NASA Astronauts Discuss Life in Space with Associated Press – Wednesday August 2026

1:14 Speaker 1: Station. This is Houston. Are you ready for the events?

1:27 Speaker 1: Associated Press? This is Mission Control Houston. Please call station for a voice check.

1:34 Speaker 2: This is the This is the Associated Press. How do you hear me?

1:42 Speaker 3: Welcome board the International Space Station.

1:46 Speaker 2: Well, hi there, Marcia Dunn here talking to you today from Cape Canaveral. Thanks so much, Jack and Jessica for taking the time to chat with me today.

1:56 Speaker 4: My first question, tell me what it was like to witness.

1:59 Speaker 2: The solar clips for more but a week ago today, and I'm assuming you'll be on the lookout for the lunar eclipse coming up next week, and maybe even in a better position to see that one.

2:13 Speaker 5: We are always excited to see these kinds of phenomenon from our unique perspective up here on the International Space Station. Unfortunately, for this most recent total solar eclipse, we weren't in the optimal location to get a good viewing, but we did have a little bit of an opportunity through certain windows of the space station. I took some photos with a solar filter on a long lens looking at the Sun, and I couldn't see given our angle and the location of the space station at the time, I didn't see a total solar eclipse, but I did see it looks like a moon.

2:45 Speaker 6: Bite, i'd call it.

2:46 Speaker 5: It's a little chunk of the moon, of course, passing in front of the Sun. So I thought it was a pretty cool photo. I was excited to do it because I've never taken a photo like that. On my last mission, I was up here for an annular solar eclipse and I was able to see this really gray shadow on the Earth, which was also cool to see.

3:04 Speaker 6: But unfortunately, given.

3:05 Speaker 5: Where we were, we didn't have that opportunity to see it next time. So I guess we'll just have to say up here longer and wait for more.

3:13 Speaker 2: What about the lunar eclipse next next week, it's going to be pretty deep by here.

3:21 Speaker 3: We're waiting to see the predictions. You know, our orbit isn't totally predictable. We change sometimes our altitude based on things going around in our orbit as well. It's around one hundred percent sure what our view is going to be looked like, but we're hoping for the best.

3:33 Speaker 6: That should be pretty awesome.

3:36 Speaker 2: Well do eclipses or auroras, what's tops for you for looking at cosmic wonders? How do they all stack up? When viewed from space, and maybe you've even seen some shooting stars too. I've seen some of the aurora pictures you've been down.

3:50 Speaker 4: They're just great.

3:54 Speaker 6: Yeah, I think for me it's the aurora. It's interesting.

3:57 Speaker 5: On my first mission, which was six years ago, you were actually at a solar minimum, so the aurora we saw a few, but they were not anywhere near as intense as they are now. Of course, this year we've just come off of the solar maximum which was last year, and so that means much more dramatic, much brighter, much more brilliant, larger displays of aurora on Earth from the Earth vantage point and also up here. So we have had a lot of opportunities to get time lapses and photos, and there was one in particular.

4:26 Speaker 5: It was after a coronal mass ejection, this particular solar event.

4:30 Speaker 6: We were all in the cupola together, and.

4:32 Speaker 5: This one was pretty unique because most of the time they're kind of off in the distance since they're closer to the polar regions and our orbit doesn't go quite that far. But this time the green dancing aurora were right below us, passing over Earth and coming over the middle of the cupola, and it looked like a snake making its way right beneath us, and that was a really extraordinary one. You could see the green light bouncing off the white outside exterior.

4:58 Speaker 6: Of the space station.

5:00 Speaker 5: Also been some really bright red wavelength that we've seen in the recent aurora, given the intensity of them, so I think for me, those are are truly spectacular and one of my favorite things to witness up here.

5:10 Speaker 6: It just looks so otherworldly and is so gorgeous.

5:16 Speaker 4: Uh, Jessica, another one for you.

5:18 Speaker 2: I love your space cat apron and O'Neil's chef toke did you take up the apron or was it already up there? And talk about cooking in space? How hard is it to create your own dishes? What's the fanciest thing you've whipped up? And you too, Jack, maybe you're doing some cooking on the side.

5:38 Speaker 5: You know, All of that credit goes to a nil. He brought back up both of that chef hat and the apron, and I wore the apron. He wore the hat for that little episode that we did. Our made an episode, but it was fun. That was actually a very spontaneous moment. It wasn't something that we had planned, but we were all very excited about this lettuce that we've been.

5:56 Speaker 6: Growing up here.

