The women of New Horizons' Pluto flyby | Human World | EarthSky

Women make up 25 percent of the New Horizons flyby team. Science team leader Fran Bagenal said, “This isn’t remarkable – it’s just how it is.”

At 7:49 AM EDT on Tuesday, July 14 New Horizons zips past Pluto at 30,800 miles per hour (49,600 kilometers per hour), with a suite of seven science instruments busily gathering data. Fran Baganel is the particles and plasma science team leader on the New Horizons mission.

Bagenal began her career working on NASA’s Voyager mission to the outer planets, she was among just a handful of women on the team. But that didn’t phase her. She was focused on particles and plasma. Bagenal said:

That’s just how it was… Space physics was just my way of exploring the solar system.

Now, as the particles and plasma science team leader on the New Horizons mission to Pluto, her response to the relative abundance of women on the team is met mostly with a shrug.

. ...

Bagenal’s attitude regarding the strong female presence on the New Horizons mission is mostly echoed by colleagues who were informally surveyed. Kim Ennico is a deputy project scientist on New Horizons who calibrates instruments on the spacecraft and monitors their status. ...

More
http://earthsky.org/space/these-women-power-new-horizons-pluto-flyby?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=8e8e8b1266-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-8e8e8b1266-393525109


x p Science