Jessica Watkins to be first Black woman on International Space Station Crew

NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins has been selected as part of an upcoming mission to the International Space Station, and that will make her the first Black woman to be part of the space station crew.

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Watkins is scheduled to fly to the space station in April 2022, NBC News reported. She will join NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Robert Hines, as well as European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, on the SpaceX Crew-4 mission.

Watkins will be the first Black woman to join the International Space Station crew for a long-term mission. Only seven of the 249 people who have boarded the International Space Station were Black, the New York Times reported.

This will be Watkins’ first trip into space since she became an astronaut in 2017. She was born in Gaithersburg, Maryland, but considers Lafayette, Colorado, her hometown. She has a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and a doctorate in geology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

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