While many people gaze at the stars and dream, Maj. Nichole Ayers of the Air Force has made those dreams a reality. The Rice University alumna recently embarked on her first spaceflight, joining the ranks of those floating among the stars aboard the International Space Station. Ayers is pilot of SpaceX Crew-10, an international team of astronauts who docked with the microgravity laboratory March 16 to conduct research, technology demonstrations and maintenance activities.
In an interview with Rice News before she left for the ISS, Ayers, who earned a master’s degree in computational and applied mathematics from Rice in 2013, said her dream to fly among the stars and explore the cosmos began early in life.
“As a little kid, I always had an affinity for the sky and for space, and I ended up going to space camp as a child, and that really started to narrow in on the fact that I wanted to be an astronaut when I was young,” said Ayers,
She also proved to be a determined youngster with a singular focus in mind.
“I happened to be a really serious little kid,” she said. “Growing up in Colorado right next to the Air Force Academy, I got to see the Thunderbirds fly over every year. I had an idea that there was an Air Force pilot path for myself, and then I grew up in the shuttle era, and I got to see the people who actually flew them.”
Ayers joined the Air Force and gained experience as a combat pilot with more than 200 combat hours and more than 1,150 hours of total flight time in the T-38 and the F-22 Raptor fighter jet. One of the few women currently flying the F-22, Ayers led the first all-woman formation of the aircraft in combat in 2019.
She says that it was all in preparation for her ultimate goal: to launch into space, an ambition she has always used as her touchstone.
It’s also an objective that required rigorous training. NASA chose her from a field of more than 12,000 astronaut applicants to represent the United States and work for humanity’s benefit in space.
“I was selected as an astronaut candidate in 2021, and then we did about two years of initial training,” she said. “I finished all the requirements in September of last year, and then in October of last year is when I started training for this mission.”
Ayers’ time in space will span across two different expeditions. She will lodge for five to six months on the space station before returning to Earth.
“The preparation for that has been pretty intense,” she said. “It’s anywhere from a year to two years’ worth of training, and it just depends on the timing of when you get assigned to the mission. I’ve been doing a lot of spacewalk training and learning the required skills to go do maintenance on the outside of the Space Station.”