Kristine Atienza is the first Filipino analog astronaut and the first to be certified for suborbital space flight. Courtesy of Space Agency Blog and Kristine Atienza
In 2023, Kristine Atienza reached for the stars and became the first Filipino analog astronaut. This year, she marks a new feat as the first Filipino to train and certify for commercial suborbital space flight.
Last year, Kristine Atienza had been doing a lot of talks about space exploration and analog space missions. She begins each talk with a question: “Who wants to become an astronaut?” “In almost every group, there’d be at least one raising their hands, but mostly there’d be a lot,” she writes in a Facebook post. In these talks, she shares with the audience her dream to “have a Filipino flag beyond the Karman line.”
The Karman line is a boundary 100 kilometers above sea level, marking the point where the Earth’s atmosphere transitions to outer space. Though it came from her mouth, she describes it as a “crazy dream.” But she had already begun reaching for the stars: in November 2023, Atienza made headlines when she became the first Filipino analog astronaut. Almost a year and a half later, she marked another feat as the first Filipino to be eligible and certified for commercial suborbital space flight.
She began her journey to suborbital spaceflight training when she watched the Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space documentary on Netflix. After watching the film, Atienza sent a cold email to the National AeroSpace Training and Research (NASTAR) Center, the premier commercial air and space training, research, and educational facility. Hours later, Glenn King, the COO and director of NASTAR Center, replied to Atienza.
It took her eight months to respond to King. “During those months, I was debating with myself,” she says. “I never originally dreamed of becoming an astronaut, but I saw that going through this training could open up networks and opportunities for the future human space flight program of the Philippines. That’s what finally pushed me to go for it.” After emailing back and forth with King, she accepted the opportunity and began her two-day Suborbital Space Flight Training program.
From participating in Earth-based simulated space missions as an analog astronaut, the suborbital space flight training prepared Atienza to safely endure the intense conditions of spaceflight (such as high G-forces) and qualified her to fly on a suborbital space mission. During training, Atienza teared up when she was first exposed to 6g acceleration. “In the moment, feeling the force of acceleration, it felt real, like I was being launched into space. Even though I was only looking at a screen and not the actual curvature of the Earth, it was the closest I could get to experiencing the overview effect,” she says.
Although suborbital space flight brings astronauts to just about the “edge of space,” Atienza is one step closer to seeing her dream. At present, she is still unsure about doing actual space flight but plans on continuing to advocate for a human space flight program for the Philippines and Southeast Asia. “I still believe that sooner than later, we’ll see the Filipino flag beyond that Karman line,” she writes in her post. “This one is for the 116M of us Filipinos all over the world, and next in space.”
