Meet Jessica Watkins, Everything You Need to Know about the first Black woman to spend 6 months in space
3 min read
Instagram/Jessica Watkins
Jessica Watkins is on road to become the first Black woman to spend six months in space. She will be living and working in the International Space Station for an extended mission in April this year. She has been a part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission since last year.
Jessica Watkins To Spent 6 Months In Space
Astronaut Jessica Watkins is about to make history as she will become the first Black women to spend six months in space. The 33-year-old astronaut has been dreaming of the same since her childhood. The mission is all set to resume in April 2022. Women of NASA made the announcement of Jessica being a part of the SpaceX Crew-4 mission in November last year.
Jessica Watkins will make her first trip to space on the SpaceX Crew-4 mission, targeted to launch in April 2022. She's a geologist who worked at @NASAAmes & @NASAJPL prior to being selected for our most recent class of @NASA_Astronauts: https://t.co/btlgMrF5kO pic.twitter.com/OMFBPtb4tj
— Women@NASA (@WomenNASA) November 16, 2021Advertisement
NASA’s Artemis program will enable the mission, which has the ultimate goal of getting humans to the moon by 2025. It is a multi-billion dollar program. Owing to her expertise in Geology, Jessica Watkins’ role in the mission will be to serve as a mission specialist by observing and recording geological changes on Earth from the ISS. She revealed to the NPR that they are working on the foundation which was laid by black women previously. Approximately 250 people have flown to the International Space Station in the past. Among them, roughly ten black women have been a part of the mission.
In 1992, an engineer and physician named Mae Jemison was the first African-American woman in space before the establishment of the space station. Other black women, namely NASA astronauts Stephanie Wilson and Joan Higginbotham have been to space as well.
All About Jessica Watkins
Jessica Watkins, a native of Lafayette, Colorado, graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in Geological and Environmental Sciences. She did her doctoral from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has been a postdoctoral candidate in Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Jessica Watkins worked with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on the Mars rover Curiosity when she was at Caltech. Her internships at JPL and NASA’s Ames Research Center included projects on the Curiosity mission, among others. Moreover, she was a part of the NASA Desert Research and Technology Studies in 2011. In addition, she was a part of NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operations 23 mission, during which she conducted aquatic missions in an underwater habitat.
Throughout her career, Jessica Watkins has won numerous awards, such as the NASA Group Achievement Award in 2010, the UCLA Chancellor’s Prize, and several Rugby awards. She has been a part of the upcoming mission since 2017. Most importantly, she will become the fourth black woman to go to space.
Riddha Kundu
I'm Riddha Kundu, a 23-year-old aspiring Chartered Accountant from Kolkata, and I'm passionate about writing contents.
