Monday, July 27, 2015
Women in STEM: The Women of The New Horizons Mission!
On Friday, NASA released the first color close-up photo of
Pluto! In honor of this momentous
occasion, and because we love space, we wanted to highlight the women involved
in making this glorious human feat a reality.
Women make up
approximately 25 percent of the New Horizons flyby team. The female team
members were photographed at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory on July 11, 2015, just three days before the spacecraft’s closest
approach to Pluto. Kneeling from left to right: Amy Shira Teitel, Cindy Conrad,
Sarah Hamilton, Allisa Earle, Leslie Young, Melissa Jones, Katie Bechtold,
Becca Sepan, Kelsi Singer, Amanda Zangari, Coralie Jackman, Helen Hart.
Standing, from left to right: Fran Bagenal, Ann Harch, Jillian Redfern, Tiffany
Finley, Heather Elliot, Nicole Martin, Yanping Guo, Cathy Olkin, Valerie
Mallder, Rayna Tedford, Silvia Protopapa, Martha Kusterer, Kim Ennico, Ann
Verbiscer, Bonnie Buratti, Sarah Bucior, Veronica Bray, Emma Birath, Carly Howett,
Alice Bowman. Not pictured: Priya Dharmavaram, Sarah Flanigan, Debi Rose,
Sheila Zurvalec, Adriana Ocampo, Jo-Anne Kierzkowsk Sheila Zurvaleci.
Credits: SwRI/JHUAPL
NASA describes The New Horizons Mission as “[a] mission
[to] help us understand worlds at the edge of our solar system by making the
first reconnaissance of the dwarf planet Pluto and by venturing deeper
into the distant, mysterious Kuiper Belt – a relic of solar system formation.” Fingers crossed that one day we will find a
habitable planet where we can settle an intersectional feminist utopia! I guess I won’t pack my bags just yet.
