Given my background in life sciences, and the fact that I was testing and sending back reports, I was the one they came to first. I described our various responses as falling into two categories: conscious and automatic. The former was sentimental: you looked towards the fading planet and felt desperately sad. You regretted the mission, wanted to go back, to step on the ground, breathe unfiltered air and stand under a sky again. Control weren’t so interested in this: it was the instinctive, automatic responses they asked about.
