{"id":17616,"date":"2020-12-09T19:24:40","date_gmt":"2020-12-09T11:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/two-washington-state-women-join-artemis-team-to-go-on-nasas-moon-missions\/"},"modified":"2020-12-09T19:24:40","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T11:24:40","slug":"two-washington-state-women-join-artemis-team-to-go-on-nasas-moon-missions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/two-washington-state-women-join-artemis-team-to-go-on-nasas-moon-missions\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Washington state women join \u2018Artemis Team\u2019 to go on NASA\u2019s moon missions"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_595446\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-595446\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-595446\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/201209-astronauts-630x338.jpg\" alt=\"Kayla Barron and Anne McClain\" width=\"630\" height=\"338\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/201209-astronauts-630x338.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/201209-astronauts-768x412.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/201209-astronauts.jpg 995w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-595446\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artemis astronauts Kayla Barron and Anne McClain have roots in Washington state. (NASA Photos)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>NASA today named the first 18 astronauts of its \u201cArtemis Team\u201d for missions to the moon \u2014 and two of the teammates trace their roots to Washington state.<\/p>\n<p>One of the pair, Anne McClain, was born in Spokane and went on to serve a six-month stint aboard the International Space Station in 2018-2019. She took on two spacewalks during her time in orbit, but because of a flap over spacesuit sizes, she narrowly missed out on being part of a high-profile, all-woman spacewalk.<\/p>\n<p>Now she has another chance at making history, as one of the candidates to become the first woman to set foot on the moon.<\/p>\n<p>She played down the gender angle during a news briefing today.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I was up on space station, we never even thought about genders or races or religions \u2014 or nationalities, even \u2014 until somebody asked us about them,\u201d McClain said through a mask that she wore to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. \u201cSo it has actually made us reflect on the reasons, and my takeaway is that the strongest teams are the most diverse teams.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The other woman on the team with Washington state roots is Kayla Barron, who considers Richland her hometown and was named to the astronaut corps in 2017. She hasn\u2019t yet been in space, but she has experience with living in close quarters by virtue of her service as a Navy submarine warfare officer.<\/p>\n<p>Barron also has another connection to the Seattle tech community: She earned her master\u2019s degree in nuclear engineering at the University of Cambridge, thanks to a scholarship funded by the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation.<\/p>\n<p>The first Artemis astronauts were introduced by Vice President Mike Pence during a meeting of the National Space Council, held today at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center. In addition to McClain and Barron, they include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Joseph Acaba<\/strong>, a California native who\u2019s flown three space missions.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Raja Chari<\/strong>, who was raised in Iowa and became an astronaut in 2017.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Matthew Dominick<\/strong>, a member of the Class of 2017 from Colorado.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Victor Glover<\/strong>, a California native who\u2019s currently on the space station.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Warren Hoberg<\/strong>, a Class of 2017 astronaut from Pennsylvania.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jonny Kim<\/strong>, a Californian who joined the astronaut corps in 2017.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Christina Koch<\/strong>, who set the women\u2019s record for longest spaceflight.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Kjell Lindgren<\/strong>, a space station veteran who was born in Taipei.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Nicole Mann<\/strong>, a Californian who\u2019s training to fly on Boeing\u2019s Starliner.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jessica Meir<\/strong>, a Mainer who lived on the space station in 2019-20.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jasmine Moghbeli<\/strong>, a New Yorker who became an astronaut in 2017.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Kate Rubins<\/strong>, a Californian serving her second space station stint.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Frank Rubio<\/strong>, a member of the Class of 2017 from Florida.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Scott Tingle<\/strong>, a space station veteran born in Massachusetts.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Jessica Watkins<\/strong>, a Colorado native who\u2019s part of the Class of 2017.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Stephanie Wilson<\/strong>, a veteran of three space shuttle flights.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cI give you the heroes who will carry us to the moon and beyond \u2013 the Artemis Generation,\u201d Pence said. \u201cIt really is amazing to think that the next man and first woman on the moon are among the names that we just read, and they may be standing in the room with us right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the years ahead, Artemis astronauts will train on the hardware that will be used during future missions to the moon \u2013 including NASA\u2019s Orion deep-space capsule, as well as landing systems that could include the spacecraft being developed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture and its partners.<\/p>\n<p>The first crewed Artemis mission is currently scheduled for 2023, and would involve a lunar flyby followed by a looping return to Earth. NASA\u2019s plan calls for sending an Artemis crew to the moon\u2019s south polar region in 2024, although that date might slip. Other missions would follow, leading to a sustained human presence at an Artemis Base Camp in the late 2020s.<\/p>\n<p>NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine emphasized that membership on the Artemis Team would not be limited to the nine men and nine women named today. He said that more astronauts \u2013 from NASA and from the space programs of partner nations \u2013 would be added as the program progressed.<\/p>\n<p>Assignments to specific missions will be announced at a later time.<\/p>\n<p>In what\u2019s likely to be his final appearance as chairman of the National Space Council, Pence said the Artemis Team\u2019s role won\u2019t be limited to moon missions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe made clear in our first year that the moon is not a final destination, but it\u2019s a base for developing and training for future deep-space missions,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going back to the moon, and then we\u2019re going to Mars and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>In related developments:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Trump administration issued a national space policy that puts more emphasis on human space exploration as well as cybersecurity and national security. Pence singled out China and Russia as countries of concern. \u201cRussia demonstrated a space-based anti-satellite weapon earlier this year,\u201d he noted. \u201cChina is developing a new manned space station, and its robotic spacecraft will return samples from the moon in just a matter of weeks.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Pence said two Florida facilities that figure prominently in America\u2019s space program have been renamed Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Patrick Space Force Base, in recognition of the past year\u2019s rise of the U.S. Space Force.<\/li>\n<li>The vice president also said \u201cwe are initiating today efforts to rename an upcoming United States military base after the late and great General Chuck Yeager.\u201d Yeager, who became the first test pilot to break the sound barrier in 1947, died this week at the age of 97.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Artemis astronauts Kayla Barron and Anne McClain have roots in Washington state. (NASA Photos) NASA today named the first 18 astronauts of its \u201cArtemis Team\u201d for missions to the moon \u2014 and two of the teammates trace their roots to Washington state. One of the pair, Anne McClain, was born in Spokane and went on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1022,304,1668,4777,1974,625,190,1488,332],"class_list":["post-17616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-anne-mcclain","tag-artemis","tag-astronauts","tag-kayla-barron","tag-mike-pence","tag-moon","tag-nasa","tag-national-space-council","tag-space-force"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17616"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}