Space Technology and Exploration: A Success Achieved by Women Irrespective of the Boulevard of Discrimination and Challenges

Author(s): Arunima Roy

Abstract:

Space has been an interest to many yet the mysteries of space have never been solved without facing any kind of difficulty. The exploration to space has been a kind of adventure and race to fulfil it started with several countries ultimately leading the first man to even explore it. The difficulty in reaching space was more down on Earth than up in the sky. But the countries tried to make the impossible more possible. Space science was hard as knowing the unknown that was not even known was tough let alone interpreting it. The position of women placing a stand was perceived more in a gendered manner rather than through capability. Becoming the first women in space, Valentina Tereshkova has put a hope in several women that journey in space was smooth for women but the history could be repeated only again with Sally Ride and Svetlana Savitskaya almost after 20 years. Post the first women in space, the MERCURY 13 project did start to train women to become astronauts yet the gendered norms ended the hopes of women abruptly. The incapability of the IBM computers to produce accurate and reliable data for the launch of the space shuttle made Katherine Johnson to fulfil the task of sending the first man to space, making America proud. Even after such great achievements Katherine Johnson and others, famously known as the Human Computers, received little or no recognition for their complex mathematical solving. Margaret Hamilton made the Moon mission possible with not so known software programming yet recognition as per Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin had never reached her.

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