Mae Carol Jemison is an American engineer, physician, and former NASA astronaut. She became the first African-American woman to travel into space when she served as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992. Jemison joined NASA's astronaut corps in 1987 and was selected to serve for the STS-47 mission, during which the Endeavour orbited the Earth for nearly eight days on September 12–20, 1992.
Helen Patricia Sharman is a British chemist and cosmonaut who became the first British person, first Western European woman and first privately funded woman in space, as well as the first woman to visit the Mir space station, in May 1991.
Charlotte Digges "Lottie" Moon was an American Southern Baptist missionary to China with the Foreign Mission Board who spent nearly 40 years (1873–1912) living and working in China. As a teacher and evangelist she laid a foundation for traditionally solid support for missions among Southern Baptists, especially through its Woman's Missionary Union.
Deep-space exploration is the branch of astronomy, astronautics, and space technology that is involved with exploring the distant regions of outer space. However, little consensus has been reached on the meaning of "distant" regions. In some contexts, it is used to refer to interstellar space. The International Telecommunication Union defines deep space to start at a distance of 2 million km (1.2 million mi) from Earth's surface. NASA's Deep Space Network has variously used criteria of 16,000–32,000 km (9,900–19,900 mi) from Earth. Physical exploration of space is conducted both by human spaceflights and by robotic spacecraft.
Teen Mom is an American reality television series broadcast by MTV. It is the first spin-off of 16 and Pregnant, and it focuses on the lives of several young mothers as they navigate motherhood and strained family and romantic relationships. Its first run consists of four seasons originally aired between December 8, 2009, and October 9, 2012, while another four seasons have aired during its second run that began on March 23, 2015. Season 9 premiered on January 26, 2021.
Creola Katherine Johnson was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights. During her 33-year career at NASA and its predecessor, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform the tasks. The space agency noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist".
Rowan Blanchard is an American actress and activist. She began acting as a child, and played Rebecca Wilson in the action film Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (2011). She rose to prominence after playing Riley Matthews on the Disney Channel series Girl Meets World (2014–2017), which earned her nominations at the Kids' Choice, Teen Choice, and Young Artist Awards. She then starred in the TNT/AMC series Snowpiercer (2020–2024) and the Hulu coming-of-age film Crush (2022).
Yajaira Sierra-Sastre is a Puerto Rican materials scientist, educator, and aspiring astronaut. She was part of a six-person crew, and the only Hispanic, selected to participate in a four-month-long, Mars analog mission funded by NASA. Sierra-Sastre aspires to become the first Puerto Rican woman to travel to outer space.
The Space Between Us is a 2017 American romantic science fiction film directed by Peter Chelsom and written by Allan Loeb, from a story by Stewart Schill, Richard Barton Lewis, and Loeb. The film stars Gary Oldman, Asa Butterfield, Britt Robertson, and Carla Gugino, and follows a teenage boy, born on Mars, who travels to Earth.
Kellie Gerardi is an American commercial astronaut who is known for a sub-orbital spaceflight with Virgin Galactic as a payload specialist in 2023. She has worked at Palantir Technologies since 2015, where she is a lead on the company's mission operations team. She is also a popular science communicator and a social media influencer.
Hidden Figures is a 2016 American biographical drama film directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder. It is loosely based on the 2016 non-fiction book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly about three female African-American mathematicians: Katherine Goble Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who worked at NASA during the Space Race. Other stars include Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, Aldis Hodge, and Glen Powell.
Storm Reid is an American actress. After early roles in the television show A Cross to Bear (2012), the drama film 12 Years a Slave (2013), and the superhero film Sleight (2016), she played the lead role of Meg Murry in the fantasy film A Wrinkle in Time (2018). She garnered further recognition with roles in the thriller film Don't Let Go (2019) and the horror film The Invisible Man (2020).
Music in space is music played in or broadcast from a spacecraft in outer space. The first ever song that was performed in space was a Ukrainian song “Watching the sky...”(“Дивлюсь я на небо”) sang on 12 August 1962 by Pavlo Popovych, cosmonaut from Ukraine at a special request of Serhiy Korolyov, Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer from Ukraine. According to the Smithsonian Institution, the first musical instruments played in outer space were an 8-note Hohner "Little Lady" harmonica and a handful of small bells carried by American astronauts Wally Schirra and Thomas P. Stafford aboard Gemini 6A. Upon achieving a space rendezvous in Earth orbit with their sister ship Gemini 7 in December 1965, Schirra and Stafford played a rendition of "Jingle Bells" over the radio after jokingly claiming to have seen an unidentified flying object piloted by Santa Claus. The instruments had been smuggled on-board without NASA's knowledge, leading Mission Control director Elliot See to exclaim "You're too much" to Schirra after the song. The harmonica was donated to the Smithsonian by Schirra in 1967, with his note that it "...plays quite well".
Abigail Harrison, also known as Astronaut Abby, is an American internet personality and science communicator, particularly in the area of the United States space program. Harrison is the founder and current leader of The Mars Generation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. She is not an astronaut.
Vanessa E. Wyche is an American engineer and civil servant who is currently serving as the Director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) since 2021. A NASA employee for over 30 years, Wyche served previously as Deputy Director and Lead Engineer of JSC.
Joy Adowaa Buolamwini is a Canadian-American computer scientist and digital activist formerly based at the MIT Media Lab. She founded the Algorithmic Justice League (AJL), an organization that works to challenge bias in decision-making software, using art, advocacy, and research to highlight the social implications and harms of artificial intelligence (AI).
Lady Diana Trujillo Pomerantz is a Colombian-American aerospace engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She currently leads the engineering team at JPL responsible for the robotic arm of the Perseverance rover. On February 18, 2021, Trujillo hosted the first ever Spanish-language NASA transmission of a planetary landing, for the Perseverance rover landing on Mars.
Niamh Shaw is an Irish scientist, engineer, STEM communicator, writer, and performer.
Tiera Guinn Fletcher is an American aerospace engineer. She is a designer and structural analyst for NASA's Space Launch System.
Alyssa Carson is an American social media influencer and space enthusiast known for her ambition from a young age to be the first person on Mars. She has attended numerous space camps and has visited every NASA visitor center. She uses the social media branding NASABlueberry, but NASA has publicly stated she is not affiliated with NASA or any space program.
