FEATURE
View of Earth from space fuels nature photography career for U of G alum
ROBERTA BONDAR
EYE IN THE SKY
O
rbiting Earth aboard the space shuttle Discovery 30 years ago, Dr. Roberta Bondar heard the voices of her six crewmates, mechanical sounds from equipment, taped music. But as she peered through a window while photographing the planet as a member of NASA’s Earth Observation Team, it was what she couldn’t hear that struck her: no chuckling of running water, no windsighing through tree branches, no birdsong. “When I was looking at the Earth in space, I didn’t see any people,” says Bondar, B.Sc. (Agr.) ’68, whose eight-day mission in 1992 made her Canada’s first woman astronaut. “I didn’t hear any natural sounds. It left me with a sense of foreboding. I’m getting a ringside seat as if the natural world had disappeared. I didn’t like that.” On the upside, the same vantage point fostered conviction and hope about the future of the planet – traits that would ultimately lead her to a successful post-NASA career as an acclaimed nature photographer and champion of environmental activism. Besides affording many “emotional 22 | PORTICO Summer 2022
moments” while the shuttle orbited the planet 129 times, the view of Earth suspended against the endless blackness of space brought home her U of G studies of ecology and ecosystems from decades earlier. “The idea to be able to look at Earth as a planet was one of the big values of the flight,” says Bondar, who marked the thirtieth anniversary of her Discovery mission in late January. “I got a more holistic and compassionate view of Earth as a planet and what we need to maintain our existence as a life form.” Back on firm ground, she initially devoted herself to extending her research done aboard STS-42. As the first neurologist in space, Bondar conducted experiments in the shuttle’s International Microgravity Laboratory. For more than a decade after the flight, she headed an international research team studying connections between astronauts recovering from the microgravity of space and neurological illnesses here on Earth such as stroke and Parkinson’s disease. She had hoped to follow up on that work with a return mission to space, but that didn’t happen. Later, Bondar even considered
PHOTO: DON DIXON
STORY BY ANDREW VOWLES
