The newly minted astronauts are the first class from NASA's Artemis program which planning missions to the Moon and, ultimately, missions to Mars.

When NASA's newest astronaut class graduated this week, it included five mighty women! The new astronauts have spent two years in intensive training in a wide variety of skills, including spacewalking, robotics, International Space Station (ISS) systems, T-38 jet proficiency, and the Russian language. "As astronauts, they’ll help develop spacecraft [and] support the teams currently in space," NASA wrote in a graduation announcement, "and ultimately join the ranks of only about 500 people who have had the honor of going into space." Continue reading → Continue reading

Mighty Girls shined at this year's premiere science and engineering competition for middle school students!

When the winners were announced at this year's Broadcom MASTERS Competition, America's premiere science and engineering competition for middle school students, the stage looked a little different than previous years — for the first time ever, all of the top prize winners were girls! 14-year-old Alaina Gassler won the top award, the $25,000 Samueli Foundation Prize, while 14-year-olds Rachel Bergey, Sidor Clare, Alexis MacAvoy, and Lauren Ejiaga each took home $10,000 prizes. "With so many challenges in our world, Alaina and her fellow Broadcom MASTERS finalists make me optimistic," says Maya Ajmera, President and CEO of the Society for Science & the Public, which runs the competition, and Publisher of Science News. "I am proud to lead an organization that is inspiring so many young people, especially girls, to continue to innovate." Continue reading → Continue reading

During their historic spacewalk, NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir replaced a power controller on the International Space Station.

NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir made history today when they conducted the first all-female spacewalk in more than five decades of spacewalking! The two ventured outside of the International Space Station at 7:50 this morning for a 7-hour mission to replace a failed power controller. Of the 227 people who have participated in spacewalks since the first one took place in 1965, only 14 have been women. Prior to their spacewalk, Meir spoke of its historic significance and the long fight for women to have equal access and opportunity to participate in the space program: "What we’re doing now shows all of the work that went in for the decades prior, all of the women that worked to get us where we are today." Continue reading → Continue reading

MIT professor Esther Duflo has helped transform the field of developmental economics by applying a scientific approach to policy interventions focused on alleviating global poverty.

Dr. Esther Duflo has just become the second woman in history and the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Prize in Economics! The 46-year-old MIT professor shares the prize with her husband, Dr. Abhijit Banerjee, and colleague Dr. Michael Kremer; together they have helped millions of people around the world with their research to develop practical interventions to alleviating global poverty. “In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in today's prize announcement. After learning of her Nobel win, Duflo said she was "humbled" and, in light of how underrepresented women are in the field of economics, she hopes that it will "inspire many, many other women to continue working and many other men to give them the respect that they deserve like every single human being." Continue reading → Continue reading

Dr. Sherri Mason's groundbreaking research discovered the widespread prevalence of microplastics in the environment.

Dr. Sherri Mason, whose research alerted the world to the widespread prevalence of microplastics, has been awarded a Heinz Award for Public Policy for her groundbreaking work to address this growing health and environment problem. Mason was the first scientist to research and identify microplastics pollution in the Great Lakes, the largest freshwater system in the world. Her research brought international attention to the threats posed by microplastics, leading to state and federal bans on microbeads, tiny bits of plastic used in exfoliating scrubs and washes that Mason discovered were accumulating in the environment and the food chain. "Sherri’s research has made the issue of plastic pollution real and present for everyone," said Teresa Heinz, Chairman of the Heinz Family Foundation. "Her ongoing work can be an important key to ending the steady accumulation of plastics in our environment." Continue reading → Continue reading

This second-ever assessment of students' technology and engineering abilities found that girls outscored boys in all six areas tested.

In a national assessment of engineering and technology skills, eighth-grade girls outperformed boys in all six areas tested — countering the long-held stereotype that boys have a more natural aptitude for these technical fields. The recently reported results of the 2018 Technology and Engineering Literacy (TEL) exam, which tests both content knowledge and ability to put that knowledge into practice, revealed that girls scored higher than boys in every category, even though fewer girls take technology and engineering classes in school than boys. "The girls have done extremely well in this assessment," says Peggy Carr, associate commissioner for assessment at the National Center for Education Statistics. "Girls are outperforming boys whether they take a class or not. And when girls take a course, they also score higher." Continue reading → Continue reading

After Nora Keegan spent three years studying whether hand dryers hurt children's hearing, she's published her research in a scientific journal.

When she was nine years old, Nora Keegan noticed that many children didn't want to use hand dryers and would often cover their ears around them. She understood from personal experience why they would have this reaction, observing that "sometimes after using hand dryers my ears would start ringing." In the fifth grade, she decided to investigate the topic further for a science fair project and started studying "if they were dangerous to hearing." Three years later, the now 13-year-old Mighty Girl from Calgary, Canada has just published the results of her multi-year study in a scientific paper in the Paediatrics & Child Health, the premiere Canadian pediatric journal. In it, she concludes that "children who say hand dryers 'hurt my ears' are correct" since, as she discovered through her research, many hand dryers operate "at levels that are clearly dangerous to children’s hearing." Continue reading → Continue reading

Dr. Katie Bouman led the creation of a new algorithm to produce the first-ever image of a black hole.

Scientist Katie Bouman has said that photographing a black hole is "equivalent to taking an image of a grapefruit on the moon, but with a radio telescope." Today, the MIT postdoctoral fellow shared a photo of herself "watching in disbelief as the first image I ever made of a black hole was in the process of being reconstructed." Bouman and her team released this first-ever image of a black hole to the public, which is the first direct visual evidence that black holes exist. Continue reading → Continue reading

"I find that I am bored with anything I understand," says Abel Prize winner Dr. Karen Uhlenbeck.

American mathematician Karen Uhlenbeck has become the first woman to win the Abel Prize — the "Nobel Prize" of mathematics! The 76-year-old professor emeritus of the University of Texas at Austin and visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton has made wide-ranging advances in mathematics that influence many sciences, including quantum physics and string theory, and pioneered a new field of mathematics called geometric analysis. "She did things nobody thought about doing, and after she did, she laid the foundations of a branch of mathematics," says Sun-Yung Alice Chang, a Princeton mathematician who sat on the prize committee. Hans Munthe-Kaas, chair of the Abel Committee, added that "her perspective has pervaded the field and led to some of the most dramatic advances in mathematics over the last 40 years." Continue reading → Continue reading

The rover will launch next year to search for evidence of past or present life on Mars.

In 2020, a new rover will fly to Mars to search for signs of past or present life — so it's fitting that the rover will be named after Rosalind Franklin, the British chemist who helped uncover the mysteries of DNA! Astronaut Tim Peake announced the name at the Airbus factory in the UK where the European Space Agency (ESA) rover is being assembled. Franklin's sister, Jenifer Glynn, spoke to the BBC about the honor: "In the last year of Rosalind's life, I remember visiting her in hospital on the day when she was excited by the news of the [Soviet Sputnik satellite] — the very beginning of space exploration. She could never have imagined that over 60 years later there would be a rover sent to Mars bearing her name, but somehow that makes this project even more special." Continue reading → Continue reading