Of the 16 women in NASA’s astronaut ranks, one of them is likely to be chosen as the first woman to walk on the moon as early as 2024. The selection probably won’t be made for some time, but one or more of these women will make history more than half a century after the first men walked on the moon.
Tracy Caldwell Dyson pauses for a portrait in her spacesuit before going underwater in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on July 8, 2019. Photo by Bill Ingalls/UPI
Kayla Barron dons her spacesuit in Houston on July 12, 2019. Photo by Bill Ingalls/UPI
Loral O’Hara stands in front of a T-38 trainer aircraft at Ellington Field near Johnson Space Center on June 6, 2017. Photo by Robert Markowitz/NASA
Nicole Aunapu Mann attends the announcement that she was being assigned to the Boeing CST-100 Starliner Crew test flight to the International Space Station on August 3, 2018. Photo Bill Ingalls/NASA
Jessica Meir sits for her portrait in an Extravehicular Mobility Unit, the suit used for spacewalks, on September 11, 2018. Photo by Josh Valcarcel/NASA
Christina Koch collects and packs Mizuna mustard greens grown and harvested inside the International Space Station’s veggie botany facility on November 13, 2019. Photo courtesy of NASA
Stephanie Wilson poses for a portrait at Johnson Space Center on July 11, 2019. Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA