In
Montreal, a young successful woman works towards furthering cosmic goals
for the Canadian Space Agency. Laryssa Patten, a Robotics Instructor/Operations
Engineer, took some time out of her busy schedule to talk to The New Pathway’s
Pavlo Terefenko about her job, her heritage and the important role it’s
played in making her life what it is today.
What
got you interested in space work?
I
think I kind of evolved to be where I am. I get that question asked a lot.
People who are born and get to live through the first moon walk – they
always say that inspires them. I like science and math. The idea of working
on a space project really attracted me.
Did
you work your way up to the Space Station project? What were the first
sort of things you did when you started working for the Canadian Space
Agency?
As
a student I worked at Allied Signal Aerospace. The first space project
that I worked on was a Satellite Attitude Sensor. The Satellite Attitude
Sensor is the sensor that determines the orientation of the satellite.
It ensures that it always points to the ground. You can imagine that if
the purpose of the satellite is to take pictures of the ground you need
something that will ensure that it’s always pointing at the ground rather
than something else. That’s what attitude sensing is. Then I moved to Radarsat
1, which is Canada’s first Earth observation satellite.
What
do you do right now, since you’re no longer involved in Radarsat 1?
Well
I’ll give you some history. I worked on Radarsat 1 in operations which
was day-to-day planning what the satellite would image and organising the
stations around the world because we send the data to a whole bunch of
stations around the world like in Japan, China, Antarctica has a station
too. From having that operational experience I moved to the Space Station
project where I initially started training astronauts, cosmonauts, mission
controllers, flight directors…. We train all those different people how
to use Canada’s robotic arm. I think you’ve seen it.
Would
you say Canada has a pretty big part of the International Space Station?
Canada
plays a key role in building the ISS. The Canadarm 2 is absolutely necessary
to build the station. The station will not be completed if the Canadarm
2 cannot do its job. To this day it’s successfully carried out its missions.
What the arm does while it’s attached to a certain point on the station
then it goes into the payload bay of the space shuttle and it picks up
a part and installs it on the space station.
What
purpose does the International Space station serve humanity?
It’s
a number of things. One international cooperation, two, spin-offs from
just knowledge gained from building it, and three, there’s the actual use
of it to have science research on it. On an international cooperation level,
the space station represents a project of sixteen nations working together.
That in itself is a tremendous achievement….[Secondly] the process of building
the Space Station offers tremendous knowledge and tremendous engineering
for things we can use on the ground…. Then the [third] one is we’re creating
a laboratory with micro-gravity, that will give you micro-gravity for a
extended period of time. And in terms of research – It’s an environment
that gives a lot of potential for research for things like osteoporosis.
With no gravity (technically there can never be “no gravity”. It’s actually
a permanent state of free-fall) crystals form differently because there’s
no single force pushing them in one direction.
Now
on to your Ukrainian roots. Where’d you grow up, where’d you go to school?
I
grew up in the West end ofToronto…
Right in Bloor West Village. I went to “Pershi Kroky” pre-school that pani
Leshchyshyn ran. Then I went to St Josephat’s. After grade four I went
to an English school, but I also went to Tsiopa Palijiw Ukrainian School
for Matura. I went to Plast, and I played in the Avantgard marching band.
I went on my first Ukrainian tour with the band, and that was a blast.
I was sixteen at the time. That was the first time someone ever asked me
for my autograph. Well, it was actually the only time. We were playing
in this concert at the Ukraina Stadium in Lviv. There was this girl that
was just so impressed with me….She came and asked me for my autograph and
I was beside myself because I was like “you can just have my address and
we can be pen pals”, and the girl was in shock.
Did
your Ukrainian roots help you with your current position and what you do
now?
Absolutely.
There’s no question in my mind that the skills that I learned through Ukrainian
school, Plast, band – all those things give you and intangible skill. Because
I work in an area that you’re interacting with people from all different
nations with different levels of English language skills and with different
cultures, having an appreciation of a different culture and knowing how
that fits in and how people perceive things, is so incredible. Being Ukrainian
and having a different culture in Canada teaches you to value certain things
like tradition, and teaches you to respect history and those things taken
into the world are very important because you have to value other people
and to value others and their perspectives, you first have to understand
yours.
Tell
me a little about working with Heide Piper.
It’s
been great. Heide Piper is Ukrainian in the sense that she’s like a lot
of us in the diaspora. She grew up in the United States, she had a Ukrainian
father and her mother is German. For her, being Ukrainian is very important.
She told me a story about how she’s in a military family, and she and her
husband travel now. They were based in Boston, they were in Hawaii, now
they’re based in Texas. The first thing they would do is pick up the phone
book and find the Ukrainian church in the new place that they went to.
She said it’s that sense of community that wherever you go – for Ukrainians
it’s so warm and welcoming. And I was quite surprised because she found
a Ukrainian priest in Hawaii. He was ninety years old and he christened
her son. So, these are things, that being Ukrainian, you can’t really measure.
The sense of community that being Ukrainian brings offers incredible sense
of being, welcoming and comfort….That’s something that I really cherish
and I think most people do.
It’s
a little cheesy, eh? But it’s true. When I wrote my speech [for Matura],
I said “My God this is so cheesy”, but I wanted to say to the kids – you
know what, what you’ve done for the last whatever number of years, and
what your parents have raised you as in the Church and in the community
– they’ve given you something that has so much value, but you can’t measure
that value until someday you’re put in a situation where you say “Oh, there
are no Ukrainians here”. And you’re like “What am I going to do, it’s ‘Sviat
Vechir’.”
You
arranged a very special gift for the Matura graduates this year. Tell me
about that.
I
mentioned [Matura] to Heide [Piper], and asked her to write some lines,
and there was no hesitation. She said “yeah, no problem”. I sent her the
names of the kids and she signed photos for them. I didn’t ask for her
to sign the kids names, and she did that too. She said she was going through
the names and said “ I think I know some of these parents.” She’s probably
the same age as some of these parents, and after my speech some parents
came up to me and asked “is she from here? I think I know her.” And it
just might be, because she went to tabir in Winnipeg…and Montreal. She
did the stuff we did you know – she went to Ukrainian School, she went
to Plast, and she kept her Ukrainian heritage. These kids achieved such
a big thing, they worked so hard, and they deserve the credit.
Well
it was great chatting with someone who holds on to their heritage as closely
as you do.
Yeah,
no problem.