Galaxy Girls Read online

  A few years later, though, another avenue to space became possible when Russia started selling seats for a short trip to the International Space Station. Anousheh could afford the astronomical cost, and arranged to be the backup to a Japanese businessman, Enomoto Daisuke. She spent six months training in Russia, just in case. Only a few weeks before Enomoto was due to blast off Anousheh got a call—he could no longer fly due to medical issues. She couldn’t believe it and wanted to scream with excitement.

  Anousheh lifted off on September 18, 2006, and spent eight days visiting the ISS. She performed experiments for the European Space Agency and shared her experiences via her blog. Since her return from space, she has gone back to her business but also works to encourage more young women to follow careers in science and technology, and to make childhood fantasies come true.

  “You can make the future whatever you want to do with it, whatever you want to be . . . Everything around you is there to empower you to shape that future.”

  Ginger Kerrick

  FLIGHT DIRECTOR

  USA

  BORN 1969 →

  LEADING THE TEAM IN MISSION CONTROL, HOUSTON

  Ginger Kerrick vividly remembers the day when, age five, she got a book about astronomy and space from the library. She can still see its cover, and the dream it sparked to be an astronaut.

  At thirteen, Ginger wrote to NASA, saying, “I want to work here.” NASA replied with the advice to stay in school, work hard, study science and math, and participate in team activities. Ginger followed this to the letter and it paid off. Her first job at NASA was teaching astronauts about the systems used on the International Space Station but she still longed to be an astronaut herself. As soon as she was able to, she applied for selection; from 3,000 applications just 120 people were invited to interview, an excited Ginger among them.

  That high soon turned to devastation. During the medical part of the selection process, doctors found out that she had kidney stones, meaning she could never be an astronaut. Ginger went home miserable. How could she go back and teach astronauts knowing she would never join them? But then she had a stern word with herself: “Get over it, get a grip.” She realized that by teaching astronauts, a part of her would still be going into space.

  Ginger took every opportunity that came her way. As NASA prepared for the launch of the space station, they wanted two people to train alongside the astronauts, and she convinced her bosses she should be one of them. For four years she went through astronaut training, leading to even more exciting possibilities.

  The voice of mission control to the astronauts in space is called CapCom. Just one person talks to those in space, and since the beginning of mission control, this had only ever been done by other astronauts. But with all her training, Ginger was the perfect fit and she was appointed to the role—the first non-astronaut ever.

  CapCom sits next to the flight director, who is in charge of the large team of people at mission control and makes all the decisions, protecting the crew, the spacecraft and the mission. They plan the operations for every day, decide what should happen if anything goes wrong and have backup plan after backup plan. Watching from her CapCom seat, Ginger desperately wanted the job—and this time she got it.

  Ginger works alongside the astronauts every day. Over eight hundred people have flown in space, but fewer than a hundred have sat in the flight director’s chair in Houston’s mission control. Ginger’s life didn’t take the course she had hoped, but she is very happy about that and how things turned out.

  “There are going to be bumps in the road . . . You’re going to need to divert your course . . . And that’s OK . . . because you might be very pleasantly surprised at what lies in store for you on that new path.”

  Elena Serova

  AEROSPACE ENGINEER

  COSMONAUT

  POLITICIAN

  RUSSIA

  BORN 1976 →

  FIRST RUSSIAN WOMAN TO VISIT THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

  Elena Serova flew into space on September 26, 2014, the 540th person to make it there. Most of those represent the United States and Russia, but over thirty other countries have also had people fly their flag in space. With all the milestones that Russia has achieved in the history of human spaceflight, you might think lots of the women in space would be Russian. But when Elena headed to the International Space Station, she was just the fourth Russian woman in space and the very first to visit the ISS.

  Elena was born in a little village in Russia. Her dad used to take her to watch planes soaring through the air, inspiring her to set her sights on the stars. She felt so strongly about reaching the glittering night sky that she would often dream she was flying. She went on to specialize in test engineering at an aviation school, and then had jobs both at a spaceship maker and at mission control. Her skill and passion saw her selected as a cosmonaut and as she blasted off on that September day, she was finally living her dream.

  Traditionally, Russian culture sees being a cosmonaut as a typically male role, but Elena thinks gender makes no difference. She is not a “woman cosmonaut,” just a cosmonaut, but the media became fixated on her gender, asking lots of questions about how, as a woman, she would cope. When, in an interview with her male crewmates just before launch, she was asked how she would manage her hair, she fired back with her own question: “Aren’t you interested in the hairstyles of my colleagues?"

  Elena proved her talents by going on to do her job superbly. She stayed on the ISS for 170 days, working on many experiments, observing the Earth and maintaining the station. She also decided to carry out her own experiment. When cargo ships deliver new supplies to the ISS, ground crew put fruit and vegetables in so the cosmonauts can enjoy some fresh food; on Elena’s flight this included apples, which she loves. She decided to see if the seeds would grow in space: they did and she nurtured a little seedling for several weeks.

