Supermoon or Full Moon illustration. (Pixabay)
Hitekno.com – United States space agency, NASA is planning an exploration mission astronaut ke Month through a mission Artemis. Interestingly, what was sent was female astronaut first there.
It turns out that NASA has its own reasons for the plan to send the first female astronaut to the Moon on the Artemis mission.
On Monday (12/4/2021), marked the 60th anniversary of human spaceflight or 60 years since Soviet pilot and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space on April 12, 1961.
Following this historic moment, NASA wants to do something similar by landing the first humans on the Moon.
Throughout NASA’s Apollo program, the 12 astronauts sent to the lunar surface had only one thing in common: they were all male.
In NASA’s first decade, the profile for being an astronaut was very rigid. Most of the astronauts were test pilots in their 30s and all were white males.
Since then, slowly the definition of an astronaut has begun to develop and the profile of being an astronaut has evolved. Now, with the Artemis program, NASA aims to return humans to the surface of the Moon and this time including women.
According to Peggy Whitson, retired NASA astronaut and first female nonmilitary chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office, said the space agency is currently trying to promote interest in flights to the Moon.
“We realized that the last time we went to the moon, in the 60s, they were all men. So we fixed past mistakes. I think it’s to show a positive attitude regardless of background, gender and other differences,“kata Whitson.
NASA previously created milestones for women in 2019 by sending NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, who made the first all-women space trip on the International Space Station (ISS).
Therefore, in selecting astronauts to land on the Moon in the Artemis program, it is not an animal if one of them is a woman.
“These women qualify, “added Whitson, as quoted from Space.com, Tuesday (13/4/2021).
According to Vanessa Wyche, deputy director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said that today women represent a significant share of all aspects of NASA’s workforce, both from considerations of mission capability and workforce diversity.
“The last two astronaut classes selected also account for the highest percentage of women in history, 50 percent for the 2013 class and 45 percent for the 2017 class,” ucap Wyche.
Wyche also hopes that as NASA increases the diversity of the astronaut corps in Generation Artemis, the first women to land on the lunar surface can inspire other women around the world.
That’s NASA’s plan to send the first female astronaut to the Moon on the Artemis mission. (Suara.com/ Lintang Siltya Utami).
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