AEROSPACE and oceanography are both about exploration, NASA astronaut Dr Megan McArthur observed while discussing her leap from undersea to outer space missions during National Science Week.

While speaking at The University of Western Australia, the astronaut explained how she went from aerospace to oceanography and back again.

NASA astronaut Dr Megan McArthur with Ali Smith, 10, a space and astronomy enthusiast from St Hilda's Anglican School for Girls / Image: Courtesy The University of Western Australia

“We can’t survive underwater any better than we can in space,” she told an audience of adults and children.

It took Dr McArthur and her fellow astronauts just 8.5 minutes to blast into space to repair the Hubble Telescope in May, while it took a little longer to get to Perth.

“This is my first trip to Australia and I travelled here from Houston, Texas,” she told the full theatre.

“It took me about 30 hours to get all the way here and I calculated quickly that in that amount of time, if I’d been on the space shuttle Atlantis, I could’ve gone around the earth 21 times,” she said.

Dr McArthur has an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering and first became interested in space travel at school.

“I grew up on navy bases around the world with my dad who was a navy pilot and so I’ve always had a love of airplanes.

“When I was in high school I started to become interested in space travel when I saw astronauts come to the military base to do some of their training. I thought it looked like a lot of fun.”

After gaining her bachelor degree, Dr McArthur conducted graduate research at the prestigious Scripps Institution of Oceanography and served as served as a chief scientist during at-sea data collection operations.

Dr McArthur was recruited to the NASA program in 2000 and worked as a crew support astronaut before entering space this year to upgrade Hubble telescope in the last of NASA’s repair missions.

“All astronauts have some degree in science. Traditionally about two-thirds to half of the astronauts come from the US military and either a flying background or some kind of operational background.”

The other half come from the scientific community with most having a Masters degree or PhD in the sciences, she said.

“We have every flavour of scientists. Astromers and astrophysists. An oceanographer, a veterinarian, a medical doctor.”

She said the common denominator is an education in science.

“You can pretty much be taught to do anything. Once you understand how systems work you can learn different kinds of systems.”

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