  Elena retired from the cosmonaut corps in 2016 when she was elected to serve in the Russian Parliament. Yet again she has proved that women can work in whatever job they wish and dreams really can become a reality.

  “We do it for others, for future generations, so that people on Earth live better, have better opportunities.”

  The Future of Space

  Now →

  Space is changing. Private companies are developing new vehicles to take fare-paying passengers on out-of-this-world journeys. The International Space Station is getting older and will eventually be retired and perhaps replaced, and China is planning its own outpost in the coming years. Space agencies and others are working on plans to send humans away from the relative safety and security of Earth’s orbit, perhaps back to the Moon and then on to Mars, searching for evidence of life on the Red Planet and proof that we are not alone in the universe.

  Liu Yang & Wang Yaping

  Kelly Latimer

  Gwynne Shotwell

  Frances Westall

  Simonetta di Pippo

  Ellen Stofan

  Monica Grady

  Gerda Horneck

  Anita Sengupta

  The First Person on Mars

  Liu Yang & Wang Yaping

  PILOT

  TAIKONAUT

  CHINA

  BORN 1978 →

  PILOT

  TAIKONAUT

  CHINA

  BORN 1980 →

  FIRST CHINESE WOMEN IN SPACE

  Liu Yang and Wang Yaping, the first female taikonauts, or Chinese astronauts, are leading the way in a new chapter of space exploration. Since the flights of Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard in 1961, hundreds of people have flown in space, but until 2003 all had been in American and Russian rockets and spacecraft. China then joined them with the Shenzhou 5 flight.

  Liu and Wang were both military pilots who were selected in China’s second group of taikonauts. The selection process was incredibly rigorous, demanding superhuman-like levels of perfection, and not only fitness, courage and the ability to work well in a team, but also no physical
scars, snoring or strong accents.

  After they and the rest of their class were selected, the strict training was conducted in great secrecy. Their names were not announced and only their parents knew they were planning to go to space. Some brilliant detective work was carried out by people outside China when a signed postcard was found for sale—a commemorative item that had accidentally been released early, and revealed the seven names of those in training.

  A few months before Shenzhou 9 was due to blast off, China announced that the three-person crew would include China’s first woman in space, but did not say whether it would be Wang or Liu. It was only on the day before launch, June 16, 2012, that they confirmed to the world it would be Liu Yang. She and her crewmates, Jing Haipeng and Liu Wang, were the first people to visit China’s small space station, Tiangong-1. They stayed there for eight days, performing experiments and testing out the new laboratory.

  Wang Yaping flew to Tiangong-1 a year later. During her fifteen days there, she delivered China’s first live science lesson from space, broadcasting to sixty million children across the country. She showed how different objects behave in the weightless environment, and confirmed that she hadn’t seen any UFOs.

  China has big ambitions for their growing space program, having already put a second small station, Tiangong-2, in orbit and flown a cargo ship to it. There are plans for a bigger space station, to send a robot to the Moon to bring back some rocks, and one day to send taikonauts to the Moon and Mars. It is not known if Liu or Wang will journey into space again but they have shown that women can play a vital part in China’s missions.

  “I believe in persevering. If you persevere, success lies ahead of you.”

  LIU YANG

  “When I looked out of the window for the first time, I realized the true meaning of the power of life . . . That kind of beauty was just beyond comprehension.”

  WANG YAPING

  Kelly Latimer

  TEST PILOT

  USA

  BORN 1964 →

  TESTING A NEW GENERATION OF COMMERCIAL SPACESHIPS

  Kelly Latimer never makes a flight without being prepared and having a plan. When her life plan went off course she didn’t give up and the outcome was unexpectedly positive.

  For as long as she can remember, Kelly wanted to be an astronaut. When she was at school she did lots of research and found out that most astronauts have been military test pilots so she set her sights on attending the military academy. Having only been a passenger on a commercial flight a couple of times, she assumed her parents would think she was crazy, so applied in secret. Only when she was called for a medical and needed their help to get there did she tell them. Happily, they were really excited and supportive.

  Kelly was successful and headed to US Air Force Academy in 1983. When at the end of the first year she started learning to fly, she worried and thought, “I really hope I like this—I’ve planned my whole career on it.” As soon as she took the controls on her first solo flight she knew she had made the right choice.

  After graduation she headed to the US Air Force Test Pilot School, and was one of the first handful of women to become a test pilot. As soon as she could, she applied to be an astronaut. She made it through to the last thirty-five candidates, but in the end wasn’t hired. Naturally, she was upset but she didn’t give up. Four years later, Kelly applied again, but when she failed to pass the medical tests for an extended stay in space, she knew her dream was over. She had to accept that she would never be an astronaut.