5:57 Speaker 5: You know, we don't get a lot of fresh, green growing things. We had some fresh fruits and vegetables that come up on cargo vehicles, but you know, most of our food is dehydrated or just warmed up. So in particular, I was very excited because I eat salad pretty much every day on Earth, just like Jack, and so I was really excited to have the flavor. So that was our first episode. We'll see what else we come up with. I actually did post earlier about the space cakes that we've had on this mission. Particularly our Russian cosmonaut colleagues up here have been making some extraordinary space cake.

6:30 Speaker 5: So that's probably the most elaborate thing that I think we've been making this mission.

6:38 Speaker 2: Jack, what about you, do you dabble in the culinary arts up there at shay iss or like also, I want to talk to you about your mustache, any space surprises and its growth and grooming.

6:57 Speaker 3: The mustache is a lot of fun up here, you know, as you can see from Jessica's hair, hair just grows out, there's no gravity pulling it down, and the mustache is the same sometimes it just kind of goes out at all sorts of angles, and you've got to keep it under control.

7:11 Speaker 2: You know.

7:12 Speaker 3: We've got our nineteen eighties flow be up here, a set of trimmers connected to a vacuum cleaner to keep it trimmed up like we do with our haircuts up here.

7:20 Speaker 6: But it's a lot of fun.

7:21 Speaker 3: It's been a good source of jokes and enjoyment amongst the crew and the ground control team. A couple of them are growing mustaches and solidarity down there. But it's always good to have anything that creates some team bonding and a little bit of fun up here on the International Space Station.

7:39 Speaker 2: Well, have there been any differences in growing a mustache and space or keeping it tidy versus down here on Earth? And has it been bothersome And when do you plan to shave it off?

7:56 Speaker 3: I guess my mustache is how long it stays depends on who you ask. But it's kind of become a little bit of my brand up here, so I don't know if it'll go away right away or I'll end up keeping it for a while. But it's actually not that big of a deal to maintain, and as compared to down on Earth. You know, a lot of things we do up here a little bit different. We don't have running water up on the space station. You know, when we take showers, it's a little bit more precarious than it is back home, and keeping our hands and face and utensils clean is a little bit different than it is on Earth.

8:30 Speaker 3: It's one of the things that we learn up here that we've We've had people up for twenty five years to understand what it's like to live on the space station, and there have been plenty of mustaches over those twenty five years. But it's just part of the fun. It hasn't been too difficult, and it's just been an enjoyable part.

8:48 Speaker 2: Jessica, I need to ask you about your piccolo. Did you launch with that? I'm assuming it wasn't already up there, And did you preform Live with the Boston Pops on July fourth or was your part pre recorded? And I have to say say, you're lucky you don't play the two book.

9:05 Speaker 6: You're right.

9:06 Speaker 5: The piccolo was very intentional and I wanted actually to fly my flu on this mission, but I didn't have quite enough space for it.

9:13 Speaker 6: It didn't fly up on the same vehicle.

9:14 Speaker 5: As us, we are allocated a small amount of personal items that we send up on cargo vehicles that actually arrived before we do, so I did put my piccolo in with those items, and it was here before me. This is actually the second flight for my piccolo. I flew it on my first mission as well. This we had talked with the Boston Pops about whether or not we could make this a live performance, because I think that would have been even cooler.

9:37 Speaker 6: But basically, logistically, speaking.

9:39 Speaker 5: With the brief delay that we have and the time zone change and making sure that the video was really in sync with them playing, it didn't really seem to make sense for a live performance, so we did not do that one live. They had me record it ahead of time up here, so my crewmates had the benefit of listening.

9:55 Speaker 6: To the beautifully resonant.

9:58 Speaker 5: Sound of the p as I have practiced and practiced this piece, which is a little bit tricky when you haven't been playing very often as I haven't been for the last twenty years, because it's very high and it's very fast, and so Jack can also attest how high and fast it is. So that one was pre recorded for them, but it was a lot of fun to do. I was incredibly grateful for that opportunity with the Boston Pops, and I think it was really a fun event for everyone.

10:23 Speaker 2: Well, how often do you pull out the piccolo to play just for your own satisfaction and any other musicians up there joining you With the instruments up there?

10:37 Speaker 3: She played almost every day for several times a day for the week's leading up to practice, and maybe a little less often now that we're in spacewalk phase. But there are quite a few instruments up here, and a bunch of our colleagues play different things. Actually listen to them play the guitar or have a little karaoke session on a Friday Saturday night. Is one of the more relaxing things we get to do, you know, to rest and relax, take a break from our normal daily routine. Those types of hobbies that are awesome up here.

11:08 Speaker 2: Well, I was going to ask you what you both do in your spare time when you get some off duty time. Do you ever get bored or is that just impossible when you're speeding over the earth that you know from two hundred and sixty miles up.

