This is the fourth in a series of AEIdeas posts to celebrate Women’s History Month. The posts look at the progress women have made in different areas.
As the world knows by now, Sunita Williams touched down after nine months in space. Among her many accomplishments, Williams, the Commander of the International Space Station, has walked more miles in space than any other female astronaut. She’s also run a marathon in space! The crew arriving at the Space Station on March 16 to put her on a journey home also included two women, US army colonel and astronaut Anne McClain and astronaut and pilot of the crew Nichole Ayers on her first space flight. These women have all had distinguished careers and are part of a group of 61 female astronauts.
As Williams returns to earth, an all-female crew is preparing to take to the skies on Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, its 31st mission. The crew will include singer Katy Perry, journalist Gayle King, and Lauren Sanchez, perhaps best known as Jeff Bezos’s fiance. Sanchez is a certified helicopter pilot and aviation CEO, having founded Black Ops Aviation, the first female-owned and operated aerial film and production company. Also on the flight will be NASA astronaut and astrophysicist Aisha Bowe and Amanda Nyugen, a bioastronautics research scientist.
Women have also made extraordinary strides in exploring the ocean’s depths. Marine biologist Sylvia Earle, who holds a PhD in phycology (the study of algae), is probably the best known. She led the first all-female team in 1970 that spent two weeks under water, and she was the first woman to walk the ocean floor at 1,500 feet below the surface. She was the first female chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and holds the record for the deepest untethered dive.
NASA and NOAA collaborate on many projects and share data. Whether in the worlds of deep sea or outer or deep space exploration, highly talented and credentialed professional women are making extraordinary scientific contributions and making history. Rather than focusing on the distance yet to go for women in these areas, it is important to celebrate the progress women have made. Their presence in these areas is no longer a curiosity. It is the new normal on the frontiers of science.
The post Women Making History: From the Stars to the Seafloor appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.
