NASA astronaut Warren “Woody” Hoburg visits Knoch
JEFFERSON TWP — Every day for 186 days, Warren “Woody” Hoburg saw 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets.
Orbiting 248 miles above the Earth’s atmosphere aboard the International Space Station in 2023, the Pittsburgh-born NASA astronaut took part in experiments ranging from planting tomatoes in space to research in heart disease treatment using human heart cells.
Hoburg shared those experiences as a NASA astronaut and as a pilot selected as part of the Artemis Program on Tuesday, April 9 with a group of Advanced Placement students at Knoch High School, telling them stories from the spacecraft’s launch in March 2023 to its return to Earth in September of the same year.
Tuesday morning, Hoburg also visited fourth graders at Mars Area Elementary School.
The visit, funded by the Mars New Year, gave students the opportunity to ask questions about his training and personal experiences in space, as well as what it takes to be an astronaut and his thoughts on the commercialization of space by people like businessman and inventor Elon Musk.
Mars Robotics Association members Elaina Anderson, a student at Pine-Richland High School, and Emma Salasky, a junior at Knoch, assisted as they read students’ submitted questions aloud for Hoburg.
When asked what inspired him to become an astronaut, the rock climbing enthusiast, mountaineer and engineer answered, “the spirit of exploration.”
His favorite part of being in space, he said, was the spacewalks. Tethered to the aircraft but floating in the void in a spacesuit, Hoburg would move around for up to seven hours performing technical work. It was exhausting, he said, and at the same time, everything that he had trained for.
“Sometimes (I) get the same questions, like, ‘Why do you rock climb?’” Hoburg said. “It’s fun to explore places that are hard to get to, like space and the moon. It’s fun to explore them, and I also think it’s a really fun technical challenge to figure out how to do that safely.”
Trained to respond calmly in the face of pressure, Hoburg said there was no situation during his time in space where he felt extremely nervous. When a colleague’s spacecraft encountered a power failure and coolant leak, he said the crew worked side by side to create contingency plans.
Hoburg said his colleague, Frank Rubio, saw his mission to space unexpectedly extended from six months to a year due to the power failure, when the control team decided the spacecraft was not a viable way to return home.
For astronauts with children, like Rubio, Hoburg said the missions present a unique experience.
“(Rubio) was stuck in space for a year. He had a family at home,” Hoburg said. “His oldest kid finished school and left the house to go to college and moved out while he was still in space. So things like that can be hard for families.”
Back on Earth, Hoburg likened the transition from weightlessness to feeling the full force of gravity to “running a marathon.”
Mundane activities, like walking, were difficult at first. Items that felt light on the spacecraft felt extremely heavy again.
“I remember picking up this bottle of water and I was like, this is made of lead, this cannot be water — water does not weigh as much as this,” he said. “It felt so heavy. Everything felt outrageously heavy.”
“You feel like an absolute wreck,” Hoburg said. “I’d been weightless for six months, and I remember how before I flew, I could only imagine what it would feel like to just be floating around all the time. It was an amazing experience, because I’m telling you, you get used to it. Your body gets used to it.”
Now in between missions, Hoburg said he is eligible to fly to space again. The Artemis Program, which Hoburg is part of, is a moon exploration program he said he hoped could help astronauts and scientists prepare for missions on Mars.
“The moon is the perfect place to do that,” Hoburg said.
NASA’s first crewed lunar mission since Apollo 17 in December 1972 is set for September 2025.
“The crew is going to land on the moon and start what I hope is a decade or two decades of presence on the moon doing science, living and working,” he said.
“With that, a goal for NASA is the commercialization of lower orbit,” he said. “We want to see companies putting space stations in lower orbit, we want to see tourism in lower orbit ... so that NASA can focus on what we do best, which is exploring further out.”
This story was updated at 2:30 p.m., April 10 to reflect that the event was funded by the Mars New Year, with members of the Mars Robotics Association assisting. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the visit was arranged by the Mars Robotics Association.
