NEED TO KNOW
- NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers are enjoying their time aboard the International Space Station
- The military pilots arrived in March as part of a four-person crew, and are due back on Earth this fall
- McClain is on her second mission, while Ayers, part of NASA’s 2021 astronaut candidate class, is on her first
NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers fly around the world every 90 minutes, getting to watch a sunset or a sunrise every 45 minutes — and are savoring every second on board the International Space Station.
But coming on the heels of the delayed return of fellow astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — who spent nine extra months in space after their spacecraft encountered mechanical issues — preparing for the unexpected is always at the back of their minds.
“We think a lot about training for this mission,” McClain, 45, tells PEOPLE in a Zoom call from space. “Sometimes I describe it as like it’s really easy to be here. It’s hard to be away from your life.”
For McClain, a colonel and Master Army aviator, that means adapting to a new normal of living and working in space.
“You do kind of exit your life for six months,” McClain, who previously spent time on the ISS for more than half a year in 2019, says, recounting the “very practical things” she had to take care of before going to space, “like are all my bills on autopay? Is my credit card going to expire halfway through and then all of my bills are going to bounce and I’m going to come back with bad credit? So you have to do a lot of the practical things.”
“Your families and friends are still living their lives and have all the same normal ups and downs. It can be very challenging to miss some of those things to not be there physically for your friends and family,” she continues.
But, McClain adds, the perks are unparalleled: “The view out the window, getting to float, working on a team, it’s absolutely a pleasure and I couldn’t wait to come back and I’m excited to be back.”
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The feeling is mutual for Ayers, 36, even though it’s her first mission.
“I think that ‘excited’ is an understatement,” Ayers tells PEOPLE. “I like to say the English language doesn’t have the right words to describe how amazing the experience is. The launch was amazing. And then getting to come through the hatch of the International Space Station, just awesome, amazing, ecstatic.”
She adds, “I can’t think of the right words, but it’s been an amazing experience so far.”
The NASA astronauts arrived at the ISS aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule and the Falcon 9 rocket on March 14 as part of Crew-10, which included JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. They are due back on Earth this fall after a six-month mission.
Until then, their days are taken up by conducting science experiments, participating in spacewalks as well as sharing group meals, enjoying movie nights and even working out, which the former collegiate athletes — McClain played rugby; Ayers was a volleyball player — thoroughly enjoy.
Earlier this month, the duo got their steps in, so to speak, when they completed a five-hour-plus spacewalk.
According to NASA, the astronauts successfully “completed their primary objectives,” which included relocating a space station communications antenna and completing “a pair of get ahead tasks, including installing a jumper cable to provide power from the P6 truss to the International Space Station’s Russian segment and another to remove bolts from a micrometeoroid cover.”
Before the big day on May 1, the military pilots said they were ready to fulfill their objectives.
“Every time we go outside of the space station, we definitely have a lot of tasks to get done,” McClain tells PEOPLE. “We certainly aren’t going out just to enjoy the view, although I can guarantee we’re going to take some time to enjoy the view as well.”
“But the space station has been up here for 25 years, which means that if you think about the technology with which it was designed, we are upgrading a lot of that technology to continue the space station through the rest of the decade,” she continues.
As for when they return to Earth, the astronauts already know what they’ll do first, and both say it involves food.
“I think I would love to get a nice big burger on the beach and just enjoy the sun and the sand and the waves,” Ayers says. “That’s kind of what I miss. The ocean is a piece of my heart. So yeah, that’s the one thing that I’m looking forward to.”
McClain adds, “One of the things we don’t have, we have a lot of variety of food, but we don’t have a lot of variety of textures. And so for me, like a crunchy chip with a really good queso sitting somewhere outside, that’ll be my happy place.”
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