Teacher on Board

01Houston, we have a podcast.

02Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center.

03This is episode 36, Teacher on Board.

04I'm Dan Hewitt, and I will be your host today.

05If you're new to the show, we bring in NASA experts, the scientists, the engineers, and the astronauts, all to tell you everything NASA.

06So today, we're talking with Ricky Arnold.

07He's a U.S.

08astronaut, and he's about to launch to the International Space Station in March for his second spaceflight and his first ride up in a Russian Soyuz.

09We talked about his education, how he started out as an accountant and then went to marine sciences, went on to a teacher, and eventually became an astronaut.

10He flew on the shuttle, and now he's about to fly on the International Space Station.

11So with no further delay, let's go light speed and jump right ahead to our talk with Ricky Arnold.

12Enjoy.

13Houston, we have a podcast.

14So Ricky Arnold, teacher, astronaut, world traveler, and now most importantly, Houston, we have a podcast guest.

15Ricky, thanks so much for joining me this morning.

16How are you doing?

17How's training going?

18You're getting ready to go to space.

19Oh, yeah.

20Thanks for having me.

21It's great to be here.

22I'm getting close.

23I'm finishing up my U.S.

24training this week.

25I've got a couple of weeks off to kind of take care of things here around the office and at home.

26I head over to Russia in early February, and we do all of our final training for the Soyuz, for our launch vehicle to get us to the space station and back, take our final exams, and then head off to Baikonur and launch in March.

27Big test day coming up.

28Yeah, we have our finals coming up.

29You're never through with final exams.

30Yeah, no matter what you think, kids.

31Exactly.

32The tests will always come back around.

33And I notice, so you're already doing some stuff for science right now.

34They already have you giving samples and all kinds of things.

35So, I mean, this isn't just a six-month stint you guys sign up for, is it?

36No, no.

37In addition to the training, you are a test subject.

38So one of the big things we're trying to learn on the International Space Station is, you know, how does a human body change in outer space?

39And if those changes are for the worse, what are some countermeasures we can use to help protect astronauts?

40So when we go off into deep space for really long stays, how can we protect people who are going to go execute those missions?

41So I've started as a test subject last year.

42And I've been providing stuff to our doctors in the clinic, and we'll continue to do that on the International Space Station, send it home.

43And then when I land, the journey continues in terms of being a test subject.

44I was telling you, I can come back to NASA for the rest of my life once a year for a physical just so the doctors can keep tabs on what has happened after spending time in outer space.

45That's a long project.

46It's a long project.

47It's a long project.

48All right.

49Well, I want to kind of dive into how Ricky Arnold became an astronaut because you have a pretty unique journey for somebody in the astronaut corps.

50And there's one thing I wanted to jump on right off the bat because— It is atypical.

51I was a business major in school, and I see you had a bachelor's degree in accounting.

52That is true.

53How did that come to pass, and how the heck did they let a business major into the astronaut corps?

54I went off to college when I was 17 years old.

55I had no idea what I wanted to do.

56I was out of town the week you went up and got all the freshman counseling and orientation.

57So I literally arrived on campus with classes starting in three days.

58And with no classes—signed up for no classes.

59I found out where I was living.

60And I met with a counselor, and he said, well, what are you good at?

61And meanwhile, he's looking at the roster of classes to see what's even available because most of the stuff's already been filled up.

62And then he said, are you good at numbers?

63I guess I'm good at numbers.

64He said, okay, good.

65Accounting 101's opened up.

66Like, eh, okay.

67And so I ended up taking an accounting class, and I've always been okay with numbers and still wasn't really sure exactly what I wanted to do.

68So I took accounting too.

69Ended up my sophomore year taking the hardest part of accounting, which is intermediate accounting, which is kind of where people decide to drop out of accounting because it's very complicated.

70Yes.

71Very complicated classes.

72And I got through that.

73And at that point, I had signed up and taken a geology class as an elective.

74And it was a geology class and really enjoyed it.

