An Interview with a Meixican Space Journalist
Did you know two voyagers that we sent out into space in the 1970’s carrying information about the human race? And now they're about to exit our solar system?
Ana Cristina Olvera, a Mexican space Journalist shares news, reflections and stories of ours and other worlds.
When did you become interested in space/the space industry?
I’ve been reporting on science and technology intensely for more than 10 years now, but I really got obsessed about space when I was given the opportunity to collaborate with the Mexican Space Agency as a Director of Press and Public Affairs. The moment I started to attend peer meetings with people from the space industry, I realized how much is happening outside earth and how little we know about it. That’s when I decided that I needed to help create some kind of interface between civilians and the space exploration world. After all, everything that happens outside of our world is a representation of humanity as a whole. So we better know what all these countries and companies are doing out there. Even better if this helps us to have a say or participate in some way.
My professional formation began with a bachelor degree in philosophy, so what really blows my mind about space exploration, science and technology is the way in which 'every milestone achieved in space is getting us closer to have a better understanding of ourselves and pushing towards answers to questions such as 'where do we come from?' and 'what is our purpose in existence?'....' and “what is our purpose in existence”. Also, and most importantly, pushing the boundaries of what is humanly possible is giving us a better perspective of our problems here on earth, the precarity of our existence, and redefining our ontology.
What does your work involve?
Right now it’s reporting and disseminating all the important things that are happening outside of this world through all of the outlets that I can get a hold of. I’ve worked mostly with public and educational television networks in Mexico and Latin America, but I’ve also reported for hispanic television networks in the United States, and in Europe. I also collaborate constantly with NASA and the Mexican Space Agency in the translation and elaboration of outreach content for Spanish-speaking audiences. Especially, I’ve been translating weekly news about what happens on board the International Space Station for almost 3 years now, presented in NASA’s show Espacio a Tierra, and I did a series about Mars for the Insight mission by the name Marte en un Minuto.
But one of the most exciting and inspiring parts of my role is to be able to chat and interview some of the key players of the space industry and get to know their work in dept. Through this I’ve learnt that space exploration is a fertile land for innovators, for everything has to be reinvented or seen from a different perspective in order to work or achieve its goals in the adversity of space or alien planets. But one of my main goals in doing all of this is also finding and highlighting the stories of hispanics and specially Latin-Américans in the space field, because I strongly believe that there is a great potential to be unleashed in this segment of the population that has been neglecting science and technology in order to address pressing problems such as hunger and poverty, but that could also find ease to these by taking advantage of its space potentialities.
How could these problems be addressed through space exploration?
First of all, going to space gives us a different perspective of our problems. The most understandable case of this is weather monitoring and forecast. We can now see the evolution of weather phenomena and its consequences from outside of the storm, so to say, giving us the ability to design better prevention programmes, or to perform more efficient disaster management strategies. This technologies have reduced dramatically the number of casualties in places like India, where the monsoon season used to take many lives and cause great infrastructure damage.
In developing countries, satellite and space technologies may be the only feasible way to grant basic human rights such as education or health. In Mexico, for example, there are more than 200 thousand remote communities with no access to traditional education and health facilities. In this cases, telemedicine, telehealth and tele-education, where satellite communications provide a bridge between doctors, teachers and other professionals with the vulnerable groups could be a life saving situation.
Also, going into terra incognita forces us to think of solutions to our problems that we wouldn’t have had the incentive to think of without leaving the planet. Technologies invented to keep astronauts alive or provide them with clean water and air are now been used to save lives here on earth. Beyond that, having access to a laboratory where you can take gravity off the equation to perform science experiments is giving us the possibility to advance medicine, design new cancer treatments or learning how to grow plants and food in extremely harsh conditions, just to mention very few of the thousand of experiments that have been conducted in space.
What is the most exciting space thing you’ve seen or heard about?
For me every space milestone is absolutely staggering, for how it adds to what human beings are capable of. But if I had to choose one mission or space feat amongst all, I would definitely stand by the Voyagers. These two spaceships that blasted off earth more than 40 years ago and that are now wondering around interstellar space, further than any other human-made object has ever been before. But that’s not the only inspiring and mind-blowing fact about them. They also are true humanity ambassadors; they carry golden discs with messages from the different cultures on Earth: phrases in different languages; music from all over the world; coordinates of our location in the galaxy and biological descriptions of our species, amongst other information. Moreover, they also where the instrument through which a brilliant idea of astronomer Carl Sagan helped us gain perspective. When Voyager 1 was about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles) away from home and had completed its primary mission, which was to visit the planets of the outer Solar System (Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus), Sagan convinced NASA to turn the camera around and take a picture of us. This was the first time we could see ourselves form such a great distance, and appreciate how everything we have ever known is as small as a speck of dust in the vastness of infinity. Just a "Pale Blue Dot".
Nevertheless, I believe, and share this conviction with people such as Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, we live in the edge of an era in which we are really going to make outer space part of our daily lives, and in which having a real possibility of leaving the planet Earth is going to reshape our vision of ourselves. The best is yet to come.
Are there many other women working in the Space Industry?
There are less women working in this field than I would like to see. Even though 2019 has been a big year for women in space, I would say it remains one of the least equal industries when it comes to gender. Last year we had the first ever all-women space walk; we had astronaut Christina Koch breaking the record for the longest space flight for a woman, and, of course, the announcement of Artemis, NASA’s mission that will put the first women on the surface of the moon by 2024. But we had to wait more that 50 years since the first person could leave Earth before we could see all these happening. They are celebrating when they should be ashamed they’re doing it just now.
So far, more than 560 persons have traveled to space, but only around 60 of them are women, just over 10%. Only the most recently graduated generations of NASA astronauts have had a similar number of women than of men. Talking about the scientific and administrative positions, Leanne Caret, who leads Boeing’s defence and space division and Gwynne Shotwell, the president and chief operating officer of SpaceX are two of the most notable positions occupied by women. But, as reported last year by the Washington Post, women make up only about a third of NASA’s workforce. They comprise just 28 percent of senior executive leadership positions and are only 16 percent of senior scientific employees, according to a survey done by the agency. This situation is only worse when we talk about gender and sexual diversity. There are no publicly and voluntarily out astronauts. But there has been more openness and advocacy for inclusion in the industry lately. For a sector where thinking outside the box is almost mandatory, this situation seems scandalous, but hopefully changing fast.
Do you believe that we’re ruining our planet and that moving to outer space is the only future for us as a species?
I really hope we don’t get to ruin this planet, but science has shown us that planets evolve, and eventually the one we inhabit won't be suitable for life any longer. We will need to have found a new home by then. I hope that traveling to outer space is not only going to be more and more accessible through time, but also it will help us reassess the uniqueness of our planet and the great potential we have to use all the knowledge and techniques we have developed throughout the history of humanity for the greater good of our species. An encounter with space is an encounter with ourselves, this includes our precariousness and our greatness.