11:26 Speaker 3: I don't think boredom is really possible up here. There's always something to do, there's always additional task to help keep the station organized. There's endless things to keep your personal gear organized.

11:40 Speaker 1: You know.

11:41 Speaker 3: The window is just incredible. It can soak you in, and every orbit's a little bit different, so every time you look out the window, you're looking at a different city, at a different country, at a different part of our beautiful world. So it doesn't really ever get boring. We got a lot of great camera equipment up here, so lots of people get into photography and pretty good at it, and taking photographs at different you know, with different lenses. Up here is a real, really interesting opportunity to get into.

12:08 Speaker 3: So I haven't found too much time where I'm like, man, I'm really looking for something to do and I just can't find it. It hasn't been a challenge yet.

12:18 Speaker 2: Jessica, I remember you took up a nice stress on your last Space station mission. What's the fanciest piece of clothing up there with you this time? And how important and fun is it for you and for all astronauts male and female to dress up once in a while in space.

12:37 Speaker 5: You know, I was very excited about that dress last time. One of the reasons why I flew it. We were really paying a tribute to the Apollo missions because we had a lot of anniversaries around that time, and so we flew for our Halloween costumes some kind of Apollo era type mission control uniform kind of things with a short button ups and ties, and I thought, well, wait a minute, there was a lot of women that were making a difference back then too, and so I flew a kind of sixties era dress that I was quite excited about wearing.

13:04 Speaker 5: I wish I had a dress this time. I was, you know, I think that was the first dress in space. There was a movie that claimed that maybe they had the first dress in space, but I'm pretty sure I beat them to it. This time, I didn't fly intentionally. I didn't really have anything too fancy. One of the things that I do like to do is have specific socks, because you know, we don't really get to express ourselves through our clothing very much up here. I guess I'm not really a khakis and polo type of girl on Earth.

13:30 Speaker 5: So I embraced that culture up here because it's part of the job.

13:34 Speaker 6: But I do have a couple of things this time.

13:36 Speaker 5: One was a gift that was given to me by one of my crewmates, this beautiful scarf, So that's definitely a little bit fancy. I think we can have some fun with this at some point. And then, of course there's a pair of special pants which we really it's a long story, but it had to do with one of our training episodes, Nole's Trip, where we had a camp, entire crew and some amazing and structs and a flight director as well, and this is the story of the traveling hotpants that made their way up here to the International Space Station.

14:08 Speaker 5: We will all be modeling these at some point, but probably.

14:11 Speaker 6: Not on the media.

14:14 Speaker 2: Well that's too bad. I'd love to see you in those hotpants. For each of you, what are the highs and lows of the mission and any close calls of any kind? And also how's everyone's health been? And I asked that because you replaced a crew that had to return early to Earth for medical reasons.

14:39 Speaker 3: Anytime you're away from home on a mission for months at an end, there's definitely hives and lows. That's one hundred percent true. There's a lot of great things that you get to do, you get to participate in really unique science, like getting to actually pipette into different test tubes and do some DNA development was really cool for me. I studied physics at On and we got to work install a cold Adam lab here which is looking at quantum mechanical properties up here in microgravity that they just can't figure out down on Earth and so or they just can't have the same type of experimental apparatus.

15:15 Speaker 3: So that type of stuff is really awesome and really interesting to be a part of. But for me, I think when I get back a year from now, the things that I'm going to remember the times that someone did something just a little bit funny or a little bit off and we just all just started laughing and just had this giant laugh attack and just really enjoyed each other's company while we're up here, you know, stuck in this tin can for eight months. Having those types of friendships and those bonds and those kind of fun moments really really make it quite quite a good experience.

15:49 Speaker 6: Yeah, I have to say I really agree with Jack on that one.

15:52 Speaker 5: If I think back to my previous mission when people ask me that question, we did a lot of incredible things, all the science things Like Jack mentioned this base walks that we did then that we're doing now, which are all extremely rewarding, some of the most challenging things that we do.

16:06 Speaker 6: But when I look.

16:06 Speaker 5: Back on that, the things that really stick out in my memory are those simple moments of just sharing with your crewmates.

16:12 Speaker 6: It's such a unique environment up here where we not only went.

16:17 Speaker 5: Through something pretty intense together riding a rocket to space, but we are up here not just as colleagues, but really as a family. You know, we do not go home at the end of the night. We have no separation between the people we work with. There's no escape from that, and it gives you this it's a special kind of intensity and challenge sometimes of course, but it's incredibly rewarding because we get to know each other so well and to share these extraordinary moments together is something powerful and something that I think that really unites all of us as astronauts, specifically as crews that we're together, but really for anybody that's had this privilege to look down at the Earth, I think as far as people's health, everybody who's been doing great this mission and feeling well, and you know, like Jack said, whenever you're away for a long period of time.

