Hello, everyone and welcome back. I hope you had chance to connect with some cool people during the networking.And here I am with Catherine T Thornton, former NASA astronaut chair and Board of Directors of Space Foundation and Professor Emeritus at University of Virginia Select by NASA in May 1984. Thornton is a veteran of four space flights. She has logged over 975 hours in space, including more than 21 hours of extra vehicular activity was inducted into the US astronaut Hall of Fame in 2010 while serving as an astronaut. Thornton was also the head of NASA Johnson Space Center Education uh working group which coordinates educational outreach activities from astronauts and professional educators work and others are teaching from space contrast with Oklahoma State University videos, printed materials and live events with school Children and astronauts in orbit with some of the products of the group prior to becoming an astronaut. 

Thornton was employed as a physician at the US Army Foreign Science and Technology Center. Hi, Catherine and welcome. Good morning. I'm super excited about your keynote that I even couldn't uh you know, couldn't read normally about 

super excited to 

have you with us and um you have some slides, right? 

No, no, you 

can do it without slides. Master. 

And I understand we'll have some questions and I'm always, yes, we'll have 

some questions at the end. So please everyone welcome Catherine. And whenever you hear something that you, there's a nice with you do let us know in the chat and prepare your questions and I will be back for the Q and A part and I will leave the stage to you. 

Ok. So you're getting my camera but not my screen. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah, 

we can see, we can 

see that. I, I hear you very well. Yeah. Ok. Ok. Good morning everyone. Well, it is morning where I am here but as the women TCH network spans the globe with more than 100,000 members in 100 and 81 countries. The sun never sets on the women Tech Network. I'm honored to join you today in celebrating dozens of outstanding women at this awards presentation. Leave it to women in technology to organize a successful event for 40,000 participants from all over the world during a global pandemic. A big well done to all the organizers and also a hearty congratulation to the finalists and the winners today of 22 awards who are will be announced throughout the day. I'm particularly excited for the young women in the network because you are our future I'm an old timer in the stem world. What other company might be called? A gray beard? Uh However, due to genetics, I have no beard sort of. And thanks to a wonderful hairdresser, I have no gray hair, but I do have memories of a different time. Most of us are evolutionary thinkers. We imagine evolutionary improvements in technology. Airplanes get bigger and faster automobiles get more efficient, new powerful antibiotics are developed. 

But how many of us can envision uh t truly revolutionary discoveries and inventions, discoveries and inventions that really changed the world. Not many of us can do that. Some of the worldchanging developments that come to mind for my lifetime are the space industry, proliferation of digital computers, medical imaging and the internet. Most of you can't imagine a life without those things, but it did exist in my household. I would also say the microwave oven is a pretty big deal, but maybe that's just me. So how did teachers in the 19 fifties prepare us for our future lives in 2020. How can we teach Children today? All they need to know throughout their lifetimes? Quite simply, we can't, we can and must give them the tools to invent their future and to adapt to changing environments. That's what we do. We continue to learn and to adapt. It'll be interesting mental exercise during one of your breaks to list five things that you now know or things that you now know how to do that. You didn't know. A year ago, I think we discovered that we've all been learning and adapting quite a lot lately, the space industry and I were born about the same time, who would have guessed that I would ride the wave of that worldchanging technology throughout my career. 

To this day, I had no idea when I was a child that I would one day fly on the space shuttle. It would have seemed very unlikely at that time that there would ever even be a space shuttle. And I would have been among the most unlikely of crew members. I'm sure that many of you very accomplished women have a plan for your career. And maybe you've been on a defined track from a very young age. My career and path through life have been more of a random walk. I never dreamed of becoming an astronaut because there were very few astronauts at that time. They were all military men and test pilots and I clearly was not gonna fit either of those qualifications. I was an unremarkable student through most of my early education until high school when it just sort of clicked with me. Uh, one teacher in my high school who taught chemistry and physics had a very significant influence in my life. He made it clear to me the only girl in my physics class that his expectations for me were the same as for the guys. He wasn't a mentor in the sense that he pointed me in the right direction or showed me the way he merely believed that I was capable. That sounds like a very small thing. But at that time, the message was clear that girls didn't do physics. 

