Representation matters. It's how children connect who they are with who they can become. While children of color today can see many more possible accomplishments and career paths, space exploration has remained largely white. There are Black astronauts, but not many, and they're not much talked about. On Nov. 16, NASA made a welcome announcement: geologist Dr. Jessica Andrea Watkins will serve as a mission specialist on the upcoming SpaceX Crew-4 mission aboard the ISS. She is scheduled to spend six months on the space station and will be the first Black woman to live and work there.

Watkins earned a bachelor's degree in geological and environmental science from Stanford University and a doctorate in geology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She started her career with NASA as an intern working at the Ames Research Center in California and at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where she conducted her graduate research on the emplacement mechanisms of large landslides on Mars and Earth. She was selected as an astronaut in 2017, and this will be her first trip to space.

Along with her education, Watkins brings broad experience to her new mission. As an intern at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, she analyzed near-Earth asteroids, and has also served on an "analog" mission in the Utah desert, participating in spaceflight training on Earth. She lived and worked underwater on the Aquarius as part of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations, and later she was part of a science team collaborator for the Mars rover Curiosity.

Crew-4 consists of Watkins, her NASA colleagues Kjell Lindgren and Robert Hines, and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. They are scheduled to launch in April 2022 on a Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This is the fourth rotation of astronauts on the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station.

Watkins is also one of 18 astronauts selected to join NASA's Artemis team. According to Meghan Bartels from Space.com, these astronauts will be the first to set foot on the moon since the crew of Apollo 15, 50 years ago. The Artemis program will see the first woman and the first person of color reach the moon.

Having grown up admiring astronauts like Sally Ride (the first American woman in space) and Mae Jemison (the first Black woman in space), Watkins hopes her work aboard the ISS will inspire more children of color to aspire to be astronauts. She told Colorado Public Radio last year, "I do hope that all young girls, especially young girls of color that are interested in STEM and interested in exploring space, feel empowered to do so.... I just hope young girls across the country feel that way now."