Megan McArthur to Bring Ocean-to-Orbit Lessons Back to Scripps

A homecoming built around exploration

Former NASA astronaut Megan McArthur will return to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography on Sept. 23 as keynote speaker for its 12th annual Student Symposium. The student-led conference gives graduate students and postdoctoral scholars a venue to present research, practice communicating it and build professional ties.today Her appearance brings an oceanographer who spent 213 days in space back to the campus where she earned her doctorate.nasa

McArthur plans to draw on a career that connected underwater acoustics, human spaceflight and public science education. She now serves as chief science officer at Space Center Houston, supporting exhibits and education programs while maintaining links with NASA and the commercial space sector.today +1

Ocean training became preparation for orbit

McArthur entered UCLA as an aerospace engineering student, but a human-powered submarine project led her toward diving and ocean engineering. At Scripps, her doctoral work examined nearshore underwater acoustics and digital signal processing; she was selected for NASA's astronaut corps in 2000 and completed her Ph.D. in 2002.scripps She has said research at sea resembles spaceflight because isolated teams must complete a mission, solve equipment failures and adapt with the people and tools already on board.today

That training later met two very different space assignments. On the 2009 STS-125 mission, McArthur operated Atlantis's robotic arm during the final servicing flight to the Hubble Space Telescope.latimes +1 In 2021, she became the first woman to pilot a SpaceX Dragon, carrying the Crew-2 astronauts to the International Space Station for a roughly six-month expedition.nbcsandiego +1

The next mission is science literacy

McArthur retired from NASA in 2025 after more than two decades at the agency, including technical and leadership posts in the Astronaut Office and International Space Station program.latimes +1 Her shift to Space Center Houston turns the public-facing side of exploration into a full-time assignment: strengthening science literacy, improving educational experiences and helping museum visitors understand how research in orbit can benefit life on Earth.today

The symposium also puts that message in front of researchers at the start of their careers. McArthur's advice is less about following a perfectly mapped route than accepting difficult work: she urges students to try things beyond their present capacity. Her own path—from learning to scuba dive because she was small enough to pilot a student submarine, to handling Hubble and Dragon missions—offers the practical case for that argument.scripps +1