Astronaut Jessica Watkins is the epitome of Black excellence. She will soon become the first Black woman to join NASA’s International Space Station crew.
The 33-year-old will serve as a mission specialist on the agency’s SpaceX Crew-4 assignment, which is also known as the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Watkins became an astronaut in 2017. The upcoming April 2022 assignment will be her first journey to outer space, BET reported.
Watkins was born in Gaithersburg, Maryland but raised in Lafayette, Colorado. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford University.
She also holds a doctorate in geology from the University of California.
Watkins landed an internship at NASA at the start of her career and then worked at the agency’s Ames Research Center.
“I’ve always been interested in science,” Watkins said in a 2016 documentary. “Particularly being passionate about planetary science.” In an interview with the National Museum of African American History & Culture, Watkins further details how she is paving the way for kids to discover passions early on in life.
“As a younger person, I think your best bet is to get involved with as much as you can. I talked about kind of finding your passion, but the only way you’re really going to do that is if you get to experience lots of different things.”
