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The time has come, NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins is now the first Black woman to make the trek to the International Space Station for an extended mission. On Wednesday, her journey began when she, alongside fellow astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines, and Samantha Cristoforetti hopped on the SpaceX Dragon to begin their mission to the ISS, NPR reports. The team traveled over 15 hours from the Kennedy Space Center located in Dallas, TX, and will remain on the trip over the course of six months. While she is not the first Black woman to go to space, the trip remains historic as it’s a huge leap into the future of space as it pertains to Black women. “We have reached this milestone, this point in time, and the reason we’re able to arrive at this time is because of the legacy of those who have come before to allow for this moment,” said Watkins when the news was announced and reported by AfroTech in November 2021. “Also, recognizing this is a step in the direction of a very exciting...
Meet the first Black woman to join the International Space Station (ISS) crew! Jessica Watkins is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut who will make history with her debut spaceflight. She is set to become the first Black woman to not only join the space station crew but also live and work in space for a long-duration mission on the orbiting outpost, according to TODAY. She will make her journey starting April 2022 aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule from the NASA Kennedy Space Center located in Cape Canaveral, FL. It is anticipated that the mission, known as Crew-4, will last six months. For Watkins, this is just yet another leap to making her dreams come true. Last December, NASA released a video where the geologist revealed that she had her eyes on a moon mission. “A dream feels like a big, faraway goal that is going to be difficult to achieve and something that you might achieve much later in life,” she said, according to NBC News. “But in reality,...
Out with the old, in with the…better! This Virginia middle school was once named after a Confederate soldier and now its name will be replaced with a Black shero. According to USA Today, Sidney Lanier Middle School was established over 60 years ago and was named after an American poet who also happened to be a private in the Confederate army. Now, it will be renamed to honor NASA mathematician, Katherine Johnson. Johnson is known for her contributions to helping NASA put the first man on the moon and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama at age 97 in 2015. In September 2020, the Fairfax city school board made the decision after a majority of residents called to have the name changed. Over 300 new names for the school were submitted and the approval to rename the school was made on Nov. 2, 2020. Other names in the running included Fairfax Woods, Legacy Independence and City, and the late great Maya Angelou....
We have Mark Dean to thank for being the brains behind some of the key components that brought us early computers in the 1980s. “A lot of kids growing up today aren’t told that you can be whatever you want to be,” the computer engineer once said, according to sources. “There may be obstacles, but there are no limits.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by AfroTech (@afro.tech) And there were certainly no limits when it came to the achievements of Dean. Upon receiving his degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tennessee in 1979, he headed to IBM, according to Our Tennessee. In the midst of his work, Dean earned a master’s degree from Florida Atlantic University and a doctorate from Stanford University in 1992. He also made history as the first Black person to become an IBM Fellow — the company’s highest distinction. “I ignored the people attempting to block my progress and had no limits to who I talked to and in sharing my opinion,” Dean said in a previous...
NASA aerospace research psycho-physiologist Dr. Patricia S. Cowings designed a program to help astronauts combat space sickness, according to Face2Face Africa . Born in Bronx, New York, Cowings, 71, dedicated her 34-year career at NASA to helping spacemen and women better adapt to outer space conditions by studying the effects of gravity on human physiology and performance. According to NASA, approximately half of the crew experience a range of symptoms of motion sickness during space travel, including mild forms of nausea or dizziness to severe malaise and vomiting. As a result of her research efforts, NASA patented Autogenic Feedback Training Exercise (AFTE), a six-hour procedure used to train people to control 24 physiological functions—breathing, heart rate, sweating, etc. — to reduce symptoms of motion sickness. During training, she teaches a subject to mentally evoke a sensation, like muscle relaxation, to bring about desired physiological changes, says NASA . “Astronauts are...
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced that it will rename its Washington D.C. headquarters after Mary W. Jackson, the first African American female engineer at NASA. Jackson, who was portrayed by Janelle Monáe in the box office hit “Hidden Figures,” started her career in the West Area Computing Unit of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. As a mathematician and aerospace engineer, Jackson authored and/or co-authored several research reports centered around the behavior of the boundary layer of air around airplanes. She also advocated for the hiring and promotion of the next generation of female mathematicians, engineers, and scientists. “Mary W. Jackson was part of a group of very important women who helped NASA succeed in getting American astronauts into space. Mary never accepted the status quo, she helped break barriers and open opportunities for African Americans and women in the field of engineering and technology,” said Bridenstine, according to a NASA...
We are living at the crossroads of the future, where automation , Artificial Intelligence, and code are being used heavily. Although the use of technology is increasing, it is neither new nor the first time workers have had to deal with the possible threat of being replaced by machines. In the film, Hidden Figures , NASA transitions from human computers to machine computers. Mathematicians, Katherine Johnson , Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson broke down gender and racial walls while learning how to operate the machines that had the potential to replace them. Today, we see more and more companies moving toward automation to cut costs and drive profits. Technical innovations come at a rapid pace, but once these innovations are on the market, these machines and computers will need someone with the technical skills to keep production running. This is our opportunity as Blacks in America. Since we have not transitioned to a world of total automation, we have an opportunity to get the...
NASA announced plans to rename a facility after legendary mathematician Katherine Johnson paying tribute to her lasting impact on space exploration. In a February 22 ceremony, Johnson, a West Virginia native, was presented with a building on the NASA complex in honor of her illustrious career. The Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) Facility will serve as a building dedicated to safety programs. ABC News reports the facility houses NASA’s highest-profile missions “by assuring that mission software performs correctly.” For 30 years, Johnson’s calculations were used for some of the most fundamental missions in the early days of NASA. She calculated the trajectories for Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 mission in 1961, John Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission in 1962 and multiple Apollo missions before the use of computers. She was deemed a “human computer” whose story became subject of the 2016 film Hidden Figures. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine showered her with...
We've heard of the iconic "hidden figures" on whose work the American space program was built, but there are many, many others, including Raye Montague, who, according to THV 11, has died at the age of 83. Montague passed away at Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Wednesday. Pulaski County Coroner Gerone Hobbs said Montague suffered from congestive heart failure , though a formal cause of death hadn't been filed yet, Arkansas Online reports. Montague's contribution to history came when she, an internationally registered professional engineer, developed a computer program that created rough drafts of ship specifications. Used in developing the first-ever computer-generated Navy ship, the FFG-7 frigate, her work fundamentally changed the way the U.S. Navy builds its vessels. Montague was feted for breaking the glass ceiling in her industry and was inducted into the Arkansas Women's Hall of Fame last year. “I had to run circles around people, but when they...