entry. I spun up to 6g and it’s almost like, you know, you’ve got five of yourself sitting on your chest.” Other highlights included shadowing people in Mission Control in Munich and in Houston, as well as training with Japanese astronaut candidates. Ms Bennell-Pegg hoped to inspire young Australians to chase their own dreams and for those wanting to follow her path to study STEM subjects as a first step. “Humans are just taking their first steps in exploring the huge universe around us. So much remains to be discovered, and we go there for improving scientific knowledge on Earth,” she said.