75And I had an interest in science from when I was much younger.

76And so then I started—and I took biology 101.

77And these were just as my electives while I was still getting my accounting degree.

78Yeah.

79And then I took biology, you know, the second biology 2.

80Ended up taking—I ended up with a biology minor to go along with my bachelor's degree in accounting.

81I bet you were a rare breed.

82I was.

83People in the roster, when I would show up for these advanced level biology classes, the teachers, they always had the majors listed there.

84And they said, you know, hey, Arnold, are you in the right class?

85I said, yeah, yeah, I'm just taking this for fun.

86I'm taking this, you know, morphology of the thalophytes just for fun.

87Oh, it sounds like a blast.

88And much like many students who went off to school, you know, you didn't have unlimited resources for college.

89So I needed to graduate with a degree.

90But by my sophomore year, I already knew.

91By the end of my sophomore year, beginning of my junior year, I already knew I really wasn't going to make it as an accountant.

92I had other things I wanted to do.

93But I went ahead and got my degree and then continued taking electives in community college while working to get into graduate school at the University of Maryland in Marine Sciences.

94And so that's where you—so you graduated with the BS in accounting.

95And then you just pivoted completely.

96Because it sounds like you found something.

97I did.

98That you were interested in.

99Right.

100But I just couldn't stay at college forever.

101So I went to work.

102I went to community colleges, took chemistry, physics, calculus, all the things I needed to do to get into graduate school to pursue an advanced degree in the sciences.

103And so that's—so where did you go to grad school?

104What was that degree?

105I went to the University of Maryland.

106And they have a marine and estuarine environmental science program because we are right—you know, I grew up right by the Chesapeake Bay.

107And— I grew up in Delaware.

108Oh, so yeah, you know exactly.

109So you can't limit yourself to oceanography in Maryland because there's too many different types of bodies of water.

110So they cover all their bases, marine and estuarine.

111And it was a research-based program.

112They had—I worked over at the Horn Point Environmental Lab on my project and actually did some—you know, I ended up doing some sediment geochemistry of some—the Severn River right near Annapolis.

113So we're sub-tributary of the Severn River.

114So, yeah, it wasn't a typical journey.

115Well, so you got the biology degree.

116Yeah, and then how'd you end up teaching?

117Well, yeah, and then—so did you—was teaching ever kind of in your mind at that point when you were going through school?

118Because, again, we're hopping around.

119No, I know.

120I think it's okay.

121And it's not like a lot of people I work with who knew they wanted to fly, you know, fly airplanes and go to space when they were three years old.

122That just wasn't me.

123When I got out of school, I had a temporary job while I—down in D.C.

124And this was a time where Krista McAuliffe was, you know, announced as being one of the members of the Challenger mission.

125And I remember thinking distinctly, I was like, wow, you know, that's pretty impressive that NASA, you know, recognizes the, you know, the kind of people we have working on our nation's public schools.

126Oh, yeah.

127And—but it really wasn't—that certainly probably played a role in formulating an opinion about being an educator.

128But one of the jobs I was working while I was taking classes at community college, I got a job at the United States Naval Academy working in the oceanography department.

129And I was just taking care of their scientific equipment.

130I was doing the maintenance for their equipment.

131I was going out on the yard patrol vessels where we were doing projects.

132And I was deploying the equipment for professors and students.

133And I also got to work with some of the midshipmen there.

134And that's really what set the bit.

135Okay, you know what?

136I think this is something I really want to do.

137So, I—my plan at that point, finally the light bulb went off a couple of years after getting out of college.

138I'll be a teacher.

139I'll be—I'm going to be a teacher.

140And I have all my prerequisites to get into graduate school.

141So, I'm going to go get my teaching certificate, do my student teaching.

142And then almost as soon as I started student teaching, I started teaching, I took a job in Charles County, Maryland.

143And my second semester teaching there, the second half of the year, I started taking classes at the University of Maryland in their graduate program.

144And then enrolled the following fall.

145So, it was busy.