17:02 Speaker 6: You never know might not what might happen.

17:04 Speaker 5: You know, we don't have a hospital up here, so we really do have to be prepared for anything, and we are. You know, we have a lot of medical equipment and supply to deal with a lot of specific scenarios. We have training for that as well, and so you know, when those things arise, we are prepared for them.

17:19 Speaker 6: Our new crewmate and nil men and of course.

17:21 Speaker 5: Is an emergency room doctor, so we're in even better hands than we were prior to his arrival to deal with anything that might come our way.

17:30 Speaker 2: Well, as you look ahead to moon bases one day, go into Mars, what's the biggest hurdle in your minds after having had this experience?

17:38 Speaker 4: Is it the physical? The mental?

17:41 Speaker 2: And I'm assuming now that a moonshot is on both your bucket lists.

17:50 Speaker 3: That's an interesting question. What the biggest hurdle between between us and putting people back on the surface of the Moon. There's all the technot hurdles that we have to come up with, right, and we want to go back in a sustainable way, in a way that we can keep people and equipment there for extended periods of time and Obviously that's new and we're going to invent all that stuff. But I've got nothing but confidence that the team is going to create all of that and it's going to happen. You know, there's always budgetary challenges that we're going to have enough money to do the type of work that we want to do on the timeline that we want to do on it.

18:23 Speaker 3: Obviously, everyone faces those types of challenges. Human spaceflight is tough because of the humans. Humans are difficult, Like we need food, we need sustenance, we need ways to clean the water and the waste, we need new clothes.

18:37 Speaker 6: We need all sorts of supplies.

18:38 Speaker 3: Like all that is really difficult. And our time up here on the ISS really sets us up for success as we learn how to live and operate in microgravity and far away from the Earth. As for moonshots, like, yeah, this is a great time to be part of the space program. Right, We're not slowing down, Right, We're going to get back to the Moon. We're going to get back there soon. We're going to get back there and stay. Like the office isn't that big. There's a great chance for really all of us over the next decade or two to have an opportunity to go, and I think those opportunities are just going to expand.

19:11 Speaker 3: And it's a real exciting time to be part of the space program, to be part of NASA, to be an American, to be a human that's watching other humans live in space and go on to other planetary bodies. It's a great time to be alive.

19:27 Speaker 2: I think I have one more question before I say goodbye and safe travels. The space station is almost thirty years old. What's your take on whether it can endure another four years without faltering. I know you had to take that temporary emergency shelter in June because of the Russian leaks, but does that all resolve now? What do you think about the longevity of the space station at this point?

19:53 Speaker 5: Yeah, I think we'll just have to wait and see what happens. We're constantly re evaluating it. We have hundreds thousands of engineers on the ground that are constantly and analyzing those situations that arise, and undergoing more testing on the ground for materials even when we have some of these new problems, and just trying to understand more about what happens as it comes. Of course, a space station has had an incredible run. It has far outlived I mean, it's about what twice its normal planned life expectancy, so to speak.

20:22 Speaker 5: And I think that that has been a very fruitful endeavor. We have demonstrated so many hardware objectives, so much groundbreaking science up here that has made it all worthwhile. So I'm not sure how much longer it'll go, but I think at least you know, twenty thirty, maybe even longer than that now we're talking about. And I think it's wonderful to have this continuous human presence in space, almost twenty six years now of continuous human presence, which is a really big deal. A twenty six year old person never knew life without a continuous human presence up here in space and lower thorbit, and that's really important.

20:57 Speaker 6: We are at.

20:58 Speaker 5: NASA, of course, working now toward these exploration missions going back to the Moon and eventually to Mars, and we also have a big effort in the sustained presence in a commercial sector.

21:08 Speaker 6: In lower thorbit.

21:09 Speaker 5: So I think that we will have some commercial space stations kind of just around the corner to maintain that presence, but hopefully the space station will be able to sustain us so that we don't have to give up this presence before those come along. So we'll see what happens. And you know, I know that NASA and all of our partner agencies are always evaluating for everything to make sure that we do maintain our safety up here as well.

21:33 Speaker 1: Well.

21:33 Speaker 2: Jessica Jacket has been such a pleasure to talk.

21:35 Speaker 4: With both of you. Godspeed to both of you and.

21:38 Speaker 2: All of your crewmates, Safe travels in your next month back to Earth.

21:45 Speaker 4: By bye station. This is Houston ACR. That concludes our event.

21:56 Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you to our participants. Station. We are now resuming operational audio communications