Diversity aboard the ISS

In April, SpaceX’s crew Dragon will carry its fourth team to the International Space Station (ISS), a mission that will be an important one for diversity in space exploration. Among the team’s crew is mission specialist Jessica Watkins, who will become the first black woman to travel to the ISS.

Watkins was accepted for NASA’s astronaut training program in 2017 and completed her training in 2019. This will be her first space mission, but Watkins is no stranger to NASA missions after completing stints at the agency’s Mars

Desert Research Station, near Hanksville, Utah, and its Aquarius Reef Base, located off Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

The SpaceX Crew-4 mission to the ISS is set to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in April 2022. Alongside Watkins will be fellow NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Robert Hines and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. The team’s sixmonth mission will involve work in the microgravity laboratory of the ISS.