MERRITT ISLAND, Florida (Achieve3000, May 12, 2022). Jessica Watkins' career has taken off. It's transporting her to a place she's been dreaming about since childhood…outer space. On April 27, 2022, Watkins blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 33-year-old is the mission specialist on NASA's SpaceX Crew-4 mission, and she will work and live on the International Space Station (ISS) for six months.
Watkins' trip to space is a historic marker for NASA as well as a high point in her own career. She's the first Black woman to be part of a long-term mission on the ISS. More than 50 years ago, the agency began encouraging women and people of color to join its astronaut corps, which had lacked diversity. The first astronauts were military test pilots, who "were usually White males of only a certain height," current NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told NPR News. Astronauts on the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions in the 1960s were all White men.
Crews became more diverse over the next decades. Mae Jemison, a physician and engineer, became the first Black female astronaut in space in 1992, and others followed. Watkins is the fifth Black woman to journey to space. She acknowledged the groundbreaking leaders whose achievements foreshadowed her own. "It's important to recognize…that we are building on the foundation that was laid by the Black woman astronauts who've come before me," she said.
Watkins' mission to the ISS is the culmination of a journey that started when she attended an afterschool program at Judith A. Resnik Elementary. The school's name piqued Watkins' curiosity about the pioneering female astronaut...and sparked her interest in space. A self-proclaimed "rock nerd," she was fascinated by geology from an early age. "My parents always stressed the importance of getting a good education and finding something that you're passionate about," Watkins said in a NASA profile.
She therefore built a STEM career crucial to getting access to the stars. Watkins enrolled at Stanford University and got a bachelor's degree in geological and environmental sciences before earning a PhD in geology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her graduate work focused on rock formations on Mars, in part to get NASA internships and exposure to careers in planetary geology.
She went on to become a geoscientist at the California Institute of Technology. Her work included planning the daily activities of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover and investigating the Gale Crater on the red planet. When she applied for NASA's astronaut class of 2017, she was one of only 12 candidates who made the cut…out of a record-breaking 18,300. After five years of rigorous training and preparations to do research in zero gravity, it was finally her turn to step up to the launchpad.
Watkins' mission on the ISS probably won't be her last voyage into space. She's been tapped for NASA's Artemis program, which aims to put people back on the moon by 2025. That means this trailblazer could be the first woman to walk on the moon.
Watkins said the secret to realizing your goals, no matter how lofty, "is just putting one foot in front of the other on a daily basis. And if you put enough of those footprints together, eventually they become a path towards your dreams."
Question 2
2 / 4
The article states:
The first astronauts were military test pilots, who "were usually White males of only a certain height," current NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told NPR News.
The author's purpose for writing this passage was to __________.
suggest that military training is the best preparation for flights into space
point out that Watkins' lack of flying experience could affect her work on the mission
highlight the significance of Watkins' achievement by presenting its historical context
argue that the height requirements for astronauts were discriminatory and unfair