When I get asked why we explore, oftentimes I think,
what would our society look like if we didn't explore?
What would our society look like if we didn't ask what was over the next hill?
What was across that ocean? And for us now,
what's beyond our planet?
My name is Colonel Anne McClain, and I'm the commander of NASA's
SpaceX Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station.
I was three years old when I first told my family
that I wanted to become an astronaut, and I'm fortunate
that no one of my family told me that it wasn't possible to do.
They all said, that's going to be a lot of work.
And they were right, but they were ready to support me every step of the way.
They reminded me of my dreams if I started to get discouraged,
because it is a long and challenging road.
One thing I knew about becoming an astronaut is that not a lot of people get to do it.
It was important to me to choose a career that I was going to love and be fulfilled in,
regardless of my selection to becoming an astronaut.
So I chose to serve my country
as a helicopter pilot and an officer in the United States Army.
I still am an active duty officer in the Army.
It's something that brings me a lot of meaning
to be able to serve the American people in that manner.
And it's something that I would be doing still every day
if I was not fortunate enough to wear this blue suit.
This is my second flight to the International Space Station.
I think, on your first flight, there's a lot of unknowns, right?
You don't know how it's going to feel to go to space.
You're very focused on making sure that you know your stuff.
On this flight, as the commander, I'm really focused on building a cohesive crew.
So over the last year and a half, I've had the pleasure of working
with my crewmates on Crew-10: Tak, Nicole and Kirill.
We've shared a lot of meals together.
We've traveled together.
We've done some tough sims together, and they are three very special people to me.
And now we get to go launch to space and do this incredible mission
with our good friends.
The International Space Station is a proving ground
for a lot of technologies for deep space exploration, but it is also
a national orbiting laboratory where the U.S.
can work with universities, research labs, other countries,
to develop things that benefit us on Earth.
Everywhere from cancer research, Parkinson's research, materials research,
and, at the same time, we're looking at the things
that we're going to use on Mars and future Moon missions.
In my career at NASA, and especially on my first spaceflight,
there were certain moments that I had, like when I came out of the hatch
on my first spacewalk,
where I realized we are operating at the edge of what humans are capable of.
And that is such a special moment.
I think it's that intersection of the magical and the technical,
where I can look across the amazing beauty of the earth,
but I can see also this amazing creation, the International Space Station,
and it doesn't belong to me or to NASA anymore
than it belongs to every single human on Earth.
It's our platform to figure out how we got here,
where are we going in the future, and the context in which we live.
Our goal is to be a beacon of hope for all of humankind,
so that people can look and say,
this is what we can accomplish when we work together.