Leading Rapid Technological Change in the Space Community: Perspectives of the Women in Charge

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This World Space Week, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) invites you to celebrate the women who have led the space community through a period of rapid technological change. This event will feature Ms. Mandy Vaughn, Dr. Ellen Stofan, and Dr. Claire Leon.

The past few years have seen an explosion of new government organizations and companies dedicated to space. Thanks to the emergence of new space companies, competition exists in the domestic launch vehicle market. Innovative satellite start-ups are enabling low-cost, rapid access to space and are fielding new architectures such as mega-constellations that contain thousands of satellites. Inside the government, both national security and civil space agencies are working to leverage these new capabilities and to build a path to explore the moon, Mars, and beyond.

Throughout this period of rapid technological change, the space community has been led in large part by women. Women are traditionally under-represented both in technology-intensive fields; for example, women only account for approximately 20% of doctoral engineering degrees. Yet, in the space community, women have led major government organizations, traditional defense contractors, and innovative start-ups. The current rapid advance of space technology was undeniably accelerated and shaped by these trail-blazing women.

Please join us this World Space Week to celebrate recent progress in the space community on and how much of that progress was led by women!

If you are a student who is interested in asking these experts a question, please see here to submit your own questions! 

This event is sponsored by VOX Space and general support to CSIS.