On Aug. 6, FY25 SWE President Karen Roth and SWE Past President Heather Doty had a special opportunity to speak with two female astronauts from NASA who are in the midst of missions on the International Space Station.
In this conversation, Astronaut Tracy Dyson and Astronaut Suni Williams share their biggest role models, the lessons from engineering school that they still apply today, and how being in space has affected their perspectives about living on earth.
Video courtesy of NASA
NASA and SWE Interview Transcript
Interview courtesy of NASA
NASA Mission Control Houston: Station, this is Houston, are you ready for the event?
NASA Astronaut Tracy Dyson: We’re ready for the event.
NASA Mission Control Houston: Society for Women Engineers, this is Mission Control Houston. Please call station for a voice check.
FY25 SWE President Karen Roth: Station, this is Karen Roth, current president of the Society of Women Engineers. I’m here with Heather Doty, one of the past presidents of our organization as well.
SWE Past President Heather Doty: Hello, how do you hear us?
FY25 SWE President Karen Roth: Station, this is Karen Roth, current president of the Society of Women Engineers. I’m here with Heather Doty, one of the past presidents of our organization.
SWE Past President Heather Doty: Hello, how do you hear us?
Dyson: We hear you loud, and clear. How about us?
Doty: Very good, thank you.
Roth: All right. It’s really great to meet with you ladies this morning. We have several questions for you, and we look forward to being able to report back out to the whole society. So, our first question is for Suni. So, with over 26 years of experience at NASA, what changes have you seen in the space program for women, and what’s your favorite advancement that’s come from the missions over this time?
NASA Astronaut Suni Williams: Wow, thank you. And it’s an honor to be here with you guys today. Tracy, and I started as astronauts together. Actually, we interviewed at the same time, so we’ve both been in it for a little while.
And it’s a great question, because I think one of the things as women in engineering, or in fields which are primarily dominated by men, my mindset has always been just sort of go with the flow, and just try to do your job, and be good at your job, and blend in. And I think over the last 25 years that we’ve been in the Astronaut Corps, that has absolutely happened. We’ve seen women, very few, doing spacewalks — to now, it’s sort of a regular thing.
We have a great training program, and even though suits are a little bit big and bulky, and not necessarily sized for women, we’ve been able to understand how to work and move in the suit, and we’re doing spacewalks all the time now. So, I think that’s a huge improvement, and it’s just been sort of a natural progression.
Also thinking about future spacecraft, too, we’re designing in the capability for people who are a little bit smaller in stature to have the same opportunities like spacewalks and moonwalks coming up in the near future.
Doty: That’s very cool. I’m glad you mentioned training because our question for Tracy is around that. What did you observe from your first long-duration mission that led you to initiate and seek to improve training and operations aboard the ISS?
Dyson: I think maybe along the lines of what Suni was just mentioning about spacewalks, that was one area in particular I was very interested in improving, and primarily because what I saw from my experience was that for, perhaps the first time, we had a contingency spacewalk where myself, and my partner, Doug Wheelock, had to go out the door without having practiced the content. In fact, Suni was on the ground doing the test run for the content before we actually went outside the hatch.
And one thing that I learned from that experience was that what we need to do is train more skill-based… Do more skill-based training than task-based training, and then start at the fundamentals, and work our way all the way from skills to tasks to operations. And what also helped with that was learning how to fly a T-6 aircraft, and go through Navy aviation training, and seeing how they take people that have never flown an airplane before, and then stick them in an aircraft.
And not only are they learning how to fly solo, but they’re learning how to fly in formation. And I thought, wow, if they can take folks, and evaluate them and their skill level with something that they’d never done before, which most astronauts coming into the program have never done a spacewalk before, then there’s some nugget there that we need tap into. And so that’s exactly what I did. So, it was a combination of my space flight, and then some aircraft training, and pulled it all together to help develop a new qualification program for newest astronauts.
Doty: That’s fantastic. This is a question for both of you. Astronauts are often listed as people who inspire others, but I’m curious to know who has served as a role model or inspiration for each of you?
