Peggy Whitson - astronaut

"Raised on an Iowa farm, but grew up to be a commander of a spaceship." If you're a sci-fi nerd like me, this story sounds very familiar. But in this case, I don't mean Captain James T. Kirk.

I'm talking about Peggy Whitson, biochemistry researcher, NASA astronaut, and former NASA Chief Astronaut. She was the first woman to command the International Space Station when she arrived as part of Expedition 16, on October 10, 2007. After her two trips to space, she's NASA's most experienced female astronaut, with more than 376 days in space. And she's going back again in November 2016 as part of Expedition 50/51. At 56, she will be the oldest woman to travel in space.

Peggy was born on February 9, 1960, in Mount Ayr, Iowa, and grew up on a farm nearby. She learned all about determination and hard work watching her parents as they got up before dawn every day to keep the farm running. When she was nine her class watched the live footage of Neil Armstrong taking his first steps on the moon. She was moonstruck. Or, at the very least, space-struck. In 1969, it seemed unlikely that a little girl could become an astronaut, but by the time she graduated from high school things had changed. The same year she received her diploma and looked out at her options was the same year NASA began accepting women. "[A]t that point I thought: this is going to be something I'm going to try and do."

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Kickstart This!

Quick... how many women in science can you name? (Hint: I sincerely hope it's more than Marie Curie, or I haven't been doing my job.)

When Anouk Charles and Benoit Fries went looking for STEM inspiration for their daughter, they realized their lack of knowledge about female scientists. When they asked their friends for help and learned how sadly common this situation was they took matter into their own hands. With the help of an illustrator friend, they developed their Women in Science Card Game, featuring leading women in science throughout history.

The fundamental idea is to familiarize players with women who have left their mark on science and often did not receive the recognition they were due. This isn’t just a question of fairness and gender equality, it’s also a matter of offering role models with whom young girls can identify.

It’s hardly surprising that few girls display an interest in physics or mathematics when they never hear about women who made extraordinary discoveries in these spheres.

20% of the profits generated by the game will be donated to local organizations promoting women in science.

They game play is easy enough for even younger players to be able to pick up the game and start playing right away -- match four cards of the same color to form sets or "labs" with the first player to make three labs the winner -- but interesting enough to hold the attention of older players. Each card features a clever illustration and a short description of what makes that scientist special.

I just love this idea! As a kid, I would have loved just reading the cards, using them as a kind of pocket encyclopedia. In fact, I could see parents or teachers using these cards to introduce new scientists to young people, and prompting them to seek out more info on each woman.



I wish I could order several sets to give them away as birthday and holiday gifts throughout the year. I'll have to settle for one set, and have to invite my favorite little future-scientists over to play cards.

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Happy Birthday - Jerrie Cobb

Geraldyn "Jerrie" M. Cobb (born March 5, 1931)

Jerrie Cobb has spent her entire life chasing her dreams. And passing them, more often than not.


Image of Jerrie Cobb in the cockpit of a plane. Source: San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive

She was born in Oklahoma during the Great Depression to Lt. Col. William H. Cobb and Helena Butler Stone Cobb, both of whom encouraged her love of flying. After taking lessons, her father, being a pilot himself, accompanied her on her first flight when she was just 12 years old, both of them tucked into the open cockpit of his 1936 Waco biplane .

Four short years later, Jerrie was flying solo, "barnstorming" all over the Great Plains in a Piper J-3 Cub. She earned money by leafleting small rural areas to announce big events, like the circus coming to town, and used that money to buy the gas to enable to her give rides to folks in order to get more flight time under her belt.

It paid off. By the time she was 17, she earned her private pilot's license, and by 18, she had earned her commercial license.

She didn't slow down one bit. By 19, she was teaching others to fly. And at the age of 21, she was a ferry pilot, delivering military fighters and bombers to locations all over the world.

