I view Crew-8
like an Olympic torch bearer.
Each nation that host the Olympics
has, you know, these torchbearers that go along
and they... you know, they make a scene of it
and they... each person passes the torch
and lights the torch and passes it on to the next person.
And that's where I see Crew-8.
We are keeping the flame of human presence in low Earth orbit alive
by going up there, maintaining the space station, continuing to do science.
Well, the International Space Station is by far
the largest laboratory that we've ever had in flight,
obviously the largest human made structure in low Earth orbit.
So whatever we can do in space to look at different types of materials,
to look at ourselves without the force of gravity to discover its true nature,
we can develop better countermeasures back here on Earth.
You know, the International Space Station, as capable as it is,
becomes like a low-Earth orbit wind tunnel, if you will.
It gives us a platform to test things before we venture away from low Earth orbit
towards the moon and eventually long transits towards Mars and eventually to asteroids.
It’s work having to do with various scientific components.
It's material science, it's biology.
So there's a vast spectrum of tasks that we address
while we stay on the station.
Each individual will be an experiment in and of themselves.
How our cells behave, how our blood changes,
how our bone density changes, muscle mass.
We're looking at everything to figure out countermeasures for the human body
so that it can live longer and longer outside the Earth's protection.
Working and training with Crew-8 is absolutely awesome.
We have a diverse group of academic and intellectual backgrounds
that come together and also an international component.
We are four, I would say,
almost as different personalities as you could possibly imagine.
Working on this flight,
we work really well as a team and we're ready to go.
The chemistry we've kind of developed I think is really quite magic.
This mission has brought us together in a way
that I don't think any other circumstances ever would.
The ISIS is, I would say, a very critical stepping stone
in human exploration beyond low earth orbit.
Every time we launch four more people to space, we're building our sample size
and our understanding of the human body and the things that happen to it
in a zero gravity environment. That sets us up to go to the Moon.
It sets us up to go to Mars.
So for us, we are just carrying that torch to go increase
that sample size and be a part of the team that moves
human knowledge of space travel further.