NASA Astronaut Jessica Meir on return from space

On September 25, 2019, as dusk settled over the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, along with two fellow crewmates, rocketed off to the International Space Station. On April 17, Meir returned—if not exactly to the world she left behind. Reentry has its usual set of potential discomforts. Some have described the so-called “soft landing” of the capsule as having the sudden jolt of a car accident; motion sickness may occur as the body adapts to gravity. But rejoining life on Earth during a pandemic is another matter entirely. “It’s really difficult—I’m a hugger!” Meir explained in a call from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where she and fellow astronaut Andrew Morgan just spent a week in on-site quarantine. A few NASA friends and family members, who self-isolated for two weeks prior, were there as support—sometimes literally. “You’re obviously a little bit wobbly at first,” Meir said. “You pick up your phone or tablet, and it feels like it weighs 30 or 40 pounds, even though your brain knows it doesn’t.” Still, broadly speaking, this isolation after isolation makes for a strange welcome. “Seven months go by, and now I still can’t come and hug people.”

Even before Meir (a dual American and Swedish citizen) emerged from 205 days in space—part of a group at the ISS that ranged from three to nine people—she staked her career at the outer limits. “I think I’ve always been attracted to these extreme environments, places where fewer people have been, where conditions are a little bit more harsh,” she explained in a NASA video celebrating the September launch. In it, a montage of photos shows Meir scuba diving in ice-capped waters off Antarctica, where she studied the diving physiology of emperor penguins as part of her PhD in marine biology. By the time the 42-year-old participated in the first all-female spacewalk in October, spending a little over seven hours with fellow astronaut Christina Koch floating in the pitch-black void, it was hard to imagine where Meir would land next.

But in the early weeks of the pandemic, as people stocked up on nonperishables and began drifting from their home office to their home home on the other side of the room, I found myself thinking about Meir’s setup at the ISS: tight quarters, family video chats, indoor workouts, vegetables arriving by special delivery. Is Meir the oracle of quarantine? I noticed as her scenic Instagram posts from space quietly took stock of the situation below; a slideshow of clouds from March 19 bears a reminder that “they are all fleeting in nature—the storm always clears. #EarthStrong.” Having now joined us in terrestrial quarantine, Meir finds it “much more isolating and confined here,” she acknowledged when we spoke on Earth Day—even if aged Gouda and wine have sweetened the homecoming. Hers is the voice you want to hear: a scientist with long-range optimism, who imagines future humans growing mizuna on the way to Mars. Read on for her descriptions of NASA’s next-gen space food, her blazing reentry, and the space movies that pass her muster.