Astronaut Jessica Watkins is a woman. She is slated to become the first Black woman to complete a six-month mission on board the International Space Station. In April, Watkins is slated to launch into space.
NASA ladies announced their involvement in the SpaceX Crew-4 mission in November of last year. The journey is a component of NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to send people back to the moon by 2025. Jessica Watkins will work as a mission specialist on a mission to observe and record Earth’s geological changes from the International Space Station.
“The basis laid by the Black women astronauts who came before me is what we are building on. I’m happy to contribute in a small way to that tradition while still being treated equally by the rest of the team.
According to her NASA biography, Dr. Watkins was born in Maryland and raised in Lafayette, Colorado. She was discovered by the space agency in 2017 and enrolled in a training program where she spent two years getting ready for space missions.
The 33-year-old astronaut graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in Geological and Environmental Sciences. At the University of California, Los Angeles, where she investigated the planet’s surface and large landslides, Dr. Watkins received her Ph.D.
After completing her degree, she was a postdoctoral candidate in geological and planetary sciences at the California Institute of Technology. She served as a Caltech women’s basketball team assistant coach as well.
While a student at Caltech, Jessica Watkins participated in the scientific team for the Curiosity Mars rover and collaborated with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL). She worked on the Curiosity expedition and other projects while she was an intern at JPL and NASA’s Ames Research Center.
A 2011 participant in NASA’s Desert Research and Technology Studies was Jessica Watkins. She also took part in aquatic missions in an underwater habitat in 2019, as part of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 23 mission.
The NASA Group Achievement Award, the UCLA Chancellor’s Prize in 2010, and various Rugby prizes are just a few of the accolades Watkins has received for her work. She states in her biography:
The fourth black female astronaut, Watkins, will travel to the International Space Station. Her six-month stay on the International Space Station will make her the first in her category.
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