Even with all this work, she still faced enormous amounts of discrimination. Still, she took any and every flying job she could get, including patrolling along pipelines to check for damage, and even crop dusting, just so she could continue to earn higher ratings, including the Multi-Engine, Instrument, Flight Instructor, and Ground Instructor ratings, and eventually her Airline Transport license.  When she wanted to buy a surplus WWII Fairchild PT-23, which would provide her a way to support herself, she played semi-professional softball for the Oklahoma City Queens to earn the funds.

A born adventurer, she wasn't content to merely fly. She wanted to soar. And break records. And she did, left and right, and traveled the world doing so. She regularly flew in air shows, and even earned the Amelia Earhart Gold Medal of Achievement while attending the Paris Air Show.

Before she was 30, she'd already set a slew of new world records, including speed, absolute altitude, and distance. At the age of 28, in 1959, she set the world records for both the nonstop long-distance flight and the light plane speed record. The next year, she broke the world altitude record for lightweight aircraft, hitting a remarkable 37,010 feet. At the same time, she became one of the few women executives work in the aviation field. She was hired by Aero Design and Engineering Company, the company that made the Aero Commander aircraft she flew during her record-setting flights.

The 1960s brought even more excitement for Jerrie, but also some stumbling blocks for the advancement of women in aviation. In May of 1961, Jerrie was appointed as a consultant to the NASA space program, as part of an unofficial project to test women using the same stages of evaluation for the (male) Mercury astronauts. Thirteen of the women in her test cohort passed all three stages with flying colors, and even surpassed some of the men, and were referred to as the Mercury 13. But because women were officially banned from flying jet fighters, none of them had any jet fighter flying experience, and they were refused admittance to the space program.

She didn't give up hope. In 1963, she testified in front of Congress about the question of allowing women to participate in the space program as astronauts. She faced such esteemed men as astronaut John Glenn, who said, "Men go off and fight the wars and fly the planes, women stay at home. It's a fact of our social order." (Later that year, the USSR launched Valentina Tereshkova into space, making her the first woman in space, a full 20 years before Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.)


As for what became of the Mercury 13, well... you can read Erin Blakemore's piece on that sad story.

Once it was clear the dream of becoming an astronaut wouldn't pan out, she changed her focus to a new mission here on Earth. A devout Christian, Jerrie began a new career offering her flying services for humanitarian needs -- transporting supplies, surveying air routes in remote areas. She has received numerous honors for her missionary work in South America, and was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1981.

In 1999, the National Organization for Women led an effort to send her to space to test the effects of aging, similar to John Glenn's return mission in 1998. Sadly, that trip didn't pan out either.

More recently, this real-life super hero was the inspiration for the fictional character Helen Cobb in Kelly Sue DeConnick's Captain Marvel series.

If you like the work I do here on SRPS, please support me!

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For more information:

Makers: Women in Space
Wikipedia: Jerrie Cobb
The Ninety-nines: Women in Aviation
Women in Aviation: Jerrie Cobb
The Sunday Oklahoman: "State-Born Aviatrix Yearns for Space. 2nd Astronaut Bid Supported." The "Mercury 13 Were NASA's First Women Astronauts," by John Shepler

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You may also be interested in:

Women's History Month - Harriet Quimby
In 1911 Harriet took flying lessons, and became the first woman to get a license in the United States. The excitement and challenge must have been exhilarating! And, true to her theatrical nature, she went on exhibition in the U.S. and Mexico wearing a purple satin flying suit she designed herself.

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Happy Birthday - Amelia Earhart
[N]ow and then women should do for themselves what men have already done - occasionally what men have not done--thereby establishing themselves as persons, and perhaps encouraging other women toward greater independence of thought and action. Some such consideration was a contributing reason for my wanting to do what I so much wanted to do.

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Latin@ Heritage Month - Latinas in Space!
This is the first in a series of posts about Latinas working in the Space Industry. There is only one Latina who has gone to space (so far), but there are many more working on the ground as engineers and scientists with NASA. Their stories are just as important and inspiring for young women looking at a career in STEM. 

