Last month, retired NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps visited ESTEC, the European Space Agency’s technical centre in the Netherlands. She was welcomed by Dietmar Pilz, ESA’s Director for Technology, Engineering and Quality.
Jeanette is no stranger to ESA, as she supported many European experiments during her time at the International Space Station (ISS).
She launched to the ISS in May 2024 as a mission specialist on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission. Her mission lasted for nearly eight months, until October 2024, and during that time she provided invaluable support to various ESA experiments – from operating ESA’s Metal 3D Printer which has since produced the first metal part ever created in space to working with KUBIK, a miniature laboratory for life science experiments.
Jeanette has also made recordings of lightnings in the upper atmosphere as part of the Thor-Davis experiment led by the Danish Technical University (DTU) together with ESA and operated a team of robots from space as part of the Surface Avatar experiment led by ESA and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR).
To prepare for her journey to the ISS, Jeanette has ventured underwater and deep underground with ESA’s CAVES training.
During her visit to ESTEC, she was able to meet with some of the ESA engineers she supported from space.
Advenit Makaya, ESA’s advanced manufacturing engineer working on the Metal 3D Printer project, comments: “It was an honour and a pleasure to meet one of the first two people – together with Sunita Williams – who touched the world’s very first metal part printed on orbit. Jeanette expressed her gratitude for the teams at ESA, who made it possible for her to work on such pioneering experiments.”