One year ago today, NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara returned from outer space! 🚀🌍✨ Before O'Hara launched into the cosmos, she explored one of Earth’s most extreme frontiers—the deep sea. As a #WHOI research engineer, she worked on ocean robots like Jason and Nereid Under Ice and helped overhaul the crewed submersible #Alvin (seen in the photos) “What I want to do with my life is build vehicles that let people work and live in places that are either inaccessible or accessible to only a few,” O’Hara told Oceanus magazine in 2013. In 2017, she was one of just 12 people (and only five women) selected for NASA’s Astronaut Candidate program—out of a record 18,300 applicants! As part of Expedition 70, O'Hara served 204 days on the International Space Station as a flight engineer and conducted a spacewalk lasting over 6 hours! From the darkest depths of the ocean to the vastness of space, exploration has no limits! Learn how ocean exploration can help us understand our place in the cosmos: oceanworlds.whoi.edu 🚀#WHOIare #WomenInSTEM 📸Jayne Doucette, Tom Kleindinst © WHOI (fb)

🤖 It’s National Robotics Week! Let's celebrate how robots have transformed ocean research and exploration! 🎉 Whether remotely sampling the deep sea or autonomously gathering data for months in stormy seas, robots help scientists study the extremes of our ocean planet faster, safer, and in greater detail than ever before. While early oceanographers were limited by the samples they could physically take at sea, robots now enable us to collect data in remote and hazardous places, track environmental changes in real time, and even help discover new species! 📲Find out how ocean robots unlock knowledge about our blue planet: go.whoi.edu/Oceanbots #WHOIAre #NationalRoboticsWeek #roboweek #STEM (fb)