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Latin@ Heritage Month - Latinas in Space 4

This is the fourth in a series of posts about Latinas working in the Space Industry. As you can read the first, second, and third posts, there are Latinas working at or for NASA in a wide variety of roles -- doing science, designing equipment, etc. Here are four more smart Latinas to celebrate!

Laurie Y. Carrillo
Laurie Y. Carrillo is a Materials Engineer, currently conducting thermal analysis to support the development of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, NASA's next generation spacecraft. She creates computer models to simulate the heating of a spacecraft from internal systems and external environment heating. For this, she uses her knowledge of orbital mechanics, heat transfer, materials, programming, and applied mathematics.

Laurie was born in San Antonio, Texas. Her father was a migrant farm worker, and her mother was the daughter of a trash collector. She attended Robert E. Lee High School in San Antonio, Texas, for two years, but spent her junior and senior years at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science, a residential program for students who are gifted in math and science, where she graduated in 1994. She then earned her BA in Mathematics and Computational & Applied Math, as well as a BS in Materials Science and Engineering from Rice University in 1998. In 2002, she received a MS in Aerospace Engineering, with an emphasis in Space Operations, from the University of Colorado. She returned to Rice University to complete her PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Her area study involved numerical radiative heat transfer at the nanoscale, with applications in space technology, nanorobotics, advanced energy systems, and high speed computing systems.

Her career at NASA started as an intern the summer after her freshman year at college. But her dreams about space started much earlier. She spent many evenings lying on towels alongside her cousins, looking up at the stars, listening while her grandmother told them stories. She was particularly fond of a story about Salina, a young girl who was taken up to heaven and allowed to touch a star. Later, when she saw a Sesame Street segment where Sally Ride launched Oscar the Grouch out of his trash can, she realized there was a place where she could go to work as an adult.

In 1998, she was hired as a flight controller. She spent the next five years in the Advanced Space Propulsion Lab conducting thermal analysis. She also served as the Development Project Lead for the Space and Life Sciences Astromaterials team, and as the Lab Manager for the Advanced Curation Laboratory at Johnson Space Center.

Over her career, she has received many awards, served on several prominent professional committees, and even was involved in the Space Generation Summit held at the World Space Congress. Laurie has been selected by the Society of Women Engineers to receive the Past Presidents Award based on outstanding academic achievement as well as strong engineering potential. She was chosen as a Hispanic Engineering National Achievement Award Conference/Daimler Chrysler Scholar in 2005 and 2008. She was selected as a Zonta International Amelia Earhart Fellow for 2006-07. In addition, Laurie led the Mexican American Engineers and Scientists Houston Professional Chapter to receive the highest award that a chapter could receive-Professional Chapter of the Year for 2001. "[A]ny time a Latina breaks a barrier, this opens the door for her to serve as a role model for those following behind. The more Latinas that enter technical fields, the more they will inspire younger generations of Latinas to consider these fields.”

Links: 
Laurie Y. Carrillo profile on Latina Women of NASA
Reaching for the Stars - Latinas at NASA


Pat Carreon
Pat Carreon is an electrical engineer who's worked at Goddard Space Flight Center and Johnson Space Center.

She was born in San Antonio, Texas, where she grew up honoring her roots in Mexico and Spain. She earned her BS in Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University, and her MS in Electrical Engineering from George Mason University.

While at Goddard, she was the network engineer for the Hubble Space Telescope Vision 2000 project. She also wrote flight software for the Gamma Ray Observatory and helped develop the Data Distribution Facility. In 1998, she transferred to Johnson Space Center, where she worked in the Missions Operations Directorate conducting operations research and strategic development. She also served as the lead for the development of the command servers and data archive server, supporting Shuttle and Space Station missions and simulators.

She is currently working with the Advanced Operations Cadre, reevaluating the way NASA performs operations on future missions and supporting the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations and Desert Research, where astronauts live in an underwater habitat, and Technology Study, where humans and robots are tested in an extreme desert environment in a meteor crater in Arizona.

