![]() ![]() ![]() NASA astronauts Jessica Meir (in spacesuit) and Christina Koch during a fit check ahead of the first and only all-woman spacewalk in October 2019. Related: Spacesuit sizing stymied a historic NASA moment, and it may always be tricky The new NASA-funded generation of spacesuits for ISS and Artemis program missions on the moon in 2025 or so will accommodate a more representative set of body sizes, such as the spacesuit set unveiled earlier this month for Artemis 3, which were made for NASA by Houston company Axiom Space. Fortunately, that disparity may start to close soon. (To date, all professional agency astronauts have disclosed themselves as male or female and no other genders have been listed.)Īlso in 2019, NASA statistics showed only 15 women had ever done an EVA in the five decades since spacewalks began in 1965, compared with more than 200 men. Helping Kavandi in this effort were other NASA astronauts-turned-leaders like Nancy Curry Greg and Marsha Ivins.Īt first, Kavandi said, females were not brought into the EMU conversation at all due to the design issue, so that was something she and others worked to challenge: "The argument was, well, they're not strong enough anyway, so why are we bothering? That really eliminated opportunity for a lot of females who absolutely were strong, and who spent many hours in the gym and were quite capable."įor perspective, so far only a single EVA - in October 2019, by Jessica Meir and Christina Koch - has been an all-woman affair, and even that spacewalk was delayed a few months due to a part sizing issue in orbit. In her ISS role, Kavandi sought to address vast gender disparity in extravehicular activities (EVAs), also known as spacewalks, as the extravehicular mobility unit (EMU) suit used by NASA was developed in the 1970s when astronauts were all male it is therefore sized for larger bodies. Related: Pioneering women in space: A gallery of astronaut firstsįormer NASA astronaut Janet Kavandi flew on three space shuttle missions between 19 and spent more than 33 days in space overall. Lucid herself was one of the first-ever women astronauts hired by the agency in 1978, and she continued in numerous management roles afterward, like serving as NASA's chief scientist. Kavandi also was branch chief for the International Space Station (ISS) and did her best to be inclusive for women in that role, following on from mentors such as NASA astronaut Shannon Lucid. Kavandi created a diverse selection board and asked for fairness and diversity in the agency's astronaut choices, which created the first-ever astronaut class with equal splits between male and female selectees. ![]() One of her many management roles at NASA was chair of the 2013 astronaut class selection committee, which she performed while serving as director of flight crew operations at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Kavandi is also partially responsible for getting more women to space in the last decade. Kavandi forms part of a small but rapidly growing minority of non-male astronauts NASA says 72 women have flown to space as of March 2023, although the number grows when considering suborbital jaunts. ![]()
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