Frank Rubio did not answer “astronaut” when asked as a child what he wanted to be when he grew up.
Yet this Salvadoran-born pilot and doctor is precisely what he has become: an astronaut who will travel to the International Space Station next month and spend more than six months in space.
“For me it is a great pride to be able to represent the Salvadoran people,” Rubio said during a telephone interview with AP from the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, where he is training for his mission.
“It is something that is very exciting for me and for our family.”
Rubio, who was born in Los Angeles but spent the first six years of his life in El Salvador, will blast off to the International Space Station on September 21 aboard the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft.
The launch will take place in Kazakhstan and there will be two more astronauts on the ship, the Russians Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin. The mission is part of the collaboration that NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, have carried out for more than two decades on the International Space Station.
The station is a scientific laboratory the size of a football field, which orbits the Earth at an altitude of about 400 kilometers and astronauts live and work there continuously.
Rubio’s mother, Myrna Argueta, and other relatives live in El Salvador, the astronaut said. Argueta will watch the liftoff from there, while three of Rubio’s children and his wife will travel to Russia to say goodbye to the astronaut and watch the liftoff from there. The eldest daughter of the astronaut is in college and cannot travel to Russia due to her studies.
This will be Rubio’s first space mission since he became an astronaut in 2017, NASA said. The Hispanic has been training for her for two years, piloting T-38 supersonic jets and getting into Russian and American centrifugal machines that simulate accelerations and accustom him to the forces he will experience on takeoff.
Rubio said he hopes to carry out a spacewalk, something he described as a challenge, since it involves working long hours and with great concentration, repairing station mechanisms in outer space.
The astronaut would also like to be able to experiment with an innovative project that others have already started: printing human cell tissue on 3D printers. The experiment must be done in a weightless environment and several astronauts have already tried it on the International Space Station. The research has been described as potentially crucial for critically ill patients in need of new organs.
On the other hand, Rubio’s mission also aims to study the human body and how it is affected by microgravity. That will help get to the Moon longer and get to Mars, Rubio said.
“For me to be there, of course it’s incredible to be in space, but more than anything, one feels very proud to do things that are going to help all of humanity,” he said. “It’s exciting”.
Rubio explained that as a child he said he wanted to be a doctor. His family moved from El Salvador to Miami, and after finishing school, he graduated from the West Point Military Academy in New York.
He was a Blackhawk helicopter pilot and flew more than 1,100 hours, including more than 600 combat hours in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, NASA reported. Rubio later studied medicine and was working as a medic for pilots in Colorado when he was selected by NASA as an astronaut candidate.
Rubio is not the first Hispanic astronaut in space. NASA has already sent specialists such as Ellen Ochoa, Michael Lopez-Alegria, Joe Acaba or Serena Aunon-Chancellor.
Tensions between Russia and the United States over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have not affected the mission, Rubio said, describing the Russian astronauts he will travel with as “friends.”
“They are incredibly good cosmonauts,” he said. “We all have great confidence in our team and, together, the crew that we are going to have is going to be very strong. We can do any mission that touches us.”
Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channel Youtube and turn on notifications, or follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Add Comment