She serves on the board reviewing proposals for newly designed launch vehicles, as well as examining the requirements necessary to return to flight space shuttle effort, and defining the future role of orbiters and crew exploration vehicles. She also spends time as a mentor for other NASA engineers through the Johnson Space Center mentorship program, as well as mentoring high school students interested in pursuing careers in engineering and science.

Links: 
Pat Carreon profile on Latina Women of NASA


Adriana Ocampo
Adriana Ocampo is a planetary geologist and the Science Program Manager at NASA.

She was born in Barranquilla, Columbia, on January 5, 1955. Her family moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, while she was still an infant, and then again to Pasadena, California, when she was 15, in 1970. In 1983, she graduated with a BS in Geology from California State University, Los Angeles. She then went on to earn her MS in Planetary Geology from California State University, Northridge, in 1997, with a thesis on the Chicxulub impact crater in Mexico. The Chicxulub crater was the major factor that caused a mass extinction 65 million years ago on our planet. Ocampo and her colleagues also discovered the Aorounga Crater Chain in Chad in 1996. She completed her PhD at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Starting in 1973 while she was still in high school, she volunteered at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and returned as an employee during her summer breaks throughout college.

From 1998 to 2002, she worked as a Program Executive for Space Science missions, including missions with the European Space Agency, Russia, Japan, and Argentina. She also served as the desk officer for NASA's Office of External Relations working with Spain, Portugal, and Latin America.

From 2002 to 2004 she worked as a senior research staff member conducting research in comparative planetology of Solar System bodies. She was a member of the Mars Express Project Scientist Team, and worked to develop and implement the payload-commissioning plan. She also acted as the deputy project scientist for Venus Express, developing science operation architecture and an educational outreach plan.

In 2005, she was the Investigation Scientist for the Mars Odyssey Gamma Ray Spectrometer/High Energy Neutron Detector and the Mars Program Science Division and the Solid Earth and Natural Program.

In 1992, she received the Woman of the Year Award in Science from the Comisión Femenil. She also received the Advisory Council for Women Award at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1996 and the Science and Technology Award from the Chicano Federation in 1997. In 2003, she was selected among the 50 most important women in science by Discovery Magazine. She has served on the National Board of Directors and as the Chair of International Affairs Committee of the US Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, working to establish technical programs of cooperation of university student exchange programs between the US and Mexico. She is a member of The Planetary Society Advisory Council, the Association of Women in Geo-sciences, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the Society of Women Engineers mentoring young girls.

Links: 
Adriana Ocampo biography on Wikipedia
Adriana Ocampo profile on Latina Women of NASA


Berta Alfonso
Berta Alfonso is an electrical and computer science engineer who designed and developed computer hardware and software for projects supporting the Space Shuttle program and the International Space Station. She is currently serving as a University Affairs Office at Kennedy Space Center, leading educational programs connecting NASA with students and faculty around the world.

She was born in Cuba, but her family moved to the United States when she was six. She was enrolled in first grade without knowing any English. Fortunately, she found that math didn't have a language barrier. After high school, she earned her BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Miami. She then went on to earn a MS in Systems Engineering and Management from the University of Central Florida.

She joined NASA as a Design Engineer, where her first design project was a circuit card to emulate the Payload Signal Processor, a shuttle flight box that sends commands to shuttle payloads. Her card was used to test payloads on the ground before being launched, to ensure things work properly once in space.

She has also worked on software used for processing the health and safety of Space Station modules. And she has designed a flight interface card to receive data for analysis while in flight.

She is now serving as the Lead for Eduction in many agency-wide project managed at Kennedy Space Center, effectively merging her two passions: education and engineering.

"Do research and tinker. Learn to use your library resources, and to find reliable information on the internet. Ask questions to people working in fields that interest you. Learn by doing! Remember: You don’t always have to be right. All you have to do is to be willing to learn."

