Today, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine appeared before the Commerce Committee for a hearing on deep space. Administrator Bridenstine touted the progress NASA has been making in the “Artemis” program—the effort to return Americans to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo program which marked its 50^th anniversary this week. Ranking Member Cantwell pointed to the need for women to be involved at every level of the Artemis program—not just as astronauts. 

“I hope that in this next mission we can use whatever tools we have to call on America’s brightest women engineers to participate in this process, as we’ve all looked at the video of the last launch – we can see one thing is missing. We don’t see a lot of women in those control rooms, we don’t see a lot of women in those pictures,” Senator Cantwell said. “I hope that we’ll do some serious work at trying to use that as a tool. There aren’t a lot of tools where we’re calling on women to help with such a national mission and I hope that we do that.”

Video footage of Senator Cantwell’s remarks on women in space is available HERE, and audio can be downloaded HERE.