Williams: That’s a great question. I mean, there’s probably a list of people in my past from my elementary school teacher all the way to a great friend who is a saturation diver who I had the pleasure of being mentored by. But I think primarily for me is actually my parents.
Dyson: She stole my answer.
Williams: Both of us, we’ve known each other a long time, and we’ve had such great role models in our parents. My dad immigrated from India, and he just was, “Put your head down, and just drive, drive, drive, and you’ll achieve what you want to achieve.” And he was a pretty famous neuroscientist and doctor.
My mom, on the other hand, she was the one who’s just very athletic, and just the question if you ever said, “Oh, I can’t do that,” she would say, “Why not?” And so it is always in the back of my head — why not? Of course I’m going to go do whatever I want to do or at least try. And that came from my mom. So, I have to say my parents, and Tracy, you’re probably going to say the same.
Dyson: Oh, absolutely. Like Suni, my mom said something very similar to me whenever I said, “I can’t do that.” She’d say, “Can’t never could.” And so I had no way out. I had to do it. And my father taught me a lot of skills — from the mechanical skills, working on cars to electrical, being a construction worker.
But what both my parents did, and I know Suni’s have done the same, she and I are athletes. We’ve been athletes all the way through college, and our parents have been there. For Suni when she was running a marathon barefooted, her mom was there. For me, my dad used to drive behind me when I would go on long bike rides on and off season to get in condition, my mom would take me to every track meet.
I mean, we’ve got stories like that where our parents really sacrificed. And what we got to see from our parents is just love in action and just the belief that they had in us that it didn’t matter what we wanted to do, they were always there to support us. I think it helped us to achieve a lot in our life, uninhibited by thinking that we needed to please them or anything like that. Anyway, we could probably go on and on. I’ll stop talking.
Roth: Well, so the next question we have I think is kind of a fun question. And we put the question out to social media to all of our members. And one of the things that came back time and time again, “Is there anything you learned in engineering school that you’re still applying to your work now?” And I think that comes from the fact that we go to engineering school, we build up a lot of skills, but nothing can really prepare you to be an engineer out there practicing in the wild. So, they really wanted to know what you’re really still applying to your work today.
Williams: I’m going to make it sort of specific because I will never forget my thermodynamics teacher’s unit analysis. And I know that sounds like, “How do you apply that in life, right?” But, I mean, it was just the meticulousness of solving a problem and actually knowing that you’re just going to get it right because everything lines up.
So, I mean, I think in my life it works that way, too. I have a problem, and I don’t know how to solve it. I start to tackle a little part of it, but it doesn’t quite line up. So, I know it’s not quite right, and I’ve got to figure out another piece that’s going to go into it. So, I think just that methodical understanding of solving a problem based in thermodynamics, and unit analysis has stuck with me throughout my life.
Dyson: So, for me, something similar when I was in graduate school, and beginning some of my research in the laboratory with Professor Don Land. I remember distinctly one day I was down in [the lab, and] it was very a hardware-intensive laboratory. We had lasers, and vacuum chambers, and all sorts of equipment. Some of it very delicate, some of it very robust, but yet complicated. And as a new graduate student, I remember having trouble one day getting a signal from the instrumentation, and I dialed up his number where he was in his office, and I said, “I’m having this problem. I’m not getting a signal. I don’t know what to do.”
And he says, “Tracy, V equals IR — figure it out.” And I was like, “Okay, I’ve got the tools. I can figure it out.” And I know it sounds simple, but he revealed to me what his expectation was, and it was that I didn’t need his hand to hold me. I could do it on my own, and I had the skills.
And so I think that really translates into what we do up here onboard the space station and even what we do on the ground when we support the missions— which is primarily the majority of our career — but it’s just having that courage to take what you know. And even if you go back to the basics like unit analysis, or IR, that you have the tools, and you just need to put them to work. Sometimes, it takes your professors to push you.
Doty: I love that coworkers and colleagues can push us as well. And I remember one of my professors, “Units will save you!” I think he said it about 50 times in my statics class. So, same thing. Same thing, absolutely.
Williams: Exactly.
