15 or so years from now, these women could be among the first human beings to set foot on Mars.
For the first time (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) NASA’s latest class of astronauts is 50 percent female. A fearless group, Meir and her colleagues Anne McClain, 36, Christina Hammock Koch, 37, and Nicole Aunapu Mann, 38, have already flown combat missions in Iraq, braved the South Pole, and dived under thick layers of ice in Antarctica.
Despite the fact that women have been going to space for over 50 years, there are still people who question the skills and abilities of women who dream of going to space. It wasn’t that long ago that Russia’s female astronauts were questioned about their makeup before an eight-day stay in a mock spacecraft to prepare for a moon mission.
Make no mistake, these women aren’t any less skilled or prepared than their male counterparts just because they’re women. These women are highly trained. They’ve got The Stuff. They’ve got What It Takes.
According to one of the females Meir, she said “If we go to Mars, we’ll be representing our entire species in a place we’ve never been before,” McClain says, “To me it’s the highest thing a human being can achieve.”
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