Links: 
Berta Alfonso profile on Latina Women of NASA
Berta Alfonso profile on Mission Control website

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Latin@ Heritage Month - Latinas in Space 2

This is the second in a series of posts about Latinas working in the Space Industry. As I mentioned in the first post, there has only been one Latina who has gone into outer space: Ellen Ochoa. But there are far more Latinas who work at or for NASA. And while the goal of having more Latinas in space is an excellent one, it's far more important to celebrate the women working on the ground -- doing science, designing equipment, etc. You can also read posts three, and four.

To encourage more young Latinas to pursue a career in STEM, it's important tell the stories of those who've come before them. Representation matters! As Dr. Patricia Gándara, The Civil Rights Project at UCLA, says in this excellent video from the Eva Longoria Foundation, "there is often a lack of role models in these communities -- somebody who has already gone to college and been pretty successful in one area or another."

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Latin@ Heritage Month - Latinas in Space!

This is the first in a four-part series of posts about Latinas working in the Space Industry. You can read posts two, three, and four. There is only one Latina who has gone to space (so far), but there are many more working on the ground as engineers and scientists with NASA. Their stories are just as important and inspiring for young women looking at a career in STEM. And, as we saw in the recent LatinaStyle article, we desperately need more young Latinas in STEM careers.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a million new jobs are created every year in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math–better known as STEM– and by 2022 there will be nine million STEM jobs available. Although the U.S. Census Bureau states that Latinos are the largest growing minority group in the country, labor statistics demonstrate that Latinas only have two percent of all the STEM jobs currently in the U.S.; it remains a field dominated by white males.

I don't intend this to be an exhaustive list by any means. Simply an opportunity to highlight some of the amazing women working in the space program.

Ellen Ochoa
Ellen Ochoa was the first Latina in space. But that's only one of her many achievements in her career with NASA.

She grew up at a time when space exploration was just beginning. She excelled in school, in both the arts and sciences, but as as a girl she never dreamed of becoming an astronaut herself. She actually thought she'd grow up to be a professional musician. It wasn't until her friends encouraged her to take a closer look at Physics as an option.

She was hooked. Her love of math and science became her route to trying to figure out the world around her. She earned a BS in Physics from SDSU, and then a MS and PhD in engineering from Stanford. It was while she was studying at Stanford that Sally Ride joined the astronaut team, and a whole new world opened up for young women like her. She immediately began pursuing a career with NASA, joining the NASA research team studying optical systems. In fact, she is a co-inventor on three patents relating to optical systems.

In January 1990, she was selected by NASA for the astronaut program. Her first flight was aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1993. By the time she returned from her last mission she'd logged almost 1000 hours in space.

In 2002, she became Deputy Director of Flight Crew Operations, and in 2006, she was promoted to Director. She has also served as the Chief of Intelligent Systems Technology at Ames Research Center. But most recently, in January 2013, she became the first Latina and second woman to be appointed as Director of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

In addition to being the head of Johnson Space Center, she is also a classically trained flutist and a private pilot.

“I am committed to space flight, human exploration, learning how to do more and more. I like the fact that it is much bigger than myself, important to my country and to the world. I like being able to contribute in this way.”

Links: 
Ellen Ochoa biography on Wikipedia
Ellen Ochoa biography on NASA website
Ellen Ochoa profile on American Physical Society website


Serena Auñón
Serena Auñón is the second Latina to become a NASA astronaut.

Serena Auñón earned a BS in Electrical Engineering at George Washington University, and then an MD at the University of Texas Health Science Center in 2001. That might seem like an abrupt change in course. She explains she wanted to be able to apply the critical thinking skills she learned as an engineer to helping people. Medicine is her passion. She served her two residencies in internal medicine and aerospace medicine. She also earned a Master of Public Health degree in 2006.

