“Like a bullet to the celebrities.” That’s how astronaut Kellie Gerardi describes the expertise of taking off from Earth on her first house flight on the Virgin Galactic 05 mission in November 2023.
“First you hear it: the rocket motor behind you within the spacecraft. Then you definately see it: the flames out [the] window and the sparks. And then you definately really feel it, and it’s the full-body vibration at practically 5g,” she remembers of the launch. As soon as the craft was in house, “you may hear a pin drop.”
What occurred subsequent was a second that Gerardi—regardless of years of coaching and taking part in over 150 parabolas (an airplane maneuver nicknamed the “vomit comet” that’s designed to simulate microgravity circumstances)—couldn’t have ready for emotionally. “I noticed Earth gentle…” she recollects with awe. “The blackness of house contrasted with the neon-blue, brilliant band of Earth’s ambiance, the fragility of that skinny band, the great thing about our planet after which the cognitive dissonance of feeling each part of it whereas being barely exterior of it.”
It was a pinnacle of Gerardi’s profession that she says can be “completely imprinted” on her perpetually. Now, Gerardi is getting ready for a second house mission in 2026 and displays candidly concerning the nontraditional path that’s despatched her profession into the stratosphere—and past.
Charting a brand new course
Rising up in Jupiter, Florida, (whose title she jokes is “very on-brand” along with her story), Gerardi spent a number of time alone, turning into an imaginative daydreamer and voracious reader who liked science fiction. The actions on the Kennedy Area Middle, simply up the coast, meant the thought of house exploration was by no means removed from her periphery. She dove into house research all through her childhood and into school, and after realizing the rising prospects in industrial spaceflight following her commencement from New York College, Gerardi was impressed to pursue graduate research in bioastronautics on the Worldwide Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS).
It was a brand new, considerably unsure avenue for an aspiring astronaut. The standard route, till not too long ago, was to safe a place with a government-funded company like NASA. “Now after I give it some thought,” she says, “I understand that what I used to be actually doing was paving a path out of a brick wall… not figuring out how it will occur, however… believing that was, directionally, the place our future was headed.”
Her confidence turned out to be properly positioned. In 2023, Gerardi’s house flight on the Galactic 05, sponsored by IIAS, made her the primary industry-funded researcher despatched up on a industrial spacecraft. As a payload specialist on that flight, she carried out assessments inspecting how fluid behaves in low-gravity circumstances to assist enhance the designs of life-support techniques, syringes and humidifiers utilized in house. She additionally wore a specifically designed “sensible” undergarment that collected biometric information and a steady glucose monitor to check house flight’s impact on insulin resistance.
The 36-year-old confesses that the groundbreaking flight assuaged a nagging impatience she’d felt all through her 20s, as she watched different younger professionals being awarded achievements just like the Forbes 30 Beneath 30 checklist. Now, she needs she may return and inform her youthful self “there can be many years the place it appears like nothing occurs, after which there can be days and weeks the place it appears like many years occur.”
The tenacity she leaned on throughout that point is a trait she believes her dad and mom helped instill, alongside the assumption that “peculiar persons are able to extraordinary issues.” She factors to one in all her first jobs, as a coat examine attendant for The Explorers Membership, as proof, remembering that she felt pushed even then to “give 110%” and developed a system for cataloging members’ belongings and memorizing their names. Quickly, these round her took word of her dedication. She says that have taught her that “you may design your personal fame in life. It’s in your energy… choose the phrases you wish to be true and also you need folks to consider you, after which put within the work to make them true.”
Mother on a mission
Because the ninetieth lady to enter house, Gerardi is keenly conscious of how few girls have had the chance to see Earth from a spacecraft. For her, gazing at her residence planet from afar got here with the “existential realization, as a mom, that in that second, I’m not on the identical planet as my child…. ” she says. “It was a momentarily arresting feeling.”
Her daughter, Delta V (named after the physics time period delta-V, which represents the change in velocity wanted for spacecraft maneuvers), was 6 on the time. Gerardi says, “Age 6 was a extremely enjoyable age to look at Mommy fly to house as a result of she was sufficiently old to grasp it, to have actually considerate, curious questions and to have the ability to rejoice it.” After that, “she walked slightly taller again into kindergarten,” Gerardi smiles.
Whereas Gerardi had full confidence within the security of her Galactic 05 flight, she felt compelled to organize herself and her household for the inherent dangers related to house journey. She wrote 100 letters to be given to Delta within the tragic occasion that the mission didn’t go as deliberate. But, Gerardi stays unwavering in her pursuit of a profession that others would possibly deem too perilous. She firmly believes that when a mom lives as much as her full potential and aspirations, it may solely profit their household. Simply as importantly, she strives to set a optimistic instance for her daughter. “If she desires to get married and have a toddler, I don’t need her to really feel like her life will get capped at being pregnant,” she says. “That’s not when your potential ends. That’s not when your identification ends…. It needs to be stuffed with company and selection.”
Gerardi says whereas pangs of guilt are a actuality as a mom who misses the occasional milestone second at residence, remorse isn’t. When she is away for prolonged durations resulting from skilled commitments, she is bound to spend some additional time with Delta and her husband upon her return, saying, “There’s no given day or week the place my private {and professional} lives have been completely balanced on the dimensions, however the years are—and I make it possible for they’re.”
Extra large leaps forward
Followers of Gerardi’s, in contrast to these of many scientists and house explorers, have the distinctive benefit of getting a digital entrance seat to her adventures. She occurs to be a extremely prolific social media content material creator and influencer, with over 1.4 million followers on Instagram and approaching 1 million on TikTok. You’ll discover her singing alongside to the TikTok sound bites of the week, asking followers to assist her select an outfit for a particular occasion or strolling a runway at New York Vogue Week. She’s even documented her private, typically heartbreaking, struggles with secondary infertility and in vitro fertilization. It’s all a part of her mission to take away boundaries round science and open the sector of house to peculiar folks. She says of her willingness to be authentically herself on-line, “I wished to only guarantee I wasn’t by chance attempting to suit society’s picture of what somebody flying to house ought to seem like and as a substitute be part of forcing that picture to broaden to incorporate me.”
And broaden it’s going to. In 2026, Gerardi will lead the primary all-female research-focused astronaut crew in historical past. Beside her can be Dr. Shawna Pandya, a Canadian astronaut and doctor, and Norah Patten, Ph.D., Eire’s first astronaut. The mission, as soon as once more aboard a Virgin Galactic craft, will construct upon the analysis carried out throughout Gerardi’s final flight and can add a number of experiments referring to girls’s well being.
In preparation, Gerardi continues to work along with her crew, refining their scientific aims and coaching for the bodily calls for of microgravity. She notes that the high-stakes environments in house coaching have helped form lots of her values as a pacesetter, together with constructing rock-solid belief among the many crew. “You actually need to maintain eyes and ears and hearts on one another,” she says. She leans on a mixture of “humility and confidence” to assist construct that belief, saying, “Individuals wish to work with somebody that they know has their again, however may even maintain them accountable.”
Above all, Gerardi is steadfast in her dedication to opening house science to wider audiences. “I believe that our subsequent large leap as a species goes to require the abilities of so many alternative talent units and so many alternative slices of innovation in society.” she says. “Area is our shared previous and our shared future.”
This text initially appeared within the Could 2025 situation of SUCCESS+ digital journal.
Picture courtesy of ©Emily Farthington
