Mark Pathy isn’t the type for being in the spotlight but, being part of the historic first civilian mission to the space station, he hasn’t had much choice.
“If I could have done this in complete anonymity, I definitely would have,” he said. “But, obviously, that’s not possible.”
Pathy, a 52-year-old entrepreneur and philanthropist from Montreal, spoke from his brightly lit hotel quarantine room outside Orlando, Fla., while awaiting his launch. It had already been moved several times.
“I’ve had this fantasy since I was a kid and watched Star Trek,” he said over Zoom. “I had a fantasy of travelling through space and bouncing around the universe and meeting new species and discovering new worlds … all that kind of stuff.”
Today, his dream of going to space came true. At 11:17 a.m ET, Pathy launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket destined for the International Space Station (ISS).
Pathy isn’t exactly heading off to meet crinkly foreheaded aliens, but he’s not on a pleasure cruise to the ISS either. Instead, he’s part of a four-person crew that includes former NASA astronautMichael López-Alegría, entrepreneurLarry Connor and investorEytan Stibbe — the first civilian mission to the space station, and they will be hard at work.
The four are part ofAxiom Space‘s Ax-1 mission. Axiom is a privately funded space company that is aiming to send commercial missions to the ISS — Ax-1 is their first — and eventually build the world’s first commercial space station.
Pathy’s uniform is seen here. The entrepreneur will be only the second private Canadian citizen to travel to space. In 2009, Cirque de Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberté became the first Canadian space tourist. (SpaceX)
It may seem like a fantastical and unnecessary goal to set up a space station, but the company’s aim, it said, is to conduct research and experiments that can be used not only in space but also here on Earth.
And that was part of the appeal for Pathy to buy a $50-million seat.
“When I found out that we were able to select research to bring up with us and complete up there, that was just the icing on the cake — that I could really make this a lot more impactful.”
But how do you tell your wife and two kids that you’re about to strap into a rocket, undergo a controlled explosion and head into a place where no human was meant to live or work?
Pathy underwent training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. (Robert Markowitz/NASA-Johnson Space Center)
“I came home and said to my wife, ‘I think I’m going to space.’ And her first response was, ‘Not without me you’re not,'” he said. “But she’s excited for me and my kids were really excited … My parents were skeptical, initially, but they’ve become big supporters. And they’re really excited about this whole thing.”
Pathy knows there are risks.
“I have a young family, so I’m not sort of thinking, ‘Wow, well, you know, I’ve had a good life, but what the hell.’
“I still intend to live a long and fruitful life,” he said. “I’ve worried about my safety and worried about my ability to do all this new stuff and taking on all these commitments, with the research and everything … but, at this point, I’m not really worried anymore.”
Sci-fi tech demonstration
Pathy will be hard at work conducting more than a dozen research projects, including a tech demonstration of two-way Holoportation in space, something that researchers hope will be helpful here on Earth.
And if that sounds like something out of Star Trek, that’s because it sort of is.
Star Trek — as well as many other sci-fi shows and movies — often utilize holograms, or 3D interpretations of people, as a means of communicating. Pathy’s experiment, meanwhile, won’t be quite like what we see on the big screen. Instead, he and someone else on the ground will wear virtual reality headsets that will act more like augmented reality. The technology is a group effort between Leap Biosystems, Aexa Aerospace and Microsoft.
Former Canadian Space Agency astronaut Dave Williams has been working with Pathy on this technology and he’s excited to see where its emergence takes us.
“Images from mission control on Earth will be sent up to space, and Mark will see them as though they’re in space with him on board the International Space Station,” he said. “More importantly, images from the space station will be sent down to mission control, so that it’ll look like Mark is, in fact, in mission control with the team on the ground.
“It’s an unbelievable technology that you can just begin to imagine how we can use that in the future.”
And those future uses could help to serve Canadians in an important way.
“If you’re talking about medical care in the Canadian Arctic, arguably, this is an extreme environment with ranges of temperatures, there’s significant isolation, etc.,” Williams said. “And we want to be able to develop technologies that are robust that are going to function in these remote isolated communities — or in remote regions in space.
Pain in the name of science
Another important experiment is one on chronic pain, something that millions of people experience every day. But its nature, and the role the brain plays in it, isn’t completely understood.
“When people say pain is all in your brain, this is completely true. The mind is the most complex organ that we have, that is completely unexplored, in many ways,” said Dr. Pablo Ingelmo, an anesthesiologist and director of the Edwards Family Interdisciplinary Centre for Complex Pain at The Montreal Children’s Hospital, who is taking part in this experiment with Pathy.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket sits ready at launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Axiom launch will be the first private crew to visit the International Space Station. (SpaceX)
“As doctors, we’ve been confusing two concepts. One is nociception: What am I feeling within a stimulus that might provoke pain, the way I send information to my brain,” he explains. “But pain is a completely different issue. Pain is my reaction, my behaviour, my sufferance, my expression of that nociceptive stimulus.”
One example is those who have fibromyalgia. People with this poorly understood condition experience pain very differently compared to people who don’t have the condition. Their body processes even slight pain as something stronger, a process referred to asallodynia.
In order to get a baseline of how Pathy experiences pain, he was poked and prodded.
“They subjected me to poking with needles in different parts of my body and asking me to report back on what my level of pain was. And then heat and then cold, mostly on my arm but also my lower back,” he said.
“It’s not always convenient or comfortable, but I think, look, I’m really happy that I get a chance to do something positive for society.”
Pathy’s family will be watching closely when he launches. There will even be a party. But that’s not what he is looking forward to.
“Personally, I’m more looking forward to the return party.”
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
