Recent developments in commercial suborbital spaceflight have expanded opportunities for researchers to fly with their experiments. In an accompanying paper in npj Microgravity, we report results from a researcher-tended experiment aboard Blue Origin New Shepard flight NS-261. This Perspective examines the historically rare role of scientists flying to conduct their own research and argues that firsthand participation in spaceflight enriches scientific observation, interpretation, and discovery.
Human spaceflight has always been intertwined with science, from the earliest physiological observations made during initial ventures beyond Earth to increasingly sophisticated experiments conducted aboard orbital platforms. Over time, the methods by which space science is performed have evolved, often favoring automation or the delegation of experimental tasks to career astronauts trained to operate a wide array of investigations. While this operational model has produced extraordinary results, it necessarily distances the scientist from the moment‑to‑moment unfolding of the experiment and from the physical and sensory context in which those measurements occur.
In many scientific disciplines, firsthand observation and intimate familiarity with the experimental environment are understood to shape both interpretation and discovery, yet these dimensions have been largely unavailable to space researchers. Since the earliest days of human spaceflight, science has traveled alongside astronauts, yet scientists flying to conduct their own experiments have remained rare throughout this history. This Perspective places the author’s flight experience within the long arc of scientists in spaceflight, from early physiological measurements and the emergence of scientist-astronauts to contemporary commercial suborbital missions.
The researcher tending the experiment discussed here was the author, an academic space biologist who proposed the science, was awarded a flight through NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program, and ultimately flew with the experiment. The space science community now finds itself at a moment where this long-standing pattern is beginning to shift. Developments in suborbital spacecraft and the broader emergence of commercial spaceflight capabilities have expanded opportunities for researchers not only to send experiments to space, but to fly with them, bearing direct witness to their execution and to the spaceflight environment itself.
My flight on New Shepard NS-26 had its unique aspects. But nothing wildly unforeseen or unexpected when viewed against the history of human spaceflight and the trajectory of science within it. From the earliest human ventures that brushed the edge of space, physiological measurements and experimental observations have been gathered from those who flew and by those who flew.
In that sense, there was nothing inherently novel about a scientist being present to capture scientific data during flight. While science has always accompanied human spaceflight, science as the primary reason for an individual to fly, to go to space specifically in order to conduct one’s own experiment, has been rare. Again, not new, but rare.
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