Remember when we thought that the internet would enable the entirety of humanity’s knowledge to be available to everyone at their fingertips?
Yeah, we forgot that quantity is not quality, and that giving a voice to every grifter and stupid idiot might just be our undoing.
Thoughts about home
For the Starkon festival
Vadim Baydashnikov
My sister and I were selected to go to Mars but she messed up and we ended up on the moon. I was mad at her so we started fighting and she took off my helmet. Turns out we could breathe on the moon? So we had fun and drew dumb faces on the moon's surface but then she disturbed the footprints so we decided to step where everyone else stepped to hide the evidence.
We came back to Earth ready to tell everyone you could breathe in space but then NASA had us killed.
Former NASA astronaut and Girl Scout alumna Jan Davis eating Girl Scout Cookies inside the shuttle Endeavour on Sept. 12, 1992. Image credit: NASA
Leadership, service, being prepared and doing your best – these qualities are exemplified by our astronauts, but are also shared by the Girl Scouts! Our astronaut corps has many scout alumnae, and over the years they’ve been breaking barriers and making names for themselves at NASA.
Today marks the 108th birthday of Girl Scouts in the United States, which has been inspiring generations of girls through leadership and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) activities to empower the explorers of today and tomorrow. To celebrate, we’re highlighting some of our Girl Scout alumnae over the years!
NASA astronaut and Girl Scout alumna Sunita Williams, who served as an International Space Station commander and spent 322 days in space during two spaceflight expeditions.
From left: Susan Helms, the first female International Space Station crew member; Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot and command a space shuttle; and Dr. Kathy Sullivan, the first American woman to perform a spacewalk.
Former Girl Scouts flew on more than one-third of the space shuttle missions and were pioneering forces as women began making their mark on human spaceflight. The first female crew member to serve on the International Space Station, the first to pilot and command a space shuttle and the first American woman to spacewalk were all Scout alumnae.
NASA astronaut Christina Koch smiles for a selfie while completing tasks during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station.
Koch went on to seal her name in the record books by surpassing Peggy Whitson’s record for the longest single spaceflight in history by a woman!
Understanding how the human body adjusts to things like weightlessness, radiation and bone-density loss is crucial as we look forward to embarking on long-duration spaceflights to the Moon and Mars. Thanks to former astronaut Scott Kelly’s Year in Space mission, we’ve been able to observe these changes on a biological male. Now, thanks to Christina’s mission, we are able to observe these changes on a biological female.
From left: NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins, Loral O’Hara and Kayla Barron
On January 10, 2020 we welcomed 11 new astronauts to our ranks – including three Girl Scout alumnae! As part of the first-ever class of astronauts under our Artemis lunar exploration program, Kayla Barron, Jessica Watkins and Loral O’Hara are now qualified for assignments including long-duration missions to the International Space Station, the Moon and Mars.
Q: A question from the Girl Scouts: What inspires you?
A: “Being a part of an awesome team has always been what inspires me. Whether it’s your Girl Scout troop, a sports team, your class – I think for me always the people around me who push me to succeed and support me when I make mistakes and help me become my best self is what inspires me to show up and do my best.” - NASA astronaut Kayla Barron
Q: How has being a Girl Scout helped you in becoming an astronaut?
A: “Being in the Girl Scouts when I was younger was really cool because, well, first it was just a group of my friends who got to do a lot of different things together. But it really gave us the opportunity to be exposed to a lot of different areas. Like we’d get to go camping. We’d get to ride horses and learn all of these different skills, and so that variety of skill set I think is very applicable to being an astronaut.” - NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara
Q: What would your advice be for the next generation of Girl Scout astronauts?
A: “My advice would be to find something that you’re passionate about. Ideally something in the STEM fields: Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics, and to pursue that thing that you’re interested in. Pursue that passion, whatever it is. And don’t give up on your dreams, and continue to follow them until you arrive where you want to be.” - NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins
To all the Girl Scouts out there, keep reaching for the stars because the sky is no longer the limit!
Astronaut applications are OPEN until March 31 for the next class of Artemis generation astronauts who will embark on missions to the International Space Station, the Moon and Mars. If you’re interested in applying to #BeAnAstronaut or just want to learn more, click HERE.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Space Shuttle loading onto the Boeing Shuttle Carrier.
The first direct visual evidence of a supermassive Black Hole.
At the center of Messier 87,a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster,resides 55 million light-years from Earth,has a mass 6.5-billion times that of the Sun.
Source: Event Horizon Telescope collaboration et al.
A chart depicting NASA’s deep space missions
R.I.P. Opportunity. This was truly an amazing mission. It was supposed to last only 90 days. But the little rover kept, well, roving - for 15 years - and it probably would have kept going if not for a worldwide dust storm that pretty much shut it down last year (but they only gave up trying to contact it yesterday).
How much you want to bet if we ever get to Mars and if they travel out to where Opportunity is parked, the moment they brush grit off the solar panels the thing will spring back to life?
Series: Color Photograph Files, 1965 - 2002. Record Group 255: Records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1903 - 2006.
Apollo 13 was intended to be the third Apollo mission to land on the Moon. The craft was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida on April 11, 1970. Two days into the flight, damaged wire insulation inside the oxygen tank in the service module ignited, causing an explosion which vented the oxygen tank into space. Without oxygen, the service module became inoperable and the lunar mission quickly turned into a mission to safely return the crew to Earth. The astronauts worked with Mission Control to shut down the command module in order to conserve the remaining oxygen, forcing all three astronauts into the lunar module. The astronauts continued to work with Mission Control to combat one technical failure after another until, on April 17, 1970, the crew landed safely in the South Pacific Ocean.
source: phillyarchives.tumblr.com
On the image above, Katherine Johnson is calculating spacecraft trajectories... by hand! Astronaut John Glenn trusted her more than computers, and her accuracy in orbital mechanics equations helped NASA to fly the first men to the moon. On top of that, she was a race and gender pioneer.
Johnson turned 100 yesterday (26 Aug), which also coincided with Women’s Equality Day. How incredible?!
Johnson at the opening of Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility at NASA’s Langley Research Center in 2017. Image credit: David C. Bowman/NASA
The story of Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, three brilliant black female scientists whose calculations were critical to the success of early manned NASA missions, is told in the movie and book Hidden Figures.
