Feature Articles » Dream Jobs 2004

Julie Payette: Geek in Space

Age:

40

What She Does:

Astronaut mission specialist

For Whom:

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency

Where She Does It:

Johnson Space Center, Texas, and outer space

Fun Factors:

Microgravity; incredible views; high-tech adventure

Fixing a balky battery recharger might seem a pedestrian activity for most EEs, but Julie Payette's circumstances were a little unusual: she was hurtling around the earth at 28 000 kilometers per hour, some 320 km up. Astronaut Payette was on board the then-embryonic International Space Station (ISS) as part of a 1999 shuttle flight to prepare the station for its first permanent inhabitants. One of the crew's key tasks during that mission was to replace a set of voltage regulators that were preventing the station's batteries from charging properly. After the power system was successfully repaired, Payette also oversaw a lengthy spacewalk from the flight deck of the shuttle and released a miniature satellite from its payload bay.

The path that led to her stint as an orbiting repairwoman can be traced all the way back to Payette's childhood in French-speaking Montreal, where, growing up, she watched the Apollo astronauts on TV. "I thought it was really cool, and I wanted to do the same thing," she remembers. People around her were skeptical, because "when you don't speak English and you're from Canada and you're a girl, wanting to be an astronaut sounds weird." But Payette stuck with her dream. "It influenced me to go into engineering. I knew I couldn't count on being an astronaut to make a living, but I did make some choices with that idea in the back of my mind," she explains.

Orbiting Fixer:: Julie Payette before a mock-up of the International Space Station. She was one of the first astronauts to visit the orbital outpost.

She received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from McGill University, in Montreal, in 1986, and went on to receive a master's in computer engineering from the University of Toronto before working for IBM as a system engineer and then for Nortel in the field of voice recognition. Payette credits her education with giving her the right mental toolkit to do her job. Being an astronaut "is about learning how systems work, how to operate systems, how to troubleshoot them, how to think on your feet. This methodology is very much in line with what you learn in engineering school," she explains.

Still, Payette feels that engineering students should broaden their horizons: "I'm a very big fan of versatility. I know that many engineers have to take a few writing or history courses and hate it. But it makes them better people, and better engineers, too, because solutions to problems often require openness and creativity, and if you haven't seen anything else but your own little domain, you won't have that." Payette practices what she preaches—she speaks six languages, has become an accomplished musician, and is an experienced pilot, with hundreds of hours in jet planes. She came to NASA in 1996, on loan from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), in Saint-Hubert, Quebec, which provides NASA with equipment—most notably robot arms for the shuttle and the International Space Station. In exchange, NASA integrates Canadian astronauts as members of its astronaut corps and provides them with a ride into space.

Like all astronauts, however, Payette spends most of her time on the ground. A large portion of it is divided between maintaining her general skills as an astronaut, which requires working in mock-ups and simulators to practice for such events as an emergency bailout from a damaged shuttle and working in mission control for the ISS as a so-called Capcom, or capsule communicator.

A Capcom is the vocal link between mission control and astronauts working in space—to avoid confusion, only the Capcom is allowed to talk to those in orbit, and by tradition the role is filled by an astronaut. Being Capcom is a job that requires constant training and simulation with the other mission controllers and astronauts.

Payette must also maintain her piloting skills by flying the astronaut corps' T-38 Talon jet planes. The rest of the time is spent on her administrative duties as the Canadian chief astronaut and on public relations projects. All this activity leads to Payette's one grouch about what she considers the best job in the world: "There's no time. I'm not in control of my time and haven't been in many years. My time is scheduled" by NASA and the CSA.

Frequently, Payette finds herself working nights and weekends, but she appears to thrive on the pressure. She gave birth to her second child a few months ago, and beyond forcing her to swap her ragtop Jeep Wrangler for an SUV-style Jeep Liberty, having a larger family appears to have scarcely slowed her down.

Although Payette expects at least one more chance to soar in space, the loss of the Columbia and its crew last February has grounded the shuttle fleet and raised questions about the future of NASA's human space flight program. The Columbia disaster affected Payette deeply, but it hasn't changed her willingness to go into space.

Speaking of NASA's efforts to return to human flight, Payette says she feels that the disaster actually "motivates us to go back to flying and completing missions, because otherwise my colleagues, my friends, would have lost their lives in vain."

—Stephen Cass

By Photo: Pam Francis