On the ‘final frontier’

Kathryn Clark met John Glenn when she was a 10-year-old girl in Silver Lake Village, Ohio, and she hasn’t been the same since.

Kathryn Clark at age 10, with John Glenn

“It was so inspirational to me that I still carry the picture of the two of us in my wallet,” says Clark, “and it’s been a long time since I was 10. I want to be an astronaut in the biggest way. I started to apply to the astronaut corps several years ago and continue to update my application every year. I have friends who applied for up to 14 years before being successful,” she says, “so I’ll just keep on trying.”

In the meantime, she has at least made it to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, where she’s worked since 1998 while on leave from her position as a research investigator in the Depart-ment of Cell and Developmental Biology. Clark joined NASA as the first woman to serve as the Inter-national Space Station’s senior scientist, a job limited to two years so it can be rotated among specialties as well as individuals. At the end of their term, “Most people retire or go back to their home institutions,” she says.

But the agency had other plans. “I was getting ready to go back to Michigan,” Clark recalls, “and my boss [Joe Rothenberg, associate administrator for the Office of Space Exploration] walked into my office and said, ‘What do I have to do to keep you here at headquarters?’ And I said, ‘Give me a job.’ So they created my current position.”

Her intergovernmental personnel agreement, the formal procedure whereby faculty are granted leaves for such service, was renewed for two more years, and she became chief scientist for Human Exploration and Development of Space, one of five so-called “enterprises” (Star Trek, anyone?) within the agency. The others are Biological and Physical Research, Earth Science, Aeronautics, and Space Science.

Clark’s father was a physician “and I worshipped him,” she says, “so I was interested in how things worked in the body — and then broke — from a young age.” She came to Michigan for graduate school in 1981 from the College of Wooster, earning an M.S. in education from the School of Education’s Department of Physical Education and a Ph.D. in kinesiology after that department became the School of Kinesiology. “I actually got to help with that change,” she says, “and I never moved.”

Her primary scientific interests are neuromuscular development and adaptation to altered environments, so it’s clear how her expertise fits with NASA’s mission. But what she really likes to do is educate, formally or informally, within or outside the walls of the agency, whether it’s fourth graders in a classroom, members of the U.S. Congress, the movie and television producers for whom she consults, or the scientists all over the world that she meets with as part of her job.

While Clark was deputy director of the Center for Microgravity Automation Technology, a NASA commercial space center in Ann Arbor, she assisted with a ladybug experiment that flew on the 93rd space shuttle mission and served as a pilot for a larger education program aimed at inspiring students to study math and science. “A group of girls from Chile designed the experiment to see if ladybugs could still eat aphids, and therefore act as a natural pesticide, while in microgravity,” Clark says. “The answer is yes, they can. But there is also some indication from the experiment that aphids breed faster in space than on the ground.”

The project, one of seven that she’s flown on the space shuttle, had other results, too. Although the Center for Microgravity Automation Technology faded into history shortly after Clark left it to go to Washington, the education program survived. It’s now called Launching Education into Orbit, and plans are in the works to get student experiments to the International Space Station.

Even commuting time can be valuable. Clark returns virtually every weekend to the Ann Arbor home she shares with her husband, Robert Ike, M.D. (Residency 1985), an associate professor of rheumatology in the Department of Internal Medicine. “I fly with a lot of the congressmen,” she says, “which can be kind of a benefit.”

A pilot herself, she’s also an avid cyclist, swimmer and cross-country skier, and was one of the first inductees when the National Women’s Museum opened in Dallas in 2000. “I’ve never put much time into worrying about being a woman in anything I do,” says Clark. “Some people tell me that this is why I have my job, because they needed a woman. Other people tell me that I must have to struggle hard because I’m a woman. I feel that if you do your job well and with enthusiasm and you’re not obnoxious, nobody really cares.”

It’s spreading the word that lights her fire. In addition to “KC,” a high school nickname that stuck, she’s also been dubbed a “space station ambassador,” having logged more than 600,000 miles, worked at 16 shuttle launches, given more than 100 speeches and briefings, and brought together scientists in 10 fields from 16 countries to work on getting science into the space station.

“I spend most of my time talking to other scientists, both around the agency and around the world, about ways to collaborate in how we’re going to explore,” she says. “Going to Mars, going to Europa, the Hubble Telescope, all the things related to exploration, I get to talk about. It’s phenomenal. It’s absolutely great. I’ve been all over the world. I’ve done only five continents — I haven’t yet dipped into Africa or the South Pole, but I have been to the North Pole.”

And Hollywood. She was the technical consultant for the feature films Mission to Mars and Space Cowboys and is currently working on a pilot for a television series, as well as with director James Cameron, of Terminator and Titanic fame, on a movie set on Mars. “When you take the elevator up to Jim’s office, the actual terminator is standing right in front of you as you exit. And the hand that’s at the end of the first Terminator movie is actually sticking out of his desk,” she says.

—JM

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