Astronaut Meganne Christian

Born in Kent, England to New Zealand parents, she moved at the age of five to Wollongong, Australia. At young age, she already showed her talent for scientific subjects, being part of the school’s 2002 international championship team of Future Problem Solving Program International.

In 2009 she received a a Bachelor of Engineering and the university medal in industrial chemistry, at the University of New South Wales. Going on with her passion for chemistry and material science, in 2011 was awarded with the Heinz Harant award and received her doctorate in 2014 researching on hydrogen storage with borohydrides. In 2022 she received her Italian citizenship, but was already studying in Bologna after her doctorate, in particular at the Institute of Microelectronics and Microsystems (IMM) at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR).
Another important step in her career was holding the role of atmospheric physicist and meteorologist at the Concordia Station located in Antarctic, in 2019.

Photo: Astronaut Meganne Christian.
Photo by @astro_meganne

Astronaut Meganne Christian during her Antarctica expedition.
Photo by @astro_meganne

When did you decided you wanted to be an astronaut and what was the event or the person that made you think about being an astronaut?

I’ve always been fascinated by space, and as a child I was always enthralled by lessons about the stars and black holes, and by my visits to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and the Kennedy Space Center. However, there was never a space agency in Australia until recently so I didn’t think it would be possible for me to become an astronaut and I put it to the back of my mind. Later in life, I moved to Europe and learnt about the European Space Agency, particularly when I spent a year in Antarctica and ESA did tests on all of the winter-over crew (including myself) because our 9-month isolation in such an extreme location was a lot like a long duration space mission. That’s when the idea came back to me.  

When did you decided to turn your dream into a real goal?

When I was in Antarctica, I heard the first rumors that ESA would be recruiting new astronauts soon. Before my experience there, I didn’t think that I had the skills to do everything that an astronaut needs to do, so I probably wouldn’t have applied. But in Antarctica I took on a completely new challenge with tasks and subjects that were nothing like anything I had done before so I had to learn a lot very quickly. It went well and I loved it, so that gave me the confidence to realize that I could do almost anything that I put my mind to, and that’s when my dream of becoming an astronaut became a concrete goal.

Among your adventures, you’ve been in Antarctica as a researcher, was it your biggest adventure so far or is there another one?

Antarctica was definitely my biggest adventure so far and I loved it so much that I actually went back again for a summer season a year later. It was an amazing experience for so many reasons…because of the isolation of our 13-person crew for such a long time; the 100 days of complete darkness and temperatures down to lower than -100 °C with windchill; the responsibility of looking after important climate change observatories; the physical hardship of living and working at high altitude, outside every day; and the spectacular polar night sky. A second place would be my participation in parabolic flights to test some of my materials for satellite cooling devices: the feeling of weightlessness is incredible!

Almost all the first astronauts where pilots, for example, among all the people that walked on the moon, only one astronaut was a scientist strictly meaning, how do you think this kind of background weighs in today’s needed characteristics for astronauts?

Early on in human space exploration, the goal was simply to get there, so we needed pilots that could do that. Once we achieved that, and especially with the establishment of a permanent human presence in low earth orbit, the goal shifted towards doing good science in space so we needed people who could carry out experiments proficiently. With the increasing automation of space vehicles, pilots are becoming less necessary, but I don’t think they will ever be redundant, and their skills continue to match strongly with the desirable characteristics of an astronaut. In the future the range of backgrounds required for astronauts will become even broader: think about all the different profiles we will need to design, build, maintain, and document a permanent presence on the moon and maybe one day further afield.

“100 days of complete darkness and temperatures down to lower than -100 °C with windchill”, this photo by her depicts quite well…
Photo by @astro_meganne

From our followers: which is your favorite movie?

I’ve always been a bit of a fantasy nerd and I love the Lord of the Rings trilogy…I think Peter Jackson did a wonderful job in doing justice to the books.  

Which object would you like to fly with you in Space and why?

I would like to take my knitted penguin, Pengaroo. I knitted her for my husband many years ago and she has been on all our travels and adventures since then, including in zero gravity and Antarctica!