Article by Kelly Kowalski

They sparkle. They shine.

They are supernova women of astronomical proportions, going where few women have tread before in space science and industry. Local film maker company Pajama Girl Productions is working on a documentary series capturing the wonder and tenacity of the stellar women who look to the stars and beyond.

Why space, why women?

The International Space Station was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize this year, compelling testimony to what humans can achieve in space when they work cooperatively across disciplines, cultures and nations.

Space is a frontier requiring diversity and collaboration for survival and success. Challenges abound when we leave the planet or ask questions about the cosmos. Solutions to problems out there cannot be solved alone. And those who go to space often return to Earth forever changed, endowed with a new sense of insight and resolve toward our human connection with our precious blue dot and our humble place in a relatively unknown universe.

The story of space is needed right now, not simply as a beacon of hope for future possibilities, but as a place where we learn and practice how to build a better world today. To complete this mission we need balanced representation. We need to break the glass ceiling to the stars and beyond, and bring the stories of women to our expanding story of becoming a space-seeking species.

While it’s encouraging that NASA’s latest graduating class of astronauts are nearly half women, representation of women in the space sector remains marginal. A 2017 UNOOSA study points out that on average girls become interested in STEM subjects around age 11, yet lose lose interest in their teens because they lack access to STEM experience, grow discouraged by gender disparity, and have few female role models.

Star Goddesses provides the public, and in particular young women, with a new vision of creating a new kind of world in our cosmos - a world more equal, built by curiosity, innovation and collaboration by all and for all. Here is a sneak peek of the upcoming documentary:

Kate Marvel: The Earthling Extraordinaire

Kate Marvel walks into a New York City bar and the bartender asks, “What’s a star-gazing astrophysicist like you doing at an Earth Science Institute in Manhattan?” Of course Kate has an answer, as she explained in her 2017 Ted Talk, “Earth is the greatest place in the universe. Other planets might have liquid water. On Earth we have whiskey!”

When people hear space, they think Apollo, UFOs and SpaceX. Rarely do we consider how the space industry reflects back on our own planet, providing us with instant cash from the ATM or the latest weather reports on our cellphones. We forget that space technology has become fundamental to our interactions here on Earth.

Kate works at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, where researchers study environmental changes that affect the habitability of our planet. She’s a climate scientist making models based on satellite data, measuring everything from air quality, rainfall patterns, to human impacts.

This episode explores Kate’s personal evolution from high school theater geek and college drama major, to a straight C astrophysics student who eventually wrote her PhD thesis at Cambridge University about the probability of a giant bubble popping into existence and eating up the entire universe. Kate proves that having unyielding persistence, along with an adaptable mindset and a flagrant imagination, makes for a great scientist. We learn from Kate about the array of satellites overhead providing snapshots of our planet. For nearly 50 years we’ve been collecting and analyzing Earth data, building a model of our climate past. Based on these models, what can Kate predict for our climate future?

Mae Jemison: The Interstellar Superstar

Mae Jemison was breaking boundaries long before blasting into orbit aboard the space shuttle Endeavour, becoming the first woman of color in space in 1992. She started college merely 16 years old, studying chemical engineering at Stanford University; decided to forgo a professional dance career to pursue medicine at Cornell; served as a humanitarian doctor at a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand and for the Peace Corp in Liberia and Sierra Leone - all before applying to NASA’s astronaut program before the age of 30.

Today, Mae leads the 100 Year Starship Foundation, envisioning a path forward beyond our solar system. But isn’t interstellar space travel science fiction? Like many in the space sciences and industries, Mae knows that imagination is what gets us there. In fact, as a little girl Mae’s role model was Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura, a fictional character but one that promised young Mae a future possibility of equality in space. So if Mae achieved space travel like her hero Uhura, why not Alpha Centauri for the next generation?

This episodes explores humanity’s dream to travel to the stars, and what makes those dreams reality. It will require quantum leaps in technology, as well as innovative approaches to education, economics, policy and culture. What are the latest insights that we’ve learned so far from space research and exploration; what technological and biological hurdles must we overcome; and what kind of human culture will flourish in space? Mae doesn’t have all the answers, but she’s got a plan to inspire the next cadre of spacefaring kids to start thinking about the mission to boldly go where no one has gone before.

Natalie Batalha: The Existential Expeditioner

The 2017 Space Authorization Act added a new objective to the US space agency’s directives, namely the ‘search for life’s origin, evolution, distribution and future in the universe’. For Nathalie Batalha that objective is nothing new. She’s been searching for life, or searching for planets that could harbor life, since 2009 as project scientist for NASA’s Kepler mission.

Crunching the data from the orbiting Kepler telescope, Nathalie confirmed the first rocky planet discovered outside our solar system. With another 2,300 more exoplanets found by Kepler, including 30 in the goldilocks habitable zone of not too hot and not too cold, it’s no wonder Nathalie looks to the stars and ponders the meaning of life - not just for Earthlings but for other potential beings in the universe.

This episode explores the fascinating evolution of exoplanet hunting - how it’s done and what we’re learning in the process. Kepler searched a thin slice of pie sky and now the TESS space telescope is searching 360 degrees of nearby star systems. Next year, the soon-to-launch WEBB telescope, humanity’s largest, most powerful lens, will peer into the universe with dizzying depth. But where will we look? That’s Nathalie’s job to figure out, and most likely it will be those goldilocks planets to analyze atmospheres, looking for a chemical fingerprint of life. And if we find that fingerprint? Lucky for us, Nathalie is a scientist with a philosopher’s heart. She wants us to start thinking deeply now about our ethical and moral responsibilities before we forge ahead as an interplanetary species.

About Kelly and Pajama Girl Productions

Kelly Kowalski is an Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker who got her start running a media production company in Namibia, Africa where she lived for nearly 15 years. She worked as a TV producer, director, writer and editor at PBS in New Mexico for nearly 5 years, and as a creative marketing director for the non-profit, The Coffee Trust, promoting development and sustainability for coffee farming families in Guatemala for an additional 5 years. She freelances as a media professional, strategizing communication and outreach for clients ranging from Udacity to UNAIDS. A few years ago she served as contributor to the SETI Institute’s Big Think workshops for the Frontier Development Lab, a NASA initiative applying artificial intelligence tools to space science research; and recently she completed the International Space University’s Interactive Space Program, a professional development intensive providing an overview of the space industry and teamwork experience similar to a space analogue mission. Kelly got her BA in International Development from the University of California, Berkeley. More here at kellykowalski.com and Pajama Girl Productions