Meet Jessica Watkins, The Only Black Woman In NASA's Newest Astronaut Class

Watch out, universe. NASA’s newest class of astronauts includes one woman with some serious black girl magic. NASA announced its first class of astronaut candidates since 2013 on Wednesday. The twelve candidates from various backgrounds and fields of study met some pretty rigorous requirements and made it to the top of the pool of 18,300 applicants, a record number for NASA. Among them is one black woman: Jessica Watkins. Y'ALL NASA JUST ANNOUNCED THEIR NEWEST ASTRONAUTS. SHOUTOUT TO BLACK GIRL SHINING JESSICA WATKINS!!!! ‍ pic.twitter.com/AA19DrEIHq— wikipedia brown (@eveewing) June 11, 2017 Watkins, a 29-year-old geologist from Lafayette, Colorado, told Blastr that she’s excited about NASA’s efforts to diversify STEM. “I’m very excited about the diversity on this team, this amazing group of people. I think that says a lot about NASA and their goals towards creating a diverse workforce,” she said. “I think the thing about diversity is that it allows for experiences that may not be exactly the same to bring different things to the table. And then the other side of that... is the idea of being able to be a face to others who may not see people who look like them in STEM fields in general, and doing cool things like going to space.” Watkins said that she always knew that she wanted to be an astronaut. After majoring in mechanical engineering at Stanford and admitting that wasn’t her passion, she s...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news