UC has sent more women to space than any other school in the solar systemMarch 4, 2024 Article by: Julia Busiek
UCLA alum and NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins aboard the International Space Station. NASASally Ride spent six years getting ready to go to space. She mastered open water survival and the minute complexities of the spaceship control panel, flew fighter jets with the windows blacked out and aced mind games while smushed against the wall of a giant spinning centrifuge.
But none of this could have prepared her to keep a straight face when NASA engineers asked her how many tampons she’d need for her week-long mission: Would one hundred suffice?
"That,” she reportedly replied, “would not be the right number." (...)
After NASA, Ride joined the faculty at UC San Diego, where she taught physics and studied electromagnetism. She retired from UC San Diego in 2007 and died of cancer in 2012 at 61. (...)
Kathryn Sullivan
UC Santa Cruz Class of 1973
First spaceflight: October 5, 1984
Anna Lee Fisher
UCLA Class of 1971, UCLA medical degree 1976, UCLA master’s of science 1987
First spaceflight: November 8, 1984
Margaret Rhea Seddon
UC Berkeley Class of 1970
First spaceflight: April 12, 1985
Tamara E. Jernigan
UC Berkeley master’s in astronomy, 1985
First spaceflight: June 5, 1991
Mary E. Weber
Ph.D. in physical chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1988
First spaceflight: July 13, 1995
Tracy Caldwell Dyson
Ph.D. in chemistry from UC Davis, Postdoc in atmospheric chemistry at UC Irvine
First spaceflight: August 8, 2007
Yi So-yeon
M.B.A. from UC Berkeley
First spaceflight: April 8, 2008
Megan McArthur
B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from UCLA, Ph.D. in Oceanography from UC San Diego.
First spaceflight: May 11, 2009
Kathleen Rubins
B.S. in molecular biology from UC San Diego
First spaceflight: July 6, 2016
Jessica Meir
Ph.D. in marine biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego
First spaceflight: September 25, 2019
Jessica Watkins
Ph.D. in geology from UCLA in 2015
First spaceflight: April 27, 2022
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Katya Echazarreta
B.S. in electrical engineering from UCLA
First spaceflight: June 4, 2022
Deniz Burnham
Bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from UC San Diego in 2007
First spaceflight: stay tuned!
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/uc-has-sent-more-women-space-any-other-school-solar-system