Doty: Suni, I understand you’re the second on the list of total cumulative spacewalk time by a female astronaut clocking in at 50 hours and 40 minutes total and nearly a year total in space. What’s the one thing you never get used to or something that always gives you a sense of awe?
Williams: Oh, when we came through the hatch this time — this is both Tracy and my third flight — and we came through, I was just like, “We’re in space.” I mean, I just love being in space. I know Tracy does, too. I mean the fact that you are floating from one end of the module to the next is just, it never ever, ever gets old. And I think, classically, also looking out the window never gets old, but just being up here and being able to look at problems.
When people ask me, “Why do we go to space?” You can look at problems from a totally different perspective. If you go upside down, the module is entirely different module. You can clean here, it’s like, “Oh, man, I can’t reach over here.”
Or when you’re out on a spacewalk, “I can’t reach this.” All you got to do is turn yourself upside down, and you can probably reach where you need to reach. So, in a metaphor, it’s just taking a different perspective and being able to live your life by flying or being upside down. It’s magical. It’s just magical, and it makes the creativity in your brain move. So, I love it.
Dyson: Well, also just along those lines, whenever we lose something, we just flip upside down and change our perspective. And usually we find it’s because it usually blends in with the surroundings. But if we change our perspective — bam — it’s right there. Sometimes, it’s hovering right by your face.
Roth: I love that when we’re on earth and physics are holding us down, we can’t just flip ourselves upside down and just look at it from a different perspective. We have to take a little bit more leap of faith to be able to look at it slightly differently. So, our next question is for you, Tracy.
And I’m hoping as I ask this question, you’re going to give me some hope for the future, because my four-year-old’s an absolute tinkerer and loves to take everything apart. And so the question is, “How did your early interest in auto repair and tinkering with power tools aid you as you work as a spaceflight engineer?”
Dyson: Well, those skills that I learned early on working with my father have served me so well throughout all of my career. From my undergraduate research to all the way through graduate school, postdoc, and then here on board the space station. I hate to say it, but I probably do use those mechanical skills a whole lot more on a daily basis up here than I do the chemistry that I spent over a decade learning at a great depth.
So, it has served me well up here. Everything from the tasks that we have, just trying to fix something that we weren’t expecting to not work to complicated setups for certain experiments, or systems on board the station that we maintain or we help repair.
But probably the proudest thing I have was the spacewalks where we had to go out and remove and replace a pump that failed. And Suni can probably tell you, multiple times, you go out there, and things just don’t work the way you expect them to. And it takes some kind of engineering mind, some kind of mechanical assurance in your mind that you understand the system, and how it works, and offer solutions, because you’re the eyes, you’re the hands, you’re the person on the scene up here, and often it takes those kinds of skills to help work with the ground to come up with solutions in a timely fashion.
Roth: So, what I heard is that every time I find something else taken apart in my house that my daughter’s definitely on the path to being a future astronaut.
Dyson: Yes, yes. She’s definitely on the right path. Do not discourage her.
Roth: All right, I got this. I’ll just keep remembering — astronaut, astronaut, astronaut.
Doty: So, you mentioned how much you enjoy being in space, but I’m curious to find out if there is one thing you wish you had known about space station living before you got there for the first time.
Dyson: I think right off the bat was that I wish I would’ve known that we didn’t have as much chocolate as I thought we would. I mean, we were just commenting on this. So, sometimes here we have amassed all this technical knowledge, and all of these skills throughout our careers, and then sometimes it just comes down to your food choices and what you brought to wear that really trip you up. I don’t know, I’m not trying to be funny. I am trying to be a little bit realistic. But what about you, Suni?
Williams: You know what? I didn’t anticipate that I really missed a shower. Like here, unfortunately, we don’t have a shower, because water doesn’t fall. And it was funny on my first flight, which was a little bit long, I remember flying over the Gulf of Mexico and seeing those big thunderstorms in the summertime, and I’m like, “Oh, I wish I was down there, and could be under a thunderstorm, and just have rain fall on my head.”