146I was a first-year teacher, starting my second year teaching, going to graduate school at night in the sciences.

147And it was pretty busy.

148But I knew what I wanted to do at that point.

149So, I was doing a job I loved, and I was getting—my evenings were spent in science, so—my weekends.

150So, it was all good.

151What did you start off teaching?

152I started off teaching middle school science.

153Okay.

154Yeah.

155And so, what grades?

156Because— Seventh grade to start off with, and I think I had two eighth grade classes as well.

157But you went on to teach high school, right?

158I did.

159Did you have a favorite grade to teach?

160Well, I—yes, I liked teaching high school, some of the advanced college preparatory classes just for the material and the learning.

161But my favorite class to teach, which is—my background is really in biology.

162Yeah.

163I taught an eighth grade physical science class, which was a combination of, you know, introductory physics and chemistry.

164And I just really enjoyed that a lot because the—there's so many foundational principles there.

165If you can teach a kid to read a periodic table—not memorize it, which is what I was taught to do, but to actually read it and say that there's— Actually use the material.

166Yeah, the material.

167All you need to know about chemistry is right here and how atoms work together.

168So I just found it was just the right amount of material to kind of spark a kid's interest in that field and set them on a trajectory where if they showed up in a chemistry class in high school or in college, that they would have the tools to be successful.

169So, I mean, I could trace back to a teacher very vividly who kind of set me on my path.

170But do you kind of wonder if you were able to—because, I mean, now you're an astronaut and it's a very visible job.

171But like you said, it was pretty incredible for NASA to recognize the people who are doing this stuff in public school.

172Right.

173Did you ever think about that?

174You know, you're setting these kids hopefully up for, you know, a life in the sciences or math or anything like that.

175I hope so.

176I mean, you know, there are kids, you know, when you—there are kids when they walk into your classroom, you know they're going to be doing remarkable things.

177And if I played—you know, it's possible I played a small part in it, but it's unlikely.

178There are kids who come who just, you know, they're going to go off and do amazing things.

179But that's only a handful.

180Right.

181Everyone else, I think, is more like I was and I wasn't really all that certain.

182So— Just trying to find your way still.

183Yeah.

184Yeah.

185So just to present options and let them know there are exciting career choices out there.

186I still keep in touch with a few former students.

187And like I said, they've gone on—some have gone to do amazing things.

188But, you know, I don't know that—I mean, maybe I play a small part.

189But, you know, there's a reason you go to school for 12 years before going to college.

190It's you get different teachers, different experiences, different backgrounds.

191And I think that all shapes the whole.

192All right.

193So you're busting in Maryland.

194You're going to school.

195You're teaching.

196How the heck did you end up in Morocco?

197How'd that happen?

198Yeah.

199I loved to read when I was—I still love to read.

200And I'm kind of a victim of my love of reading because I like reading about different places and different cultures and different, you know, different things, different ideas.

201And I had been teaching for four years in Maryland.

202I had just finished graduate school and graduated.

203And I picked up a Washington Post on a Sunday morning.

204And there was an advertisement in the classified section, which I hardly ever looked at, but this Sunday I happened to.

205And it said, hey, the headline was, are you interested in teaching overseas?

206I was like, I'm interested in going overseas.

207I hadn't really considered teaching there as a means to get there.

208So I called the number and went to this presentation.

209It so happens the gentleman who was putting this thing on had been a headmaster at a school in Tangier, Morocco.

210So he started off telling the story about, you know, living in exotic Morocco, his experience.

211And I was like, oh, wow, this is something that really signed me up.

212How do I do that?

213Well, it doesn't quite unfold like that.

214But, you know, you go to these interview fairs.

215We actually went into a big room.

216And they had the jobs posted on the walls from different locations all around the world.

217So you could be going to, you know, there's the International School of Tanzania.

218We have these openings.

219There's the International School of you name it.

220And I ended up getting hired as a, you know, a biology, high school biology and middle school teacher and a science teacher in Casablanca, Morocco.

