When NASA’s Perseverance rover slowly crashed down on the surface of Mars last week after seven months in space, the news was first confirmed by Indian-American Swati Mohan. What is important here is that this female NASA scientist once again made history as a successful leader – leading the development of sight control and landing system for the rover – among the team of scientists. which is behind the historical mission.
The European Space Agency (ESA), the European equivalent of NASA, recently announced plans to recruit more female astronauts and people with disabilities, providing a good opportunity for those who have always been dream of going into space to fulfill their dreams. Clearly, the focus is now on making crew space missions more diverse.
According to a news report in the Associated Press, only 65 of the more than 560 people who ever went into space are women. Of those 65 women, 51 were Americans. ESA has sent just two women into space: Claudie Haigneré and Samantha Cristoforetti. As of March 2020, NASA’s website recommends that 65 women have moved into space, including cosmonauts, astronauts, payload experts and space station partners.
ESA, which is running its first astronaut recruitment campaign in more than a decade, says greater diversity is one of its goals. “We’re looking towards the moon… and Mars. We need some great astronauts in the future, ”ESA director general Jan Woerner told AP. Interestingly, it also opens up a blank space in the framework of the “Parastronaut” feasibility study to select an astronaut with a degree of physical disability.
Not only this, in 2016, ESA proposed ‘Moon Village’ to promote international harmony with a vision to unite countries and create an environment where both international cooperation and commercialization of space can take place. success.
It is true that the diversity of voice and sight allows great connection, learning and understanding among people from all walks of life. In addition, this type of inclusion gives women an equal opportunity to pursue – and succeed in – STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.
Over the years, space missions have seen a diverse next generation of explorers in terms of gender and ethnicity. For example, in 1978, NASA selected a group of astronaut candidates with a wide range of conditions who brought a wealth of experience and knowledge. Guion Bluford was NASA’s first African-American astronaut to fly into space on the 1983 STS-8 mission, the first of its four spacelights. Then, on the STS-47 mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavor in 1992, Mae C Jemison became the first African-American woman in space. As more and more women flew into space, NASA and the International Space Station in 2020 identified, in fact, women who did science aboard the orbiting laboratory. Now, there’s some amazing excitement about NASA’s Artemis program that introduces the latest Phase 1 plan to land the first and next female on the lunar surface in 2024.
The first woman in space was Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova who flew on Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963. The first American woman in space, Sally Ride, boarded the STS-7 Space Shuttle in June 1983. Other famous missions : Roscosmos cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya took part in a space mission in July 1984 and NASA astronaut Susan Helms was the first member of the female crew aboard the space station and a member of Expedition 2 from March to August 2001. Kalpana Chawla was the first woman of Indian descent in 1997 to travel into space as the mission expert and chief operator of a robotic arm aboard the U.S. spacecraft Columbia. In December 2006, Sunita Williams became the second woman of Indian descent to enter space on a 12-day repair mission to the International Space Station (ISS). But the 2013 astronaut class was the first with an equal number of females and males.