If girls went to college, it was to find a suitable husband and failing that they could be teachers or nurses until they finally found a guy. Physics. No way. Looking back, I realized how the smallest encouragement can give uh young people a chance and have a tremendous influence on their lives. I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. In fact, I'm still working on that. I knew that I liked math and science when I went to college, but not specifically what I wanted to do with it. But if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. First, I learned that math was interesting as long as I could envision a practical use, but proving mathematical theorems was just not my thing in chemistry. I learned you have to wash dishes and pay for what you break. And that love physics. I like physics because it was a puzzle. The solution to a physics problem could be immediately obvious or it could take days to see. I wasn't sure what one could do with a physics bachelor's degree. So I went on to graduate school and eventually earned a phd. I enjoyed being a student and I was good at it. But unfortunately, you have to grow up and graduate. 

I had a postdoctoral appointment at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany for a year and then came back and worked for the US Army as a physicist. After a few years, I saw an announcement that NASA was selecting its next astronaut class and I was surprised to see that the requirements were just normal, healthy people with a bachelor's degree in science, math, engineering or medicine. This was the selection for the 10th astronaut class and just the third class to include women and minorities. This was about the time that Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983. So I applied for me, it was like buying a lottery ticket. I never expected to be selected. But until they said no, the dream was alive and it was a very engaging fantasy to live. Surprisingly, NASA said yes and I was selected to be in the 10th class of NASA astronauts who reported to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas in July of 1984. By that time, I had acquired a husband who didn't want to move and a two year old daughter by mutual agreement, my daughter and I moved to Houston and I joined NASA. 

Happy to say that my husband and I celebrated our 41st anniversary this year, two career families are not easy. But then nothing is. As for every working parent life was hectic. We were given our schedules on Friday for the following week and I began to make arrangements to get everything covered, including general childcare, swim team, softball, practice gymnastic classes. While I had early morning simulator sessions and days of travel away from home. 

I lived one week at a time. Every time I felt like I had my life almost under control. We decided again by mutual agreement to have another child. By the time I left NASA in 1996 we had three daughters at 12 years with NASA and four Great space shuttle flights. My flights included a classified mission that I can't talk about. And the first Hubble space telescope service mission that was televised all over the world. I had the opportunity to deploy satellites in space to repair satellites to do spacewalks and science experiments in an orbiting laboratory. One of the most poignant connections between my NASA life and my family life was the Hubble mission. My oldest daughter was 11 years old when I flew on the first Hubble service mission and then later earned her phd in Astrophysics using data from the Hubble. I can't take credit for her phd, but I'm happy to have helped a little bit. I love my time at NASA. But after 12 years, I decided to leave that world behind and have to have more time with my family and to have an opportunity to influence the next generation. I joined the faculty at the University of Virginia. It's very rewarding to work with university students. And even though I'm now retired, I continue to follow their careers. We see excellent students at the University of Virginia and I know that most of them will do well in their careers with or without any help from me. 

But the ones who steal a piece of my heart are the ones who struggle a bit. The ones where just a little bit of encouragement can make all the difference because I was one of them many years ago. I was born at the same time as the space industry, which has now grown to be a $430 billion business. The fuel that enabled growth of the space economy from nothing to almost a half trillion dollar segment of the global economy is people. It's the really smart students who don't need us to the kids who need just a little bit of encouragement to people who don't think they have any place at all in space economy. We need them all. I've been privileged to be a member of the board of directors of the Space Foundation since 2010. The Space Foundation is a nonprofit leader in space awareness activities, educational programs and major aerospace industry events. One of the initiative initiatives of the Space Foundation of which we are most proud is the center for innovation and education that creates and delivers workforce development and economic opportunity programs that enable all people to actively participate in the global space economy. 