221Wow.

222And so a year later, after going to that thing, I was stepping off a plane in Casablanca and making my way to my new apartment in North Africa.

223I mean, that had to be.

224Had you ever traveled outside the country before that?

225No, my wife and I were both teachers.

226And we were newly married, too, when we moved there.

227No, I'd been to.

228Did you at least leave Maryland?

229I'd left Maryland.

230I'd been to Ecuador because a gentleman who worked in Charles County would put together these trips in the summer, like professional development programs.

231And one of them was down to the Galapagos.

232So I had been down there.

233I'd been probably to Canada and, you know, maybe to Mexico, but not really.

234Not something just totally outside your element.

235Not, yeah.

236I mean, what was it like to make that move?

237I don't know.

238I just enjoyed the community that we got to know.

239I enjoyed the diversity of ideas with the students that you taught.

240We had kids from all over the world.

241The different languages and the opportunity to try to learn some languages.

242It was challenging, but I think it was a very rewarding part of my life.

243But that was just stop number one.

244Yeah.

245Where else did you teach?

246Yeah, we lived in Casablanca for three years.

247And my daughter was born when we were living there, my oldest daughter.

248We then moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

249And my youngest daughter was born there.

250And we lived there for five years.

251And then I think we had enough.

252We had the Mediterranean climate.

253We had the desert.

254And we ended up going to the jungles of Indonesia, teaching at a small school in Irian Jai, or West Papua, Indonesia.

255So on the island of New Guinea.

256And then two years there.

257And then finally a year in Bucharest, Romania.

258And from there, I was hired to come to NASA.

259And so everything we do now with the space station is international.

260International.

261That's right there in the name.

262Did your experience, you know, kind of being a bit of a globetrotter there for a little while, did that play into your role as an astronaut now?

263Do you look back and say, I'm really glad I did that because now none of this seems so daunting?

264You know, I'm glad I did it for myself just because of the opportunity for learning.

265But, I mean, I naively, when I came here for my interview, I really had no false expectations about getting a job as an astronaut.

266I mean, when I applied, I thought, hey, this is going to be a really, really awesome rejection letter to hang in my office.

267This will be a good story.

268Yeah, this will be a good story.

269And then when I got the interview and I came in here, I was like, I mean, I really had no expectations.

270But I thought when we have this one hour, the interview process itself is a week.

271Most of it's medical.

272There's all kinds of aptitude tests and those kind of things along with some tours.

273But you have a one hour interview with, you know, a fair number of highly experienced astronauts and some other folks with the agency.

274And it's like, well, you know, when I get to that interview, surely they're going to ask me about my international experience.

275And so I thought that might be kind of a good thing to be able to talk about.

276Yeah.

277And I had, it turns out, in between when I got out of school and was working those jobs to get into graduate school, I had worked as a, I worked on a sail training vessel for about a half, not quite a half a year.

278We sailed all over the, you know, the Atlantic.

279And I was an assistant scientist on board this vessel.

280It was like, you know, four months, five months.

281I figured, okay, that's hardly even worth mentioning on a resume.

282That was the only thing the interview committee asked me about.

283And now it makes sense.

284I was deploying scientific equipment in an extreme environment, you know, late at night, you know, early in the morning.

285There was always an element of risk involved with the job.

286You were living on a small ship with 30 other people, 30 some other people, and you were part of the crew.

287So, but I do think, getting back to your question, I mean, at least having some experience overseas, kind of prepared me for the travel back and forth to Russia and, you know, the amount of time we spend there and in Germany and in Japan as well.

288Well, so now you're getting ready to fly.

289This will be your second time.

290Right.

291You've been to the space station once.

292Right.

293But that was short.

294It was.

295It's going to be a whole new ballgame.

296Sure is.

297Are you really excited about this?

298Are you excited?

299Because we always hear from astronauts when they did the short shuttle missions, it was like you're just getting a little taste of it.

300And you never really feel like you're there.

