Having plunged hundreds of feet below sea level and flown millions of miles in space to execute complex tasks, Dr. Michael Gernhardt knows from personal experience what it’s like to handle high-risk situations. And while many would be terrified if placed in those conditions, Gernhardt said he enjoys the challenge.
A native of Mansfield, Gernhardt has served as an astronaut at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center for the past 22 years. Prior to that, he worked as a professional deep sea diver and project engineer on a variety of subsea oil field construction and repair projects around the world.
At age 10, Gernhardt started scuba diving. He noted, “My first love was the ocean.”
When he was in tenth grade at Malabar High School, he began taking physics courses and was fascinated with Skylab, America’s first space station, and Tektite, which was an undersea project funded by NASA. With those interests combined, he said, “I kind of set the distant goal that I wanted to do the most I could with the life I had, both mentally and physically, and to me, being an astronaut was kind of the ultimate challenge in that regard.”
After graduating from high school in 1974, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Vanderbilt University in 1978 and a Master of Science degree and a doctorate in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983 and 1991, respectively.
“As an undergrad, I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do in grad school, and I had been working summers in college as a scuba diving instructor and boat captain, and then as an apprentice for a deep sea diver,” he said.
In 1977, he made deep sea diving his profession, logging over 700 deep sea dives. During his diving career, Gernhardt attended graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania and developed a new theoretical decompression model based on tissue gas bubble dynamics.
“I liked the challenge of it,” he said of his diving career.
He added, “The discipline that it takes to do that kind of work turned out to be perfect for me when I got to NASA in terms of planning and executing space walks.” Thus, he found it to be a natural transition when he joined NASA in 1992.
After serving three years at the Johnson Space Center, he embarked on his first space mission in 1995, experiencing a little bit of turbulence leading up to the launch. He explained that a week before he was slated to fly, he accidentally tripped and dislocated his shoulder.
“I remember thinking ‘this is going to be interesting,’ but I had a really good attitude, which is I’m the best trained to do this flight and if I can do it I will, and if I can’t then I’ll train somebody else,” he said.
Fortunately, Gernhardt was able to participate in the mission, which he said was “a really complex flight where we actually deployed and recovered two science satellites and did a whole bunch of experiments inside the space shuttle, and then me and my partner did a space walk to evaluate all of the techniques that we were going to use to build and maintain the space station.”
Remembering his first spacewalk, he said, “The first time you look back at Earth, it just takes your breath away and it’s hard to believe that you’re out in space and floating above the clouds.”
Gernhardt witnessed more breathtaking sights while executing a task in which he had to go out on the shuttle’s robot arm in the middle of the night, with all the lights of the shuttle turned off, and test new glove heaters to see if they would keep his hands warm, he said.
“So I’m up in the middle of the night, it’s pitch black, and you can see Jupiter and it’s four moons with your naked eye, and the Milky Way thousands of times brighter than you’ve ever seen on Earth,” he said.
During that same mission, he witnessed Hurricane Marilyn over the Virgin Islands. “I remember looking down and seeing that hurricane and I was overcome with a sense of pride, not for myself, but for the whole team at NASA that had the technology to put me up there above the hurricane,” he said.
Gernhardt spoke animatedly about his profession, indicating his passion for his job.
He currently assumes many other roles in addition to his position as an astronaut. He is the Manager of Environmental Physiology Laboratory, with which he does biomedical research for space walks. He is also project manager of Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV).
Additionally, he’s leading the development of a mission to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. “I’ve got a big team that’s working on all of the details from how we get there, how we operate there, what kind of equipment we need,” he said.
“Right now my main focus is looking forward to deep space exploration,” he said.
He mentioned, “I was hoping to be on the next crew to go back to the moon and when that got cancelled that was a disappointment to me, but I’m now working toward going to the moon of Mars and Mars as if I would be going, and I hope I can, but even if I don’t then the work I’m doing will make it better for those that come behind me.”
Speaking to those who would someday like to become an astronaut, Gernhardt advised, “Get as much education as you can, study hard, work hard, do things that you like…Frankly it takes a little bit of luck and timing, and if you’re doing things you like and don’t get picked to be an astronaut then you’ll still be doing things you like.”
Contrary to popular belief, astronauts don’t fly as frequently as people assume. Gernhardt has flown four times in space, “which is more than a lot of people,” he said. “And for each of those times you’ve flown in space, you’ve been training and working for years and years.”
He also noted that people sometimes don’t understand all of the hard work and the tens and thousands of people that it takes to launch astronauts into space.
“It’s not all glamorous; you’re working long hours—sometimes 16-18 hour days,” he said.
Despite the sometimes taxing effort that goes into his job, he said, “But it’s worth it.”
“I remember looking down and seeing that hurricane and I was overcome with a sense of pride, not for myself, but for the whole team at NASA that had the technology to put me up there above the hurricane,” said Michael Gernhardt.