Our goals for the Center overlap with those for the Women Tech Network Space Foundation, Chief operating Officer Shelley Brunswick, the driving force behind the Center for Innovation and Education is a global ambassador and mentor for the Women Tech Network, as well as a finalist for the Diversity and Inclusion Officer of the Year Award, Lawrence Smith, a fellow Space Foundation board member is a finalist for speaker of the year award. 

We're very proud of both of them, but I don't have my finger on the scale. I wish the best of luck to all the wonderful finalists. Thank you to the Women Tech Network for empowering women all over the world and for holding this wonderful event. It's been an honor to join you today. I would be happy to answer any questions, which is actually my favorite thing to do. 

Wow. Thank you very much Catherine. That was, that was incredible. I was like, you know, listening to your story and, and, and following how people were telling, hey, I see, Catherine aren't on in front of my screen. Oh my God. For some people, it's like really this moment when they can actually listen to you and interact with you right ahead. And as you said, the Q and A is the favorite part for you. And thanks a lot for the warm words about the job that we are doing at Women Tech Networks. It meant a lot to us to hear this from you. So here we have a lot of questions and a lot of comments. So I will start with this until they didn't say no, the dream was alive. This really resonated with me. There is a comment from Liliana and this really resonated with me as well. And until this, until you get the rejection that you actually don't feed, why don't you even try? Right. That's what you did here we are. Um I'm curious about your experience as a former NASA astronaut. My son looks interesting about the space, the space. He watches the videos on youtube and told me about uh black hole et cetera. 

So probably the question is how to encourage him or what would be the next step as a 

mother. Um I'm not sure what we're encouraging to do to get into the space business, not necessarily the same space business. You know, there's lots, excuse me, there's lots of ways to participate in that. Being an astronaut is just one of them, but the the industry is enormous. 

It includes, you know, all the commercial side um uh our, our International Cooper Operation government Space and that sort of thing. Excuse me. Um I think, you know, I just um I have, I have four grandsons and so um I think you just encourage their interest with um talking to them, asking them questions, letting them visualize where they wanna be and then, you know, in school that you have to do well in school to, to do that. 

So that's sort of an encouragement to, to keep pressing on. And it doesn't uh you know, I used to say, well, you need to study math, science, engineering, whatever, but that's not true because there's a place for people with all kinds of interest in the space industry. Yeah, absolutely. 

How was your experience? There is a question from uh Rashma Wati. She's asking how was your experience when you landed the space 

for the first time? Yeah. Um You know, we did so much training leading up to that, that it was almost like for me kind of an out of body experience, like I was watching myself going through all the motions of going out to the launch tower, climbing in the space shuttle strapping in. Um So it wasn't like I was worried and scared and because you've made the decision, you're gonna do it. Nobody, nobody backs out at that point. So the decision is made, you just go through with it and see what happens. Um The training is really good. And so, you know, most of it is it, it's kind of most of the sensations you kind of expect. There's a at lunch time, there's a lot of vibration and I'm talking shuttle world which now doesn't exist So I'm a dinosaur. Um But in the, in the first stage, there's a lot of vibrations. I mean, literally like this. And I remember hearing some of my colleagues pilots saying, you know, I trained for years to read the engine gauges to see how the engines were performing and I can't see them bouncing around a bunch. 

And that went on for a couple of minutes and then the solid rocket booster separated and we were riding on the the main engines on the shuttle and that was very, very smooth like uh electric car ride that went on for another 6.5 minutes. The acceleration built up to about three Gs. So you feel like you have a gorilla sitting on your chest toward the end of the ascent. Um And but when the main engines cut off, it was like everything went from being crushed to floating and it's just like in one instant, it was a magical moment. So I don't know what um what the acceleration profile is for these new capsules for soy use or for um I think it's probably higher GS than we experienced in the shuttle. It was pretty awesome. 