301Right.

302You can't soak it in.

303Are you really looking forward to kind of, you know, stretching your legs and hanging out in microgravity for six months?

304Well, I am.

305I mean, six months is a long time.

306Yeah.

307And so that's going to be a completely different mind shift from a very short duration mission where you just got to go, go, go, go, go, go, and then sleep when you get home.

308You just can't do that for six months.

309However, you know, it was really exciting part of my career to be able to go help finish the construction of the International Space Station.

310After we left, we were able to go from three to six crew, start doing a lot more of the science.

311And, of course, we're just a small part in the chain, but we provided the power to make all that happen.

312And that was really exciting.

313But now I get to go kind of live and work there.

314You know, the assembly is pretty much done.

315We're just going to go up and take advantage of everyone else's hard work and then try to do a good job, you know, doing what the space station was intended, why it was built.

316Well, I mean, last time, so you were building it.

317At this time, you're going to be one of those scientists.

318Right.

319Does that almost have you more excited because of your background of always being interested in that kind of stuff?

320It does.

321It's a bit intimidating, too.

322You know, when you go to the space station, you're building part of it.

323You know, we knew after one EVA that our mission was more or less a success.

324Yeah.

325Right.

326We were up there on the fifth day in space.

327We got the S6 trust installed.

328The next day, we deployed the solar arrays.

329Another box checked.

330And then anything after that was kind of gravy.

331Yeah.

332Right.

333It worked.

334It was all good.

335Here, your responsibility, you know, there's a lot of people around the world who spent their entire career trying to get a payload into space or an experiment into space.

336And you don't want to be the link that kind of crushes their dreams, you know, because you made a mistake.

337And it's going to happen, right?

338But you've got to minimize it and, you know, just go out and do the best job you can.

339And as a former teacher, can I call you a former teacher?

340Sure.

341Or do you still consider yourself a teacher?

342I kind of still.

343You were going to go back to teaching?

344Maybe.

345Maybe.

346I've thought about it.

347I'm right now at the halfway point.

348I've been an astronaut as long as I've been a teacher.

349So we'll – but I still kind of call myself a teacher.

350Well, Astro Teacher Arnold.

351So you're not going to just be doing the science.

352You're going to be bringing the station into classrooms down here on Earth as part of the year of education on station.

353Right.

354I mean, talk a little bit about what your role is going to be.

355I mean, what you got – and you're not the only one doing that.

356No, no.

357And, you know, we've used the ISS as an education platform in the past, certainly.

358But by sheer coincidence, we ended up with two additional slots on the International Space Station, which means there'll be one more American there for an entire year.

359And those two Americans both happen to be classroom teachers, Joe Acaba, who's up there now, and me, who will launch in March.

360So we have people who have that background for a continuous year, and we have more crew time available to pursue education pursuits.

361So we won't be the only ones doing the – providing the educational outreach.

362Certainly our crewmates will be part of it, but it's because we're there.

363It tells – it's a nice story of, hey, we've got teachers on space for a year, and we're certainly going to be highly involved in what's going on.

364But our crewmates, it's going to be a shared effort.

365And I'm really excited about continuing to highlight the International Space Station as a platform for education.

366Is there any project in particular you're excited about that you guys are going to be doing, you know, either really soon or down the road while you're up there?

367Well, absolutely.

368The thing that I'm most excited about is – I think I mentioned earlier about the Challenger mission.

369Did I mention that earlier?

370Yeah, you did.

371I think I thought so.

372You said you were watching it on TV.

373I was watching it.

374Exactly, exactly.

375That kind of planted a little seed.

376Planted a seed.

377Thank you.

378And, you know, I've kind of always wondered – it was just such an amazing thing that NASA was trying to offer to the education community.

379And I kind of always wondered what became of that, what became of those lessons after that sacrifice.

380And there's been amazing things done.

381There's the Challenger Centers have started up and carrying that mission forward.

382The Onizuka Foundation.