  Years later, Virgin Galactic was looking to hire test pilots to fly their first commercial spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo, which will take fare-paying passengers on a suborbital rocket trip into space and back. Out of the blue, Kelly got a phone call. This time she passed the medical tests and now her dream of going to space is alive again, and even better. She is currently a test pilot for the carrier aircraft which will take SpaceShipTwo high up into the atmosphere, and in the coming years will qualify to fly SpaceShipTwo as well.

  Not only will Kelly go into space herself, she will also get to take other people up who, just like her, have dreamed of space. She cannot wait to feel the acceleration when the rocket fires, and then the sudden cutoff and weightlessness, looking back at Earth. Kelly’s plan is working out after all.

  “Do the best you can at whatever job you are doing. Anything you do will give you experience.”

  Gwynne Shotwell

  ENGINEER

  COMPANY PRESIDENT

  USA

  BORN 1963 →

  PLANNING TO GET HUMANS BACK TO THE MOON AND ONTO MARS

  At school Gwynne Shotwell loved math and science and finding out how things worked. She thought about a career in engineering but was afraid that she would be called a nerd as it wasn’t cool. One day her mother took her to an event where she met a mechanical engineer who owned her own business and Gwynne saw that she was a brilliant person. She realized that being a female engineer wasn’t at all a strange thing to do, and she has spent her career doing some very cool things.

  Gwynne has worked in the space business ever since she left university, starting off as an engineer and then taking on management roles. In 2002 she joined SpaceX, a small, young company with big goals to develop new rockets and spacecraft and just six years later became their president.

  Gwynne’s role is to be responsible for all the day-to-day operations, using her engineering skills as a manager. SpaceX is developing new rockets and spacecraft which will soon be ferrying crew to the International Space Station, but they are planning on going farther. They have announced plans to send humans to lunar orbit and hope to send humans to Mars one day.

  As SpaceX has developed new rockets, they have had to invent all sorts of new technologies; they knew this would not be easy, but they weren’t afraid to give it a go. They have tested things over and over again, even when they suspect that they will not succeed. Sometimes their tests do end in failures, but they learn a lot from these and improve their designs as a result. As leader of SpaceX, Gwynne constantly pushes her team forward. Even when their new technology for landing rocket stages had had five good tests, Gwynne still said, “Come on, we’re not pushing hard enough,” knowing that perhaps they were playing it safe and that there was still more to learn.

  SpaceX is revolutionizing the world of space travel. They have managed to fly the first stages of their rocket back to Earth and carry out a pinpoint landing on a target on a barge in the middle of the ocean, a bit like trying to stand a pencil on its flat end. This is driving down the cost of rocket launches, which means that space travel should get cheaper and more accessible to all. Gwynne is pushing SpaceX hard so that in the not-too-distant future you will be able to buy a ticket and go into space yourself.

  “Do great work. I believe that you get recognized when you do great work. Figure out what you are there to do and do a great job.”

  Frances Westall

  GEOLOGIST

  SOUTH AFRICA

  UNITED KINGDOM

  FRANCE

  BORN 1955 →

  IS THERE LIFE ON MARS?

  Frances Westall is a geologist who has spent her life studying the oldest known rocks on Earth, looking at the evidence of tiny beings that once lived in them. She has also been investigating the possibility of tiny beings in even more unexpected places.

  Ever since people first thought about going into space, one destination has always held a great fascination: Mars. It is similar to Earth in some respects, nearby, and for centuries we have wondered if there is life there. Spacecraft first started visiting Mars in the 1960s and though we know there are no little green men, scientists still think there could have been primitive life-forms there, and maybe there still are somewhere under the surface.

  Currently, the Earth is the only place we know of in the whole universe that supports life, but we also know that the universe is unimaginably large. Our Sun is one of about a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, and astronomers estimat
e that there are at least a hundred billion galaxies in the universe. Most scientists think this means that somewhere out there, at some point, life has evolved in one form or another. Finding evidence of that will change the way we think of our beautiful blue-and-green planet—and one of the places we can look is Mars.

  In the beginning the Red Planet was much more similar to Earth than it is today, but scientists think that about 3.5 billion years ago the surface of Mars became inhospitable. Life might, however, have survived underground by extracting nutrients from the rocks, just as some creatures on Earth do today. Frances has studied fossilized bacteria, the oldest known form of life on Earth. She has done lots of experiments to show how these life-forms can be preserved in their underground habitat, and has looked at rocks to find out what early life was like and might still be like on Mars.

  Frances is one of the scientists working on the European Space Agency’s ExoMars rover, due to head to the Red Planet in 2020. It will use a drill to search for signs of life. She will be analyzing the data very carefully—but to really use her skills she would like to study the rocks herself. She is looking forward to the day when samples of Martian rock can be brought back by robots or even humans, and maybe she will find evidence that life has evolved somewhere other than Earth.