Yeah, here is another question from Nehan. She's asking what were your thoughts worries about family or maybe some other worries that you had when you travel for the first time. I mean, I'm sure you must be excited to your family, but what were your 

feelings? Um you know, the hardest part of launching is saying about your family without a doubt, we were, um, for health reasons, separated from our kids for a week before flight. So we didn't catch any kid germs in the last week. So, you know, that part was, that part was hard. And, um, kind of your last contact with him is typically the night before launch and call him on phone, talk to him and that sort of thing. And after that, for me it was just flip a switch. You know, I have a job to do. I just have to do it. I'm pretty sure things are gonna turn out. Ok. But I can't know. Kinda interesting. 

Was there something that you were scared of when you were out there in space? 

Um, you know, I don't think that it, I was scared because I, I sort of, I trusted, um, that we knew how to take care of anything that we could take care of and everything else was beyond our control and there's no point worrying about it if you can't do anything about it. So, you know, I assume when I launched, I assumed I was coming home. There's no question I did. I knew there was a possibility I wouldn't. But, you know, my operating assumption was I'll be back next week and you, 

you, you did, didn't get back and you're here. How did you balance your career and family? Was it easy? 

No, it is not easy for anyone to balance a career in family. So there's really the way it is. You, I, I think you take care of what's most important and you know, if your floors need sweeping, don't worry about it. No. 

Yeah, absolutely. Um, as a mother myself, I can confirm that. It's 

not easy. Yeah, it's, it's never easy, but I think it's rewarding. I wouldn't have. It is, it 

is rewarding. It is rewarding and you will see it um with, with every positive moment that you encounter. Here's a question from Usha. How is it possible to help um how to pave the way out to space your suggestions and recommendations? 

I'm not sure I understand that. How to 

promote maybe women to get more in space. 

Oh, get more people in space. Yeah. You know, um 

and especially encourage women to get into space. 

Yeah, that's um you know, I would have said that, you know, you have to do the maths science route and would study that in school in order to have the opportunity to fly with NASA or with the other um space agencies around the world. But, you know, we have a real revolution coming now and that's commercial space flight. That's people, you know spacex who's built their, their launch vehicle, it's not government owned. Uh NASA buys seats from them right now, but other people can buy seats from them too. And so next year, I think this year, we had two launches with spacex. So they launched people. Um NASA bought the seats like a ticket on an airline and flew to a NASA facility which was the International Space Station. Uh Next year, I think, I hope it's next year, there will be the first truly commercial space fliers where it is not NASA paying for the seat and they will go to the space station because there's nowhere else to go right now. But but in coming years, there will be other destinations in space. So the other route for getting into space besides um you know, studying math and science and getting selected by NASA or the other space agencies is to make a lot of money and be able to buy your way up there. 

And I think that the price of that will come down, you know, as we um the launch technology gets maybe less expensive because of reusability. I think cost of launching will go down and so more people will have the opportunity to do it. It's not gonna be like hopping on a bus ever, but you know, it will become more accessible to people. Interesting. 

Interesting. Here is a comment from Kim. She said it's 1 a.m. in Sydney and I stayed up for Catherine. 

Oh, thank you. 

So people are joining from all over the world and since we run across different time zones, we have more questions. Here is a question from Alma who was your role model who inspired you? Oh, did you have one? 

