'I started reading my children those wonderful, beautifully illustrated picture books,' Slade said. 'We can start.'Īfter seven years as a mechanical engineer, Slade made the career switch to become a children's book author.

Slade pointed to herself, 'He's here,' she said. 'We are waiting for the test engineer, he hasn't showed up yet,' the man said. She could not understand why they were all standing around, waiting to begin the test. One day, shortly after arriving at the company, Slade and a couple of colleagues gathered for a rocket component test. Slade's parents supported her interests and after graduating from Valparaiso University with a mechanical engineering degree in 1986, she went on to work at McDonnell Douglas Space Systems as a test engineer. Still, she remembers sneaking away in coat closets to work on math workbooks for fun. Growing up in Goshen, Indiana, during the late 1960s to early '70s height of the Space Age, Slade knew of no women in the science field, let alone women who had gone to space. Mae Jemison followed in 1992 as the first black woman in space. Twenty years later, in June 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. The first woman was Russian astronaut Valentina Tereshkova in 1963. The year 2024 became the new target, theoretically falling just in time for the end of a second Trump presidential term.Īs of March 2019, of the more than 500 people who have flown to space, just 64 have been women. This was 'just not good enough' for Vice President Mike Pence, who in March urged NASA to speed up the timeline. NASA took up the Trump administration's mission and responded with a plan to have humans on the moon by 2028. A sustainable moon base could serve as a necessary pit-stop once Mars missions begin. However, President Donald Trump, in 2017, ordered the agency to redirect its focus back to the moon. The 'first woman and next man' will step foot on the moon's southern pole, a place no human has gone before.įollowing the Columbia space shuttle tragedy in 2003, NASA's mind and money have been long set on Mars. The goal is to not just make a return visit to the moon's surface by 2024, but to create a sustainable U.S.

This new program is named Artemis, after the Greek goddess of the moon and Apollo's twin sister.

Daring Dozen by Suzanne Slade