As I watch today’s #Artemis reentry and #splashdown streaming live, I marvel at the collective power of #human intellect and knowledge when collaboration, #research, and #trust in #mathematics & #engineering are tested through spaceflight.
While I always hope for a successful #space mission, the reentry process seems an especially precarious period because the Columbia disaster remains a vivid historical moment for me, demarcated by where I was and what I was doing when the tragedy occurred.
🧵
The U.S. is in a precarious period of its own, as funding and support for #science are eroding. Science, currently, isn’t always perceived as a practice essential for public good and shared global benefit for humanity’s progress, but a means to increase corporate profit and shareholder value.
Seeing the small boats gather near the splashdown for recovery of the astronauts, I think of my great uncle, an engineer who worked on the NASA-led Project #Apollo.
🧵
Everyone who plays a role in calculating, developing, designing, planning, programming, producing, testing, and QAing every element and aspect of a mission contributes their best #human effort and knowledge to a project, hoping it will be enough for success. And, more importantly, that the humans aboard will return safely with new data collected with which to inform and enhance our collective understanding about the #Universe and #Earth’s place therein.
🧵
Alecia Batson (she/her)