She joined NASA as a flight surgeon, and in 2009 was selected as an astronaut candidate. Although she has yet to have her chance at space travel, she is a key person on the support team for the latest group of astronauts and cosmonauts heading to the International Space Station. She uses her medical expertise to support astronauts in space as well as helping to design equipment and technology.

In 2012, she piloted a DeepWorker 2000 submersible as part of a NASA/NOAA NEEMO 16 underwater exploration mission off the coast of Florida.

"Always follow your passion. If you go down a path you think others want you to follow, you'll be miserable. What you love is your passion, and everything else will work out."

Links: 
Serena Auñón biography on Wikipedia
Serena Auñón piece on NBCLatino.com


Candy Torres
Candy Torres is a strong advocate for girls, and especially Latinas, pursuing a career in STEM.

She grew up in South River, New Jersey. She knew early on that she wanted to be an astronaut, but being a Puerto Rican girl in the '60s, that wasn't necessarily in the stars. She had to confront the prejudices of the day, but she was determined to not let it get in her way. While she waited for her chance, she devoured as much science fiction as she could to keep her dream alive. She was mesmerized by the use of technology to solve problems in shows like SuperCar, Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, and, of course, Star Trek.

At the age of 14, she joined the Civil Air Patrol where she learned marching, drilling and wilderness survival. Oh, and she learned to fly a plane. She graduated from high school in 1971, and attended classes at Douglas College (now part of Rutgers), where she managed to cobble together a self-made major in space sciences from classes in vastly different fields such as geology, engineering, and astronomy. It was her professor in astronomy that helped her land her first job after graduation, working on the Copernicus OAO-3C Satellite at Princeton. From there, she was hired to convert large data files for NASA. The work was being done by hand, and was time consuming and quite boring. Torres, ever the innovator, taught herself FORTRAN so she could write a program to do the conversions in a more systematic way.

In 1983, she drove for 21 hours to be on site when Sally Ride made her historic journey into space. She knew that this would be an important opening for other young women to join the space program. And then, only a few weeks later, she was offered her dream job: a contractor position with McDonnell Douglas working on the software for the Space Shuttle program. Since then, she has also worked on projects supporting the International Space Station.

"I had a very curious mind, and I was not willing to let go of that."

Links: 
Candy Torres biography on STEMWomen.net
Candy Torres biographical piece on CNN
Candy Torres piece in The Atlantic


Dr. Nitza Margarita Cintrón
Dr. Nitza Margarita Cintrón is the chief of NASA Johnson Space Center Space Medicine and Health Care Systems Office. What started out in 1979 as a two year plan to create the Biochemistry Laboratory turned into a full-fledged career spanning three decades.

Born in Puerto Rico, she traveled often during her childhood, following her Army father around the world. After his retirement, the family settled in Puerto Rico, where she excelled in school, and was a self-driven learner when it came to the sciences and math. Even at an early age, she dreamed of being a scientist. She earned a BS in Biology from the University of Puerto Rico, and in 1972 entered the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology program at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, earning her PhD there in 1978.

She applied to the Astronaut Corps and passed the finals, but poor eyesight limited her to earth-bound work. But it was her academic credentials that impressed the folks at NASA, and they offered her a position as a NASA scientist. In addition to her work on the Biochemistry Laboratory, she also served as the project scientist on the Space Lab 2 mission as part of the shuttle Challenger launch in 1985.

NASA sponsored her studies at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, where she graduated in 1995 with her MD, specializing in internal medicine. She was named the director of the Life Sciences Research Laboratories in support of medical operations, a position that enabled her to continue to focus on both the science and medical aspects of space travel.

She was awarded the Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, the highest science honor given by NASA. And in 2004, she was inducted into the Hispanic Engineer's National Achievement Awards Conference Hall of Fame in Los Angeles.

"In everything you do, always do you very best, be your very best. Everyone has skills and talents, and if you do your very best with them, you will always be a winner."

Links: 
Nitza Margarita Cintrón biography on Wikipedia
Nitza Margarita Cintrón biography on Latina Women of NASA

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