Over the summer most students go to the beach, go swimming or hangout with friends. For Krishaan Vadia this was not the case.
“I went to the space camp at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama,” Vadia said. “There are three tiers: there’s space camp, which is the most well-known one, Space Academy and Advanced Space Academy. I trained at the Advanced Space Academy, which is essentially a one-week residential immersion program that takes you through an intensive training process of what it’s like to train as an astronaut. In general, it’s a great preparation experience for space careers.”
The camp can be a gateway for anyone wanting to get into a space career but especially as an astronaut.
“Most of our training was centered around our simulated flight missions, which were basically missions meant to replicate real NASA missions on a timescale of anywhere from one to three hours long in a close simulation without any help,” Vadia said.
The missions showed what the experience was like in the cockpit and what it would be like if they were actually in space.
“I just loved how immersive it was,” Vadia said. “It was an awesome experience to be able to interact with people as passionate as I am about space science. The overall US Space and Rocket Center facility in general was great because we had a space museum on site where we got to learn a lot of history.”
The immersion in the camp helped create the feeling of being in space as an astronaut and being in zero gravity.
“Part of our training was scuba diving into a 25-foot deep training tank for 20 minutes without resurfacing,” Vadia said. “That was definitely a difficult challenge for me, especially overcoming atmospheric pressure and just the overall scary feeling of ‘What if I drown?’”
Despite some of the challenges that came with the camp, Vadia said the camp is for anyone.
“Even if you’re not necessarily interested in a career in space science, it was such a cool experience,” Vadia said. “I don’t think you’d be able to find anywhere else because you’re finding people around you that are super passionate about what they do. Like just wanting to learn. If you’re into athletic stuff or into science, anything, it’s like anyone can benefit from it.”
