Dr Megan McArthur
Image: courtesy of NASA 

Earlier this year, NASA astronaut Dr Megan McArthur ventured on her first mission into space to service the Hubble Space Telescope and extend its life by at least five years. This week she visits Scitech and The University of Western Australia to deliver a series of talks for National Science Week.

Being an astronaut is a challenging job, Dr McArthur says.

“You have to be a generalist as well as a specialist in some areas, and, of course, it’s a lot of fun.”

While in space in May this year, the 38-year-old astronaut was responsible for a tense operation of the robotic arm used to capture the Hubble telescope so it could be repaired.

Dr McArthur clocked 12 days and 21 hours in space during her mission, travelling 197 earth orbits and close to 8.5 million kilometres.

“We are thrilled to have Astronaut McArthur visiting Perth for National Science Week,” Western Australia’s National Science Week Chair Paul Nicholls says.

“In this International Year of Astronomy, it is important for us to recognise the research efforts that are taking place in space and provide the public with an opportunity to be astronomically inspired.”

During the mission, Dr McArthur’s fellow astronauts completed five difficult spacewalks, replacing the telescope’s gyroscopes and batteries, repairing two existing instruments and installing a Wide Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.

This will allow even more spectacular images to be recorded in space.

“As human beings we’re very curious about the world around us and, of course, about the universe around us, and these images help to sort of answer some of those questions but also encourage us to ask more because we are very curious,” Dr McArthur said before embarking on her mission.

The new technology installed has boosted the telescope’s power by 10 to 70 times, extending its picture-taking ability to encompass longer wavelengths of light.

Prior to her space adventure, Dr McArthur served as the crew support astronaut for the Expedition 9 during its six-month mission aboard the International Space Station. She joined NASA in 2000 and worked in the Space Station and Space Shuttle mission control centres. She is married to fellow astronaut Robert L Behnken.

Astronaut McArthur received a doctorate in Oceanography from the University of California, San Diego, in 2002 and worked with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, conducting research into near-shore underwater acoustic propagation and digital signal processing.