The conquest of outer space by Deaf people is getting closer every day. You will remember that Sign Language can have advantages in outer space (article here), that 11 Deaf men made important contributions to the research of the behavior of the human body in the absence of gravity (article here) and that in 2018, for the first time a Deaf female engineer participated in an active NASA mission (Johanna Lucht). Now, for the first time in history, a Deaf woman is a strong candidate to become an astronaut, she has passed the first challenges and her determination is admirable: Julia Velasquez.
Aspiring Astronaut in 2017
In 2017, while Julia was studying at the
University of California San Diego, she participated in a contest to choose a single student from that
university among 30 other applicants and Julia was chosen. The announcement
of the winner of the contest was a surprise recorded by the television
network Xploration Station, distributed by the important audiovisual
multinational
Fox Broadcasting Company. You can watch the announcement and Julia's reaction in the following
video (ASL and English subtitles):
After winning the contest, Julia went to Hawaii to participate in an
astronaut training program in an environment that simulated the habitat of
Mars. After receiving the announcement, Julia dedicated her thank you
message to empowering Deaf people, hoping that her personal achievement
would serve as a role model for other young Deaf people.
In the following video you can watch a short interview after winning the
contest (in ASL, without subtitles):
The Experience of Living on Mars
Part of the training involved Julia obtaining an aviation pilot's license.
Outside the United States, it may come as quite a surprise that a Deaf person
would obtain an aviation pilot's license. However, as reported by the
Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, there are about 200 deaf people licensed as aviation pilots in the United
States.
Another part of the training was an experience simulating life on Mars in a
habitat called
HI-SEAS, located on the
Mauna Loa
volcano on the island of
Hawaii. During this experience, although Julia had a Sign Language interpreter,
other people from the scientific team took the opportunity to learn or
practice Sign Language, which they then tried to use during a simulation of
Martian exploration, with which Julia wanted to show other forms of human
communication, in the same way that astronauts need to learn other languages
to communicate with international colleagues. A recap of her time in this
training program can be seen in this video report (ASL and automatic English
subtitles):
Intense Preparation for Success
Julia had an early vocation for outer space, she was given her first telescope
when she was ten years old and her father would wake her up at dawn to watch
meteor showers. Since then, her resume has been full of training and
experiences: she graduated in Biology from Gallaudet University, was selected
for internships at the
NASA Academy
and at the
Kennedy Space Center, worked as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health
and at the
University of Rochester Medical Center, lived for a few years in Sweden, where she held various responsibilities in
the Swedish National Association of Deaf Youth (Sveriges Dövas Ungdomsförbund) and the European Union of Deaf Youth (EUDY), and has traveled to more than 30 countries around the world.
|
| Julia Velasquez (right) with part of the Xploration Station and PISCES production and film crew at HI-SEAS, the Mars surface simulation habitat in Hawaii (photo: © PISCES Hawaii via Flickr). |
Candidate For a Space Mission
Recently, Julia has been in the news again for being one of the candidates
to participate in the first space mission with an all-civilian crew, called
SpaceX Inspiration4, which was announced on February 1, 2021. This mission will consist of a
several-day stay in low Earth orbit during which they will conduct a series
of scientific experiments and is scheduled to take place before the end of
the year.
Julia has gone viral with a message full of hope on social networks and has
immediately received the support of thousands of people around the world and
her video on Twitter has reached more than 65k reproductions:
Hi!! I’m Julia! This is my #inspiration4contest story to become the FIRST DEAF PERSON TO GO TO SPACE 👩🏼🚀✨
— Julia Velasquez (@h2ojewel) February 23, 2021
RT & ❤️ to make SPACE accessible for ALL!
Check out my @Shift4Shop: https://t.co/nqUS42vBUx
¡Si Se Puede! ✨ pic.twitter.com/E3Gcs09S09
We can do the same things as everybody else, we want to be equal. We want to come up with creative solutions to make it work (Julia Velasquez, 2018)
Sources:
- Evelet, R. (2019, January 27). It’s Time to Rethink Who’s Best Suited for Space Travel. In Wired. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/its-time-to-rethink-whos-best-suited-for-space-travel/
- PISCES (2017, October 4). #StudentAstronaut Trains for ‘Mars’ on Hawaii Island. Retrieved from https://pacificspacecenter.com/2017/10/04/studentastronaut-trains-for-mars-on-hawaii-island/
- Puhak, J. (2018, June 16). Deaf woman hopes to earn pilot’s license through scholarship program. In Fox News. Retrieved from https://www.foxnews.com/travel/deaf-woman-hopes-to-earn-pilots-license-through-scholarship-program
- Watts, B. (2017, July 20). 2017 #StudentAstronaut Contest Winner: Julia Velasquez. In Xploration Station. Retrieved from https://www.xplorationstation.com/stories/StudentAstronaut-Finalist:-Julia-Velasquez
