THE VIEW FROM ABOVE


and the first time these components ever touched each other was in space, and it works! And it works well.”


“I think it’s a fantastic legacy of the program that it will be, probably, one of the most important legacies that we take forward with us in the future programs,” Morgan said of the international cooper- ation aspect.


MIC CHECK, 1-2-3


Morgan shows his Army pride in the Kibo laboratory module, while talking to personnel on the ground in March 2020.


A UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE While McClain had returned to Earth well before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Morgan was still aboard the ISS during the initial wave of the disease. He and two others from his flight crew landed back on solid ground in what he thought was the middle of the crisis, but was actu- ally the beginning.


“Watching that play out and being the only three people off the planet who were truly protected from the pandemic,” Morgan said, “and then being dropped back down in the middle of it, really helped us reflect about how fragile of a planet we live on, but also how beautiful of a planet that we live on.” Te pandemic is an example of something that affects everyone equally, he added. He believes that the collabor- ative, multinational effort in building and sustaining the ISS for more than two decades illustrates how we, as a global community, can come together to solve problems that affect us all.


SURGICAL PRECISION


Morgan is tethered to the ISS while finalizing thermal repairs on the alpha magnetic spectrometer, a dark matter and antimatter detector, during a spacewalk in January 2020 that lasted six hours and 16 minutes.


“You really do get a different perspec- tive when you’re out on the International Space Station, when you’re off the planet,” McClain said. She recalled one of her spacewalks, holding on to the ISS by a handrail and looking down at the blue and green orb of Earth, which was the biggest thing she could see, other than the ISS. Behind the space station was the infinite expanse of space—the only thing holding her in place was gravity. She realized that


126 Army AL&T Magazine Winter 2021


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