page_title: Jessica Meir
section_title: Expedition 61/62
hierarchical_section_title: Jessica Meir / NASA career / Expedition 61/62
caption_attribution_description: English: Expedition 62 astronaut Jessica Meir is seen outside the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft after she landed with NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Friday, April 17, 2020. Meir and Skripochka returned after 205 days in space, and Morgan after 272 days in space. All three served as Expedition 60-61-62 crew members onboard the International Space Station.
context_page_description: Jessica Ulrika Meir is an American-born NASA astronaut, marine biologist, and physiologist. She was previously Assistant Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, following postdoctoral research in comparative physiology at the University of British Columbia. She has studied the diving physiology and behavior of emperor penguins in Antarctica, and the physiology of bar-headed geese, which are able to migrate over the Himalayas. In September 2002, Meir served as an aquanaut on the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 4 crew. In 2013 she was selected by NASA to Astronaut Group 21. Meir launched on September 25, 2019, to the ISS onboard Soyuz MS-15, where she served as a flight Engineer during Expedition 61 and 62. On October 18, 2019, Meir and Christina Koch were the first women to participate in an all-female spacewalk. The Soyuz capsule carrying Jessica Meir and fellow astronauts Andrew Morgan and Oleg Skripochka touched down on Friday April 17, 2020 near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 11.16am local time.
context_section_description: In April 2019 NASA announced that Meir had been assigned to the crew of International Space Station Expedition 61/62 as flight engineer, scheduled to launch aboard Soyuz MS-15 alongside Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka and MBRSC astronaut Hazza Al Mansouri, who would fly a short duration mission and land with the crew of Soyuz MS-12 eight days after launch.
  Meir, Skripochka and Al Mansouri launched aboard MS-15 on 25 September 2019, marking the final flight of the Soyuz-FG rocket and final launch from the Gagarin's Start launch pad, both of which were retired following launch of Soyuz MS-15. The crew successfully reached orbit and rendezvoused with the ISS only six hours later. Soyuz MS-15 docked to the ISS at the very end of Expedition 60, meaning it marked an unusual period on the station where there were nine people aboard, the reason for this was to allow for Al Mansouri's flight, in which he became the first person from the United Arab Emirates to fly in space. Expedition 60 ended on 3 October 2019 when Al Mansouri, alongside Soyuz MS-12 crew members Aleksey Ovchinin and Nick Hague undocked from the station and returned to Earth, returning the ISS to normal six-crew operations during Expedition 61.
  During Expedition 61 Meir was scheduled to perform three spacewalks during this mission to help install new lithium-ion batteries on the Port-6 truss structure of the ISS, although this schedule was later changed. On October 18, 2019, Meir performed her first spacewalk alongside her colleague Christina Koch, replacing a faulty Battery Charging Discharging Unit. The unit had unexpectedly failed to activate, preventing the station's newly installed lithium-ion batteries from providing additional power. The three other scheduled spacewalks scheduled to install the new batteries had to be postponed in order to perform this spacewalk.
  The spacewalk lasted seven hours and 17 minutes, and was the first all-female spacewalk in history. During the spacewalk US president Donald Trump called and spoke to the astronauts in recognition of the historical significance of this event, being corrected by Meir after mistakenly announcing the event as the first time a woman was outside the space station.
  On 6 February 2020 Koch, alongside Soyuz MS-13 crew members Aleksandr Skvortsov and Luca Parmitano returned to Earth, following which Meir, Skripochka and Andrew Morgan transferred over to Expedition 62, due to delays with NASA's Commercial Crew Program, most of this increment was spent as a crew of three. During the final eight days of the Expedition, the crew were joined by the three person crew of Soyuz MS-16, Russian cosmonauts Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner joined by NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy, who launched and docked to the station on 9 April 2020. Although their time as a six person crew was short, the expanded Expedition 62 crew made the most of their time together, conducting experiments on how muscles react to long duration spaceflight as part of NASA's Muscle tone in space (Myotones) experiment. On 13 April Meir and Cassidy, both Maine natives, participated in a live conference with several students from around Maine; the two, joined by Andrew Morgan, also participated in a segment of Some Good News, an internet show hosted by American actor John Krasinski to spread good news during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  On 17 April 2020, Meir, joined by Skripochka and Morgan, returned to Earth aboard Soyuz MS-15, wrapping up a 205-day spaceflight for Meir and Skripochka and returning Morgan from a 272-day flight. The departure of the three crew members signaled the start of Expedition 63, commanded by Cassidy, which would see the arrival of the SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission, the first crewed spaceflight to launch from American soil since STS-135, the final flight of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.
caption: Meir following the return of Soyuz MS-15.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "Expedition 62 astronaut Jessica Meir is seen outside the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft after she landed with NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Friday, April 17, 2020. Meir and Skripochka returned after 205 days in space, and Morgan after 272 days in space. All three served as Expedition 60-61-62 crew members onboard the International Space Station. Photo Credit: (NASA/GCTC/Andrey Shelepin)", "Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D4S", "Image XResolution": "240", "Image YResolution": "240", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 9.2 (Macintosh)", "Image DateTime": "2020:04:17 06:09:32", "Image Artist": "(NASA/GCTC/Andrey Shelepin)", "Image Copyright": "(NASA/GCTC/Andrey Shelepin)\n\nFor copyright and restrictions refer to -\u00a0http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/guidelines/index.html", "Image ExifOffset": "896", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1660", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "20177", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/1000", "EXIF FNumber": "11", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Shutter Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "500", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0231", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2020:04:17 08:35:20", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2020:04:17 08:35:20", "EXIF OffsetTime": "-04:00", "EXIF OffsetTimeDigitized": "-04:00", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "1245723/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6918863/1000000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "70", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "44855751/32768", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "44855751/32768", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "70", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "2037937", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[70, 200, 14/5, 14/5]", "EXIF LensModel": "70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8"}