spare 10 minutes of your time to be inspired!

In our previous blog 'What's out there?' we suggested it is never too early to encourage the young to think about space and science. In a follow-up to that item, we present an inspirational video that every young (and not so young) space enthusiast should watch! Spare just 10 minutes of your time to hear the inspirational accounts of 3 female astronauts who were launched into space at 25,000 miles per hour in their journeys to the International Space Station (ISS).​ Kathryn D. Sullivan and Nicole Stott are former NASA astronauts, who between them spent 127 days in orbit, while in 2006, Anousheh Ansari became the first Iranian in space when she arrived at the ISS as a self-funded space tourist for 9 days.  

As of July 2016, only 60 women have flown in space, out of a total of 537 space travellers. Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first women in space on 16th June 1963, when she launched on Vostok 6, and there followed a gap of 19 years before Svetlana Savitskaya became the second women in space (Soyuz T-5, 19th July 1982). Meanwhile, the first US female astronaut to launch was Sally Ride, happening almost 20 years to the day after Tereshkova (Space shuttle Challenger, STS-7, 18th June 1983). Perhaps this short film called Dot of Light, written and directed by Eliza McNitt, in collaboration with Google, will inspire more young ladies to follow the path of the sciences and to dream about one day heading into space, to the Moon, or even Mars. 
Blog written by Mary Upritchard​