Um, you know, people ask me that and I, nothing really comes to mind. I mentioned the teacher who was encouraging to me, not necessarily the role model I didn't want to follow in his footsteps. Um, II, I think my mother, although she, you know, she lived at a time where she didn't have the opportunities that I did. But I think, had she, had, she been born in my time, she would have been something she raised six kids and, oh, wow, that's 

impressive. Yeah, wonderful. Um Here's a question from justly, what was the most challenging and memorable um NASA 

journey, what was the most challenging part of joining NSA? I am uh not a gifted or comfortable public speaker. And so I, you know, I thought as a physicist, I could just work a problem in my head and not tell anybody about it. Um But when I joined NASA that we got thrown into the public relations pool pretty quickly and I had to go out and, and overcome that. Well, I don't know if you ever ever overcome it. I had to learn to adapt and compensate and, and do the things that I need to do to go out and spread the, spread the news. So I do it. But the questions are always the most fun. Yeah. Yeah. I also, 

that's why we wanted to keep, that's why the conference is live. So we have this interaction with people and that they can talk to you in real time. And I think that you did a great job uh with your keynote. I really enjoyed the fun, funny moment that you shared and it was like, not, you know, not, not very uh like you didn't expect people to love but the smile and we did. And that was really like, I really love the, the authenticity of your talk. And I think that's what, that's what resonates with people the most. That's why they are sharing all these great comments. No, no, no. How did you manage? And what inspired you to choose that field? You particularly shared. Uh But maybe you can share more and how maybe did you, did you, have you ever thought of giving up, uh you know, your career that you started in space? 

Uh my career? Well, I did give up the career I started in space. Um Not because I didn't love it. I loved every minute of it. But, um you know, I had three kids that were growing up and I was gone a lot. I traveled a lot and so, you know, I had four great flights and I thought I can stay here the rest of my career. I'll get maybe two or three more flights, which would be awesome. But, or I can go somewhere else and have more time to, you know, watch my kids grow up. So, you know, it wasn't an easy day. Let's say it was an easy decision. I don't know. It's, it's, it's, it's a decision that I made willingly because it was in my best. It was, it was my decision, you know, as well as good for the kids. I don't say I gave everything up for the kids because I didn't, I gave it up for me. Yeah. 

And then you're the mother and you decide and that's what you did. And that was the decision that you made. What was your dream back then? And maybe, what is your dream now? 

Oh, wow. Um, the question from Alma. Yeah. Well, you know, as I said, I've, I've never had a, um, a plan at all. I just sort of see what happens next and I, I've advised a lot of students when I was a professor and, and one of the things I tell them is, you know, once you make a decision to go do something, don't ever look back because you can't change it. If you find out you're somewhere you don't want to be, you don't like what you're doing. Um, then do something else. Find another way. But don't ever second guess your decision, don't ever look back. Um, I also tell them that I think you need to spend three years on your first job that the first year your heads just sort of spinning around the circle. You're trying to figure out what you, what's going on. Second year, uh, I think is often disillusionment that this, well, this isn't exactly what I thought it was gonna be. And the third year you kinda reach an equilibrium and at that point you're still unhappy, then you need to move on. Yeah. So give 

yourself three years at a company. Well, unless it's really 

bad. Right. It's really terrible. Then certainly you move on, you know, don't stay anywhere miserable. But I think there is a cycle to how we adapt. Yeah, if you 

feel like good at a company and you may be tempted by some opportunities, but if it's great and you feel like this is a place to stay for three years and see what 

happens. Right. But almost, you know, I think almost always in the second year, there's sort of this disillusionment period and, and you don't wanna give into that too quickly. Right. 

Right. You're a piece of advice to people out there struggling to fulfill their dreams. 

Keep at it. 

I feel like you, you know, from the experience that you are sharing, you're a doer, you do and you feel confident about it. Is that, is that the case 

confident? No, I don't. Well, maybe I project that, you know, when I went to NASA, I didn't know anything about the whole business. I mean, I was pretty sure pointing into the space shuttle went up and that was about my limit of what I knew but I sort of kept my, my eyes and ears open and my mouth shut for a little while and if I would hear something I didn't quite understand then I would go off and figure it out. 

So, I think, I think continuous learning, you know, is you have to do that right. 

Regardless of the age. 

