In the next decade, NASA will send astronauts to Mars for the first time. Separated from Earth, and unable to communicate with ground in real time, crew members will experience extreme isolation that could gravely affect their three-year journey. Space: The Longest Goodbye, a Sundance-premiering documentary, follows a savvy NASA psychologist tasked with protecting daring space explorers.  

Join the National Museum of Natural History and Sant Director Kirk Johnson in conversation with former astronaut and museum board member Cady Coleman, Cady's son Jamey Simpson who is featured in the film, current NASA astronaut Kayla Barron, and film director Ido Mizrahy as they discuss and show clips from the film.

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About the film: In the next decade, NASA intends to send astronauts to Mars for the first time. To succeed, crew members will have to overcome unprecedented life-threatening challenges. And while many of these hazards are physical, the most elusive are psychological. Throughout their three-year absence, crew members won’t be able to communicate with Earth in real time due to the immense distance. The psychological impact of this level of disconnectedness and isolation—both from mission control and loved ones—is impossible to predict, endangering the mission itself. Directed to mitigate this threat is Dr. Al Holland, a NASA psychologist whose job is to keep astronauts mentally stable in space. Space: The Longest Goodbye follows Holland, rookie astronauts Kayla Barron and Matthias Maurer, and former astronaut Cady Coleman, among others, as they grapple with the tension between their dream of reaching new frontiers and their basic human need to stay connected to home. This conflict transcends space travel: how do humans balance the quest for progress with a deep connection to history and each other?

About Cady: Cady Coleman is a former NASA Astronaut and a retired US Air Force Colonel with more than 180 days in space, accumulated during two space shuttle missions and a six-month expedition to the International Space Station (ISS) as the Lead Robotics and Lead Science officer. Cady served in a variety of roles within the Astronaut Office, including Chief of Robotics, and lead astronaut for integration of supply ships from NASA’s commercial partners. Before retiring from NASA, she led open-innovation and public-private partnership efforts for NASA’s Chief Technologist. Cady and her family were recently featured in two documentaries, PBS’s The Longest Goodbye, and The Wonderful: Stories from the Space Station. Her book, Sharing Space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change, about her NASA experiences and the insights she gained as an astronaut, is due out this summer. Cady is a vocal advocate for inclusion in STEM/STEAM fields, a research affiliate at the MIT Media Lab, and consults on space-related work for research and for the media. She serves on several boards, including the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and Greenfield Community College.

About Ido: Ido Mizrahy’s narrative and documentary films premiered at Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca and New Directors / New Films, among many other festivals, and went on to win a number of awards. His films have been distributed by AMC, Sundance, Netflix, Filmrise and Greenwich Entertainment and co-produced by ITVS, PBS, BBC, MTV and Arte. Mizrahy is currently co-creating a VR video game, with Nir Sa'ar (writing-producing partner on "Space: The Longest Goodbye"), that’s equal parts family drama and space thriller.  

About Jamey: Jamey Simpson is a Washington, DC-based photographer who has a passion for storytelling through powerful imagery. His work has been published in People Magazine, American Craft Magazine and featured on the Today Show. Simpson has collaborated with renowned brands including National Geographic, Disney +, Marriott Hotels, and the Washington Wizards. Notably, he created a launch video for the Smithsonian's climate initiative, "Our Shared Future: Life on a Sustainable Planet," which premiered at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. 

About Kayla:
Kayla Barron was selected by NASA to join the 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class. She reported for duty in August 2017. The Washington native graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a bachelor’s degree in Systems Engineering. A Gates Cambridge Scholar, Barron earned a master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Cambridge. As a Submarine Warfare Officer, Barron was a member of the first class of women commissioned into the submarine community. She served as member of the NASA SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station, which launched on November 10, 2021. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-3 astronauts safely splashed down on Friday, May 6, 2022 completing the agency’s third long-duration commercial crew mission to the International Space Station. The international crew of four spent 177 days in orbit.

Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls