Dr. Jessica Watkins Makes History as First Black Woman Astronaut to Join NASA’s International Space Station Crew
Dr. Jessica Watkins, 33, a NASA astronaut, will become the first Black woman to live and work at the International Space Station crew.
According to NASA, she is set to launch into space in April 2022 on the SpaceX Crew-4 mission; she will spend six months on the ISS as a mission specialist.
Watkins was born in Maryland but currently resides in Colorado and considers it her hometown; she was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology. In 2017 Watkins was selected as an astronaut candidate; since then, she has been preparing for her first space mission.
The selection means that Watkins will be the first Black woman to join an ISS crew for station maintenance, training scientific research, and much more over six months.
NASA posted a video where Watkins introduces herself and goes on to share her love for space and why she enjoys her career.
“A dream feels like a big faraway goal that is going to be difficult to achieve and something that you might achieve much later in life. But in reality, what a dream is, is putting one foot in front of the other on a daily basis. And if you put enough of those footprints together, eventually they become a path towards your dreams…” says Watkins in the Youtube video posted by NASA.
Growing up, Watkins says she always looked up to astronauts such as Mae Jemison, the first black woman in space, and Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. Watkins will be flying as a mission specialist alongside three other colleagues: NASA’s Robert Hines and Kjell Lindgren; and Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency.
More Turtles in space! Congrats to my friend and teammate, Jessica Watkins. She’s going to be an amazing crewmate for @SpaceX Crew-4. https://t.co/VtmuWrXUcq
— Jonny Kim (@JonnyKimUSA) November 17, 2021
Fellow astronaut Johnny Kim took to Twitter to congratulate Watkins after the International Space Station announced that she would be joining the Crew-4 mission.
Although Watkins will be the first Black woman to join the ISS crew, Victor Glover, who was part of SpaceX’s Crew-2 mission of November 2020, was the first Black astronaut to join a station crew.
NASA announced last year that Watkins had been chosen for the prestigious Artemis program, which aims to put astronauts back on the lunar surface no earlier than 2025.
NASA astronaut @astro_kjell shared the official #CrewDragon #Crew4 patch yesterday. ESA astronaut @AstroSamantha is on this crew with NASA colleagues Jessica Watkins and @Astro_FarmerBob 👉 https://t.co/1yHremm5GS pic.twitter.com/rtsEnKoO1K
— ESA (@esa) December 3, 2021
The official crew patch was shared on social media; it features a dragonfly representing the spacecraft, the number four, and all four last names of the astronauts part of Crew-4.
She hopes to inspire more kids of color to aspire to space travel.
