The Press Stories
NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps will be earning background in 2021 as the initial Black woman astronaut to grow to be a crew member on a mission to the Global House Station.
The house agency declared on Tuesday that Epps would be joining Sunita Williams and Josh Cassada for NASA’s initial operational crewed flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. Williams, who will be embarking on her third expedition, and Cassada, on his very first, were being assigned to the mission in August 2018. On Twitter, NASA’s administrator Jim Bridenstine explained that Epps is a “fantastic addition.” Epps responded with a movie sharing her many thanks.
Epps was picked as a member of the 2009 astronaut class after earning her doctorate in aerospace engineering and working for the CIA. She was slated to be a part of a June 2018 ISS expedition just before the posture was all of a sudden handed onto fellow woman astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor, who grew to become the initial Hispanic woman to reside on the ISS.
At the time, Epps’s brother Henry claimed that racism at NASA was the purpose for the swap — a sentiment that Epps has never ever commented on publicly. NASA didn’t right away reply to Yahoo Life’s request for remark, but responded in 2018 to Henry Epps’s statements, telling the Washington Submit, “Diversity and inclusion are integral to mission accomplishment at NASA and we have a assorted astronaut corps reflective of that method.”
NASA verified to CNBC that six Black Individuals have frequented the space station in the previous, while none for an extended period of time, earning Epps the initially Black girl astronaut to make a 6-thirty day period expedition.
Epps has shared almost nothing but her exhilaration on Twitter, producing that she is “looking ahead to the mission” and sharing that enjoyment with her crew customers.