383I'm going to leave people out, but there's been families and concerned people who surrounded that mission who went on and did some really good things in education.

384But I always kind of wondered, you know, what happened to the things Krista was going to do on orbit?

385And so Joe and I – and we're going to announce it here shortly, but Joe and I are going to have the opportunity to actually conduct some of the lesson plans that Krista McAuliffe was going to do while she was on Challenger back in 1986.

386All right.

387And so besides – Which I think is really cool.

388Yeah.

389No, I mean, that's – that's incredible.

390And it does kind of bring a full circle as, you know, NASA.

391We started the educator focus back then.

392We're doing it now.

393So, I mean, you've got to just be excited to get up there.

394Yeah, and hopefully inspire, you know, a few other teachers out there to pursue degrees and, you know, advanced degrees in science, you know, directly in science, not science education, but as a scientist.

395And consider, you know, maybe coming to NASA at some point and continue the mission.

396Joe and I are the only two left.

397Barb Morgan left a few years ago.

398Dottie Metcalf-Lindenberger left shortly after Barb.

399And that's just Joe and I are the only two left.

400So we've got to hand off the baton to someone.

401No pressure.

402No, no pressure at all.

403So aside from all that, anything you're just really excited about getting up there to do?

404Any science you've seen going on recently?

405You really want to do some spacewalks?

406Anything that's, you know, on the Ricky Arnold bucket list for a space station?

407Doing another spacewalk would be awesome.

408Awesome.

409The science we're doing up there, I'm really excited to be a part of that just because we're really working hard to improve life here on Earth.

410But from a purely selfish standpoint, I'm just looking forward to having some time to look out the window.

411The look, I'll never forget my first look at Earth from space.

412And that image is kind of embedded in my mind and I think always will be.

413But on the shuttle, we just didn't have a lot of time for just looking out the window and admiring Earth.

414You get a real sense for, you know, this is all we got right now.

415So the planet's beautiful.

416We're all in it together.

417And there's a lot of nothing that surrounds us.

418And so just appreciate the Earth from low Earth orbit and maybe, you know, encourage people to take better care of it.

419That's the only thing we got right now.

420All right.

421Well, I know I got to let you go back and do astronaut stuff.

422One final question.

423Sure.

424You've been an astronaut now as long as you've been a teacher.

425And you said, you know, maybe you'll go back and teach.

426Where would you go teach?

427Would you go back and do eighth grade science?

428What would you go do, you think?

429That's a good question.

430I think I would probably go back to middle school, seventh or eighth grade.

431I just enjoy working with that age group.

432They're, you know, they're still figuring things out.

433They're still open to ideas.

434They're still, by and large, enthusiastic about learning.

435I just, there's something to me that I didn't intentionally become a middle school teacher.

436Mm-hmm.

437Thanks for joining me today, man.

438Oh, my pleasure.

439Thanks for having me.

440Appreciate it.

441Thank you.

442Thank you.

443Thank you.

444Thank you.

445Thank you.

446Thank you.

447Thank you.

448Thank you.

449Thank you.

450Thank you.

451Thank you.

452Thank you.

453Thank you.

454Thank you.

455Thank you.

456Thank you.

457Thank you.

458Thank you.

459Thank you.

460Thank you.

461Thank you.

462Thank you.

463Thank you.

464Thanks again for listening.

465If you want to follow Ricky while he's on board the International Space Station, head over to Twitter and you can follow him at astro underscore Ricky.

466And as always, you can follow us online at nasa.gov slash ISS for all the latest on the International Space Station and on our various social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

467And as always, you can use hashtag Ask NASA on your favorite platform to submit any ideas for a podcast.

468Just make sure to mention it's for Houston.

469We have a podcast.

470This podcast was recorded on January 18th.

471Thanks to Alex Perryman, John Stoll, Pat Ryan, John Streeter, Greg Wiseman, and Ryan Stewart.

472And of course, thanks again to Mr.

473Ricky Arnold for coming on the show.

474We'll be back next week.