Earth Views Series

Karen Nyberg was selected as a member of the NASA Astronaut Corps in 2000. She made her first trip to space aboard Space Shuttle Discovery in 2008, during the height of International Space Station (ISS) construction, delivering and installing the Japanese Laboratory. On her second spaceflight in 2013, Karen launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and lived and worked at ISS for 166 days.

Mention the words “NASA Astronaut” and most people immediately think of exceptional scientists and smart, technical engineers.  Less often would someone describe an Astronaut as a talented artist or accomplished seamstress.  Yet, Karen Nyberg is all of these things.

Robert Kaufman Fabrics made a line of fabrics from her photographs of clouds over water, of desert, of mountains, of forests and of deltas from the ISS Observation deck. These fabrics remind me of the lyrics of our special hymn Blue Boat Home by Peter Mayer: “The wide universe is the ocean I travel, and the Earth is my blue boat home.” These stoles celebrate our blue boat home and the interconnectedness of all of us on board.