Jessica Watkins' work has spanned from Earth to Mars.
Watkins was selected to join NASA's 2017 astronaut class before reporting for training in August of that year, as he was assigned to fly to space for the first time in 2022. Watkins was one of the 12 new NASA astronauts.
Watkins is set to become the first black woman in history to fly in an extended space mission when she leaves the station in six months.
Jessica Watkins will set a new record in space.
On May 14, 1988, Jessica Watkins was born. Her family moved to Lafayette, Colorado where she attended high school.
After graduating from high school, Watkins went to college and earned a degree in geological and environmental sciences. Watkins was a member of the USA Eagles team that placed third at the Rugby World Cup Sevens in 2009.
While her rugby career was a pretty serious one, Watkins also plays soccer and enjoys rock climbing and skiing.
At the University of California, Los Angeles, Watkins earned a PhD in geology. She studied Mars soil to support the Phoenix Mars lander mission.
Watkins was involved in a number of space missions. Watkins was a chief geologist for an analog mission with NASA at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. She was a science operations team member for the NASA Desert Research and Technology Studies analog mission.
She was a graduate research fellow at UCLA and studied the surface of Mars. emplacement is the process or state of settling into place.
She studied our planet and the Red Planet through geological mapping and the use of images and data. At UCLA, Watkins was a teaching assistant and won a scholarship for academic excellence and outstanding original research.
During her time as a graduate student, Watkins worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where she studied near-Earth asteroids spotted by the agency. She worked on the Mars 2020 and Mars sample return missions, as well as the Perseverance rover, which landed on the Red Planet.
Watkins began her research career at the California Institute of Technology, working in the division of geological and planetary sciences. Watkins was a member of the science team at NASA. She worked with the team to plan the daily activities of the rover.
Watkins was the assistant coach for the Caltech women's basketball team.
Watkins was part of the new astronauts class. She began her training in August of this year.
The two years of training for astronauts included extensive coverage of the systems aboard the International Space Station as well as information about spacewalks.
This preparation included training in water and wilderness survival, as well as flying T-38 supersonic jets and practicing geology. In the past, survival training has included camping with an emphasis on survival as opposed to leisure.
This type of training is typical of NASA astronauts who have had to be proficient in flying vehicles, scientific knowledge, various technical skillsets and the challenging physical aspects that come along with flying to and living in space.
Watkins completed another mission as part of her training. Watkins was part of the crew that worked at the underwater habitat off the coast of Florida as part of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations.
Watkins will fly to space for the first time on the Crew-4 mission.
The crew will stay on the space station for six months to conduct research in the microgravity environment.
Watkins will be the first black woman to accomplish an extended mission in space.
In December 2020, Watkins was announced as one of 18 NASA astronauts who would serve on the space agency's Artemis Team, a group of astronauts that would train and eventually fly Artemis missions to the moon.
Watkins and her Artemis teammates will be training to fly on NASA's moon landers, as well as the Space Launch System megarockets. NASA recently announced that it will choose a second company to build a lander as well as the one that has already been selected by the space agency for use as a moon lander with Artemis.
Gateway is a planned station that will house traveling astronauts as it orbits the moon and, farther into the future, other deep-space destinations.
Artemis 1 is an uncrewed flight around the moon in mid-2022, followed by Artemis 2 and the first crewed moon landing of the Artemis program. Artemis 3 is expected to launch no sooner than 25 years from now, but experts think it could push to a later date.
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