Less support from women in space exploration? Time to change perception

International News

In March 2019, Vice President Mike Pence stated that the goal of NASA should be to return humans to the Moon by 2024. While the cost of such a venture isn’t known yet, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has supported the effort and gone as far as naming the 2024 Moon mission, Artemis.
The selection of Artemis is no mistake. In Greek mythology, Artemis was the sister of Apollo as well as goddess of the Moon. The name also signals a new focus on the role of women in space exploration.
From my perspective as a space policy analyst, this is an important message for NASA to send. Women have been historically excluded from the space program, especially early on. While women have made inroads both as astronauts and more generally within the NASA ranks since, there remains a significant gender gap in support for space exploration.
And for Artemis to succeed in getting the first woman to the Moon by 2024, a lot of political and public support will be required. But a recent AP-NORC poll found there is not a lot of enthusiasm for going back to the Moon. Only 42% of the 1,137 respondents supported the idea, 20% opposed it, and 38% didn’t care either way. NASA’s efforts to reach out to women should help them garner support, but it is by no means guaranteed.
Gathering of female astronauts and Johnson Space Center’s former director and its first female director. Seated (from left): Carolyn Huntoon, Ellen Baker, Mary Cleave, Rhea Seddon, Anna Fisher, Shannon Lucid, Ellen Ochoa, Sandy Magnus. Standing (from left): Jeanette Epps, Mary Ellen Weber, Marsha Ivins, Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Bonnie Dunbar, Tammy Jernigan, Cady Coleman, Janet Kavandi, Serena Aunon, Kate Rubins, Stephanie Wilson, Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, Megan McArthur, Karen Nyberg, Lisa Nowak. NASA-JSC

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Footprints on the Moon: An interview with space archaeologist Alice Gorman

International News
Perhaps in 50 more years we will be sick of hearing stories from people who have travelled to the moon and back. tdlucas5000 / AAP, CC BY Alice Gorman, Flinders University
Alice Gorman is a space archaeologist working on space junk in Earth orbit, deep space probes, and planetary landing sites. She explores what we can learn from these items and places as material objects, and also their heritage significance – what they actually mean for people and communities on Earth.
Alice features in The Conversation’s podcast series To the Moon and beyond, published to mark the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing of July 1969. This is an edited extract from Alice’s interview with The Conversation’s Sarah Keenihan, published as part of our occasional series Zoom Out.
There is a lot of documentation about what’s been left on the Moon – but it’s amazing how much we don’t know.There are things that have gone missing, like part of a thermal blanket that got ripped off a landing module. There are things that may have gone up there that we didn’t know about. An Apollo test module went walkabout in solar orbit and has only recently been found again.
This is actually where archaeology becomes interesting. I don’t believe, for example, that anyone has ever fully documented the position of all of the boot prints of the Apollo astronauts on the Moon.

 We know what they look like. We know that they’re there. They’re reproduced in countless photographs of the Apollo sites.But has anyone ever actually catalogued them? Has anyone studied them for what they can tell us about how these human bodies moved across the lunar landscape, how they adapted to this environment so different to that of Earth?Read More