by When a colleague sent John McFall a job ad for aspiring astronauts, he responded quickly. “To be honest, all I had in my mind was, ‘It would be great to go to space.'”
But doing so would mean breaking a glass ceiling – a ceiling that has stood for more than six decades of space exploration.
Nevertheless, he continued. Three years after McFall spotted the European Space Agency’s job advertisement, he is now on track to become the world’s first astronaut with a disability.
After the Brit lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident at the age of 19, he became a sprinter at the Paralympics, won bronze in Beijing and later became a trauma surgeon and orthopedic surgeon.
McFall threw himself into the agency’s grueling selection process, going through six phases that ranged from hours of psychomotor testing to panel interviews. In 2022, the agency announced that he would join them to push the boundaries of space exploration by joining their years-long effort to address the question of whether someone with a physical disability can live and work in space .
“It’s very exciting,” McFall, 43, said in an interview. “A common response is, ‘Why wasn’t this done sooner?'”
There is no guarantee that McFall will be able to go to space. Instead, the agency methodically moved him through the demands of a six-month mission to the International Space Station. “We need to provide data to prove it is possible,” he said. “So it’s not like people said, ‘That can’t be done, it’s not possible.’ It’s more like, “We don’t doubt it’s possible, it’s just that no one has done it.”
Because space operations are designed for people without disabilities, the tests aim to examine questions such as how McFall would move and stabilize in microgravity and how space conditions would affect his prosthesis.
So far, all signs point to spaceflight being feasible for McFall, raising hopes that he – or someone with a similar disability – could eventually train for an upcoming mission. “I would hope that between 2027 and the end of this decade we will see a European astronaut with a physical disability as part of the crew of the International Space Station.”
While the agency’s findings are specific to McFall, part of the project’s goal is to provide a path so that others with disabilities – whether similar to McFall’s or not – may be able to follow his path.
“We’re challenging the narrative around physical disability,” McFall said. “And that leads to discussions and reduces stigma.”
This discussion also addresses the question of how exactly to refer to McFall. Since joining the European Space Agency, he has tried to gently push back against the widely used title of parastronaut. “I think it’s useful to have a conversation about it. What does it mean?” asked McFall.
“I’m not a parasurgeon, I’m a surgeon. “I’m not a Para dad, I’m a father,” he said, describing putting Para before everything someone with a physical disability does as a “slippery slope.” “And I think if we continue to use it, it will probably continue to create a divide, which is not necessary.”
This perspective points to the broader implications of its cross-border efforts as many people with disabilities around the world continue to face severe discrimination. Data from across the EU suggests that people with disabilities are more likely to be unemployed and live below the poverty line.
By challenging people’s perceptions of what an astronaut looks like, McFall hopes to change some of that. “This is an opportunity to create more opportunities for people with disabilities in various career fields,” he said.
“My job is to ensure that people have a comprehensive and informed definition of disability and what it means to be disabled,” he added. “It’s not like the 1950s or 1920s version of disability, you know?”
