2023-05-14 14:17:01
This May 14th is Mother’s Day and what better way to celebrate it than by remembering an impressive mom. In 1983, astronaut and chemist Anna Lee Fisher learned that NASA intended to recruit her to be one of the first American women to go into space. Then, she was 33 years old and pregnant with her first daughter.
As he recounted in 2019 in an interview with The Washington Post, When she found out about the news that she had been waiting for her entire career, at 8 and a half months pregnant, she did not even doubt it.. “I wasn’t going to say no. Don’t say no to this offer, ”he commented to the outlet.
Fisher, who 5 years earlier had been one of the first female astronauts who entered the NASA space program, then also became the first mother on the planet to travel to space.
The scientific, gave birth to their daughter “Kristin” a few weeks after accepting the trip and after going into labor on a Friday, on Monday she was already at the space agency facilities for her first meeting with which such an odyssey would begin.
By that time, he says, he felt like he was sending a message to the rest of his coworkers. “It was worth it just to see the looks on his faces”, counted. And he maintained this attitude even when after completing weeks and weeks of training, one of his colleagues suggested, “You’ve got Kristin, you’re training, it’s too much,” he revealed.
Along the same lines, and despite the fact that the decision had already been made, he recalled that he had to battle several times so that his commanders would not back down on his trip. Although that didn’t stop her.
Anna Lee Fisher went into space when her daughter was one year old
In 1984 the time finally came to leave. previous months, he dedicated himself to documenting every possible moment with his daughter and even wrote her a letterin case something went wrong during your mission.
“If something happens to me, you know that I love you very much. Your dad and your grandmother will take care of you. And I will be taking care of you,” the letter said. Understanding the risk he was exposing himself to with the trip.
And it is that embarking on NASA’s Discovery space shuttle was still unreasonable, since it was barely the second flight of the ship.
In addition, the space agency was already burdened with some fatal catastrophes on its trips to space, as happened for example with Apollo 13, when its cabin exploded in 1970 despite being already the seventh manned trip to the Moon.
The day Fisher took off for the first time from NASA’s Florida space center, her husband and daughter were there to say goodbye.
His stay in space lasted 7 days and 23 hourswhile its mission consisted of orbiting the Earth to retrieve and send satellites.
Without the possibility of contacting her family, Fisher narrates that what she did in her spare time was sit at the window of the ship and listen to a recording of Kristin that she carried on a Walkman, there her daughter, who was barely beginning to speak, He said “I love you, i love you“.
Rest and the triumphant return of Fisher
Fisher returned safe and sound, the letter to her daughter was kept in a jewelry box, she says, and some time later assigned a new mission for 1986. That year was marked by the explosion of the Challenger shuttle, which killed its entire crew.
this tragedy It happened 6 weeks before Anna Fisher boarded a flight again and one of her close friends, Judy Resnik, died there. that he had joined the space program the same year as her.
After this, the astronaut decided to refrain from her next mission and took a 7-year leave of absence to raise her daughter. In that period she was also a mother again, of her son Kara.
But this was not the end of his career, in fact, in 1996 she returned to NASA and became one of the heads of the International Space Station (ISS)which finished assembling in 1998.
There she remained as one of the space agency’s most experienced astronauts and he finally retired in 2017, after turning 67. Her daughter currently works as a correspondent for Fox News and is also on the go.
“I told Kristin not to feel guilty about being out. If you are doing something you love, or contributing money, you are doing something important for your child.Anna commented.
Anna Lee Fisher inspired a movie
The iconic astronaut even inspired movie stories. In 2019, it premiered I promise to returna European film starring actress Eva Green, who plays a divorced ESA astronaut, who has an 8-year-old daughter and is preparing for her first trip to space.
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