Where was Jessica Meir born and what is her family background?
Jessica Ulrika Meir was born in Caribou, Maine. Her father Josef H. Meir arrived from Baghdad, Iraq in 1925 after his family fled antisemitism.
Jessica Ulrika Meir was born in Caribou, Maine. Her father Josef H. Meir arrived from Baghdad, Iraq in 1925 after his family fled antisemitism.
Jessica Meir earned a Ph.D. in marine biology in 2009 from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Her research focused on emperor penguins and northern elephant seals at Penguin Ranch on McMurdo Sound in Antarctica.
On the 18th of October 2019, Jessica Meir performed her first spacewalk with Christina Koch to replace a faulty Battery Charging Discharging Unit on the International Space Station. The spacewalk lasted seven hours and 17 minutes and marked the first all-female spacewalk in history.
Jessica Meir returned to Earth near Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on the 17th of April 2020. Her total time in space reached 205 days while serving as flight engineer during Expedition 61 and 62.
Jessica Meir holds both American and Swedish citizenship through her mother Ulla-Britt Karlsson who is a nurse from Västerås. She is technically the first Swedish female citizen holder in space.