Destination space
When Jessica Meir was in first grade, her teacher asked the students to draw pictures of what they wanted to be when they grew up. Meir drew an astronaut. Three decades later, Meir has stepped into that picture. In June, she was selected from more than 6,100 applicants to be one of eight in NASA’s latest astronaut class, the first selected in four years. This summer, she took a leave from her post as assistant professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) to head to Houston for two years of astronaut training. Those who know Meir say the leap into space is not much of a stretch. She’s a scientist who spent 10 years investigating how animals survive in extreme environments, going to extremes herself to find out. She’s an accomplished scuba diver, a pilot, a backcountry skier, and a researcher dedicated enough to spend months with...