Jessica Meir

Jessica Meir was born in 1977 in Caribou, Maine, and came to spaceflight by way of the ocean and the natural world rather than the cockpit. She earned a biology degree from Brown University, a master's in space studies from the International Space University, and a doctorate in marine biology from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, becoming a comparative physiologist who studied how animals survive at physiological extremes — tracking the deep dives of emperor penguins in Antarctica and the high-altitude flights of bar-headed geese. Drawn to spaceflight from childhood, she earned a private pilot's license as a teenager and never abandoned the ambition to fly herself; NASA selected her in its 2013 astronaut class, and she trained as a scientist-explorer who spoke English, Swedish, and Russian.

Meir's first flight began on 25 September 2019, when she launched aboard Soyuz MS-15 to join Expeditions 61 and 62 as a flight engineer. Just weeks later, on 18 October 2019, she and crewmate Christina Koch stepped outside to perform the first all-female spacewalk, an event that drew global attention and that the two women extended into a series of all-woman EVAs — three spacewalks with Koch that together totaled roughly 21 hours outside the station. Her long-duration stay ran 205 days, ending with a landing on 17 April 2020 amid the early pandemic. Nearly six years later she returned to orbit as a mission commander: on 13 February 2026 she launched on NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 mission aboard a Crew Dragon to command a Dragon flight to the ISS and serve on Expedition 74, joined by pilot Jack Hathaway and international crewmates. Across her missions she has accumulated thousands of hours in space.

Named to the Time 100 list of most influential people in 2020 and a recipient of the NASA Space Flight Medal, Meir became one of the most recognizable scientist-astronauts of her generation, in large part because the first all-female spacewalk crystallized decades of progress for women in spaceflight into a single, widely shared image. She has been an outspoken advocate for STEM education and for women in science, saying she hopes her work will inspire young people, especially girls, to pursue exploration. An active NASA astronaut currently serving as a station commander, Meir represents a modern archetype — the field-scientist-turned-spacefarer whose curiosity about how life endures extreme environments carried her from the Antarctic ice to command of a spacecraft.