So, I think that’s what I missed. I don’t know if I knew any better that we don’t have showers. Of course, we don’t have showers up here, but just to prepare myself for not washing my hair but twice a week. It’s a lot of overhead to get this all done. Maybe I would’ve prepared a little bit better for that. I don’t know. I don’t think about soap and shampoo at home, but maybe I would’ve thought a little bit more about that before coming up here.
Roth: It’s the little things. So, we are down to our very last question. And so I just want to take two seconds to thank you both, too. We have almost 50,000 members globally in the Society of Women Engineers. And they just really appreciate taking the time to listen to you guys, and hear your perspectives, and have you both as great role models. So, our last question also came from social media. So, this is direct from the members, and it’s, “How does being in space change your perspective about living on earth?”
Williams: I think we’ll both probably answer a little bit [the same], but I mean, classically you look out the window, and generally there’s ocean. And so really to me it hits home that like, wow, our planet is because of our ocean, and we should think about how we deal with the ocean, and how we take care of the ocean, and how we take care of our atmosphere, which is interacting with our ocean.
But then you see land, and you see that’s where everybody lives — on all that brown, or purple, or green, or white stuff down there, red stuff. That’s where we all live. And it really, I mean it sounds maybe a little trite, but it’s like, “Why can’t we all just get along?” We don’t have a lot of places to live. This is our thing.
And also when you look out the window, and you look into the universe, and you see all those stars, you realize this is our home. This is our spaceship, this is our planet, and we really should take care of each other, and find solutions, and have a different perspective to solve problems. Maybe that means going to space, maybe that means going underwater. Maybe that means working in a factory — who knows what it means? But it means that everybody brings a different perspective, and we need to engage in those perspectives, and learn from each other, and make this place a better place to live.
Dyson: So, Suni, and I both, like I mentioned, we are both athletes, and participated on teams, and sports teams are where it’s as much physical as it is mental. And I think one thing that touches me about being here, similar to Suni, is we look out the window, and we gaze upon our planet. And it’s been said before that you just don’t see the borders other than between land masses, and the waters, and all of that.
But those that divide nations and people groups, you just don’t see that from here. You’re just so taken back by the beauty of our planet in the starkness of the universe, and how vulnerable it looks, and how precious it looks in the presence of such harshness as we know from our EVA suits, what we’re being protected against. And then go back to the notion of teamwork. We experience and exercise teamwork from onboard this space station with our crew mates on the ground, basically with our ground teams — and not just in Houston, but in Huntsville, Munich, Cuba, and also in Russia, and Canada as well.
All of these nations have participated in creating this International Space Station. And then we can even, when our gaze is averted from the beauty of our planet, and we just look at the structure of our space station, aren’t you just amazed?
Williams: It’s amazing. It’s amazing what engineers can do when they work together.
Dyson: Exactly. You heard Suni say that it is amazing and beautiful what engineers, what great minds can do when they come together, and with a common goal in mind to build the space station. And not only build it, but use it for science, technology, and betterment of humanity. It’s just, that’s the kind of thing that hits me when I’m up here, especially as Suni said, when we’re gazing out the window and just taking it all in.
Roth: The theme for this year for SWE is actually “Together We Rise” for exactly all of those reasons — that it’s not any one of us particular one that creates anything, but when you’re engineering systems and you’re creating science, it’s the teams coming together from all diverse backgrounds that are really what has the big impact. So, I love that not only did that answer was phenomenal, but it fit right in with our theme this year for SWE.
Doty: Absolutely. Great job picking that, Karen.
Williams: Yeah. I think that was absolutely natural. And I am hoping you guys with your organization — thank you so much again for inviting us — could spread that word. We’ve got to work together. We’re one big team.
Dyson: That’s exactly it. And Karen and Heather, it’s been a real pleasure spending this time with you. Thanks for all of your questions and your interest, and we look forward to talking to you more, maybe back when we’re on planet Earth.
Roth: Absolutely. We’re looking forward to it. And thank you again. And thank you on behalf of the Society Women Engineers.
Mission Control: Station, this is Houston to ACR. That concludes the event. Thank you.
Thank for sharing! That’s really amazing!