changetheratio:

Congratulation to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the successful launch of Mars Curiosity! Huge. You deserve to celebrate. And be celebrated. You’ve made Earth proud. 

I also celebrate NASA/JPL for how visible women were as part of this extraordinary event. Several times on the livestream last night people made reference to kids looking at the launch of the Mars Curiosity and seeing possibilities for themselves in STEM - and thanks to a number of prominent women on the team, little girls will see a path to space for themselves too. 

There were six members of the JPL team in the control room for the launch. In no particular order, they were:

• Pauline Hwang, Deputy Integrated Planning & Execution Team Chief
• Erisa Hines, Attitude Control System Engineer 
• Ann Devereaux, EDL Flight System Engineer 
• Kelly Clarke, Deputy Realtime Operations Team Chief/GDS Engineer 
• Leslie Livesay, Director for the Engineering and Science Directorate 
• Nagin Cox, Assistant Flight System System Engineering Manager 

…and present in rehearsal (unsure what role she had at launch; confirming)

• Tracey Nielson, Fault Protection System Engineer  

NASA commentator/reporter Gay Hill tied it all together as the night wore on. 

Also, those delightful @MarsCuriosity tweets are voiced by a trio of ladies, led by NASA’s social media manager Veronica McGregor (who opened the press conference after the launch), with Courtney O’Connor and Stephanie Smith. Still giggling over “GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!”

Anyhoo. Not that we’re indifferent to Bobak’s charms - please, we’re totally down - but we wanted to give shout-outs to the incredible ratio-changing people who were part of the MarsCuriosity’s terrific team. We’re sure there are more, but these were who we saw. See, visibility is important. Even from space. 

“Wow, look at how many women there are…” was one of my big takeaways from last night. So awesome.