Dad’s space oddity an eye-opener

As her father became famous, Kristin Hadfield was knuckling down to her studies

At the start of 2013, I was with my family after celebrating Christmas together — all except for dad, who was in space. I’ve spent nearly my whole life as the daughter of an astronaut, but he hadn’t been to space for over 10 years and never for more than a few weeks at a time, so I didn’t know what this mission would be like for myself or for the family.

For one thing, I was extremely nervous at his launch — seeing the Russian Soyuz rocket get absorbed in flames while watching helplessly in the Kazakh cold, just hoping that everything would go ok. For his other launches, I was young; I didn’t understand that spaceflight was dangerous and that my dad was anything less than invincible.