Right. Yeah. I don't know what I'm gonna do now. You know, I'm in a, I'm retired almost two years ago. I spent the first year hiking the Appalachian trail, which is a 2200 mile footpath along the east coast of the United States. From Georgia up to Maine. So that's what I did in 2019, uh, 2020 I've been in this, you know, COVID world, so I don't know what I'm gonna do when I come out of this and I'll find something, 

you know, some of the plans that I personally made for 2020 started from March. Like, we had more than 50 events worldwide, you know, planned to happen and we had to cancel them in a heartbeat. So it's very unpredictable and I like what you said, like, you know, um, see, see how things are developing and see where, you know, like where you can go and just, just do it, take the opportunity also, take the moment, how, how do you feel like, and, and be, be, be ok with your decision, whatever you make. 

Um Here's a question from Liliana at some point. Did you feel your time was limited? And you couldn't do all that you wanted 

every day? Especially when, when I had kids in the house every day. I mean, there's never enough time. Uh, now, since I'm trapped at home in COVID, I'm not sure that's true. Although I have found that I used to say, well, I don't do this because I don't have time. I don't do this because I have time now. I have all the time in the world and I still don't do it. So I don't know. We are just 

humans, right? I mean, we cannot perfectly make the most of our time. We get tired, we get lazy, we make mistakes and so on and so on. So in the end, it's, it's about celebrating our successes and not getting too upset about our failures. 

Right. Right. 

Absolutely. And um here are more questions of coming and more comments are coming. I'm very impressed with having the chance to listen to you. Space is fascinated. Um How do you think we can solve the problems with the extended space debris? And um yeah, 

space debris. That's a good question. I don't know. I know that there are some people that are working on it. Very smart people, but I don't know specifically what their plans are. Um I heard some talks at the last uh space symposium that, well, we didn't have one in 2020 So it would have been 2019 about um some concepts for dealing with space debris. But I think, you know, right now, the best thing we do is just not create it is make sure that anything that's sent up there. Um, upper stages are vented so they don't pressurize and explode and um hope that there are no more um, collisions of space objects that are, you know, uncontrolled so we can't avoid them. Um Yeah. 

Yeah. And here is one question from Glane, what was the most memorable flight 

at NASA? What's the most memorable flight? Well, that's interesting. It's kind of like, which is your favorite show child, you know, it kind of depends on the day. 

Um ok. What, what comes to your mind right now? Well, 

the Hubble flight was, was memorable because it was, it was so critical and that we get it done right to save the Hubble space telescope. And um but, you know, we really didn't have any problems. Things went off just like clockwork on my previous flight where we tried to capture a satellite and put a new booster motor on it, you know, like everything that could go wrong did go wrong. We were ultimately successful but we got it done. So that one, you know, was exciting and that we weren't really sure what the outcome was gonna be. Uh My first mission was classified so we couldn't talk about it and our communications to the ground were not released to the public, to the whole world. So we can have a little bit more relaxed environment and conversations with the ground. Um And the last one was a science mission where we had a in the cargo bay of the space shuttle instead of satellite, we had a laboratory, half the crew slept while the other half worked. So we kept it in operation 24 hours a day. So that's the first time I could imagine wanting to spend time on a space station because we had a lot more volume to live in and half the people at a time to, to deal with, you know, to interact with uh as opposed to the other missions where we all, all we had was the the crew module of the space shuttle. 

So it was, I don't know, maybe twice the volume of a minivan to live in with six of your best friends for a week and a half. Um So anyway, they were all very different. I can't say that there was a favorite. They were just all very different. Yeah, which is great. 

Yeah, which is great. Absolutely. And it was great to have you and you made our conference really memorable. Thank you very much, Catherine. Thanks for your time. Thanks for everything you've done. How many women you have inspired in our audience and we'll continue inspiring. 

Thank you very much and we hope to see you at our events again. Thank you. 

Ok, thank you so much. Goodbye and good luck on the rest of the 

conference. Thank you. Thank you very much.