NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins will travel to the International Space Station on Wednesday for its historic first spaceflight.
Watkins, 33, will be the first black woman to perform a long-term mission on the space station, where she will live and conduct research in a microgravity laboratory. She will also be the first black woman to perform a spacewalk.
Her seminal journey made Watkins the fifth black female astronaut to go into space. Mejmieson was the first.
Astronaut candidate Jessica Watkins in front of a T-38 trainer plane at Ellington Airport
NASA announced last November that Watkins would serve as a mission specialist for the SpaceX Crew-4 mission, the fourth rotation of astronauts on the Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. It will be her first trip to space since becoming an astronaut in 2017.
NASA astronauts Robert Hines and Kjell Lindgren and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti joined her. The group took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 4 a.m. ET on April 27.
The Crew-4 team will conduct more than 200 experiments in space, including those involving smart clothing and artificial retinas.
Watkins was born in Maryland and now lives in Colorado. Previously, she worked as a geologist with a B.A. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from UCLA.
She joined NASA as an intern and has worked at multiple research centers in California. In her selection of astronauts, Watkins served as a postdoctoral fellow on the Mars Science Lab's scientific team on the probe Curiosity.
NASA astronaut candidate Jessica Watkins in 2017 prepares to be submerged in water
Watkins' journey to space fulfills a dream she's held since elementary school.
Watkins said in a video released by NASA last year: "The dream feels like a distant goal that is difficult to achieve, or a goal that you may achieve later in life." "But in reality, dreams come true only with one foot in front of the other every day." If you put enough of these footprints together, eventually they will become the path to your dreams. ”
She also hopes her space story will inspire other young people to pursue similar careers in science, technology, engineering and math.
"There's more room to invest in youth education, get young girls and young people of color involved at an earlier stage, and then provide them with the support and resources to keep them going down that path and pursue careers in STEM fields," Watkins said. ”