Who are those three women? by Barbora Misakova

The France 24’s article headed “Discovery mission a first for female space exploration” is actually about anything else than female crew members. You can get quite detailed information about the time of launch, all the equipment on the rocket’s board and their functions, but you can hardly find out something more than just names of females mentioned in the heading. The US space shuttle Discovery which blasted off on Monday is the first shuttle mission with three female crew members and the first to see four women in orbit informed France 24. Actually only three of them are flying aboard space shuttle, the forth one is awaiting them at the Internation! al Space Station. The article somehow skipped closer information about these women. Person who wrote it probably believed you will appreciate information that Discovery lifted off from Launch Pad 39A at 6:21 am and that two booster rockets peeled away as planned 120 seconds after the launch more than profiles of these women. Although you may be more interested in the facts such as the Discovery reached Earth’s orbit eight and a half minutes after launch, I won’t bother you with the rest of them mentioned in the article. I would rather introduce you these three women. Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, 34, is former high school teacher who was accepted for educator-astronauts in 2004. During her first spaceflight she will operate the robot arm and coordinate three spacewalks from inside. Stephanie Wilson, 43, is one of only a handful of black women to fly in space. NASA picked her as an astronaut in 1996 and she became the second black woman in space 10 years later. S! he will also help operate the robot arm. The third woman is Ja! panese a stronaut Naoko Zamazaki, 39, who is the second woman from her country to fly in space. She will be in charge of moving van that is flying up on Discovery for the space station. Discovery’s planned arrival at the ISS is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday. Hope everything goes well.

related story (sgx16924): http://www.france24.com/en/20100405-space-discovery-iss-shut...

by Barbora Misakova for Cantell TV (http://cantell.tv)

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