NASA female engineer oversees rocket construction aimed at first woman on moon – 60 minutes

The first woman to run the Marshall Space Flight Center says women at NASA have come a long way. They literally go further than ever if the rocket she is building launches her first sex on the moon. Jody Singer talks to Bill Whitaker for a 60-minute report on NASA’s Artemis Program, which plans to put a woman on the moon sometime in this decade. The story will be broadcast on Sunday, March 7, at 7pm on CBS.

When she joined NASA, Singer was once one of only a few female engineers there; today, she is on one of several Artemis programs. “Well, number one, I’d say we’ve come a long way. You know, Charles and I, we know we’ve known each other for at least 20 years. We were But we were, you know, sometimes the same women in the room, “a singer tells Whitaker.

“Charlie” is Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA’s first female startup director. She says 30 percent of the engineers in her firing room at Kennedy Space Center will be women when the first Artemis rocket goes off.

America’s space program has been animated since she was a child Blackwell-Thompson says. “I remember the last Apollo missions, the last couple. And I remember the curiosity and the surprise that I could go out and be able to look at the skies, and that our astronauts were visiting the moon. “

Whitaker examines the various aspects of the Artemis program – named for Apollo’s mythical twin sister – including nine males and nine females selected for the pool of astronauts. The program has been severely delayed and overpriced, and Lori Garver, a former NASA number two officer, complains that these problems could have been avoided if Congress had allowed it. ‘more reliance on commercial launch providers and less on expensive government contracts and political orders.

Blackwell-Thompson says going back to the moon promises more valuable experience. “There’s a lot more to learn. We’re still learning from the samples returned during the Apollo program,” she says. “There’s so much science – so much scientific discovery to come from returning to the moon.