#54 - Why women should be humanity's first explorers on Mars

Watch my TEDx talk now to learn why

From one red dot to another: one month ago I stood on a TEDx stage and argued that women should be humanity's first Mars explorers. Now you can watch the talk:

This has been months in the making, and I’m so excited to share it with you.

Please watch, like, comment, share — to help spread my idea.

Why I did this TEDx

For the majority of human spaceflight history, women have been a side note if not written out completely. The historical global total of astronauts that are women is just 11%. Like many girls, I grew up fascinated by space, but did not see it as a pathway open to me to build a career.

I don’t want us to repeat that mistake for girls now. It’s taken three generations for us to go back to the Moon, but it will only take one more to get us to Mars. NASA plans to send humans to Mars by 2040, and women need to be driving that mission forwards.

Since giving my talk I’ve heard from many parents who say it’s inspired their daughters to become interested in space. One audience member came up to me after the talk to tell me “My daughter saw your talk and is now thinking about if she could go to space.”

That is why I gave my talk.

I want to challenge who we see as explorers, as leaders, and who we picture when we hear the word ‘astronaut’.

You can also follow along my #womeninspace series on Linkedin, Instagram and YouTube to say the names of women astronauts with me.

Three qualities needed to get us to Mars

My talk was underpinned by research that Dr Iya Whiteley conducted in partnership with the European Space Agency into the psychological challenges of long range space missions, leading to the publication of ‘Toolkit for a Space Psychologist’:

Resourcefulness: when we go to Mars we need to take everything with us — fuel, food, oxygen, water, medical supplies, clothing, and more. And we need to have the skills so we can fix things that break: mechanical, electrical, sewing, medical.

Resilience: the mission is hard enough when everything is going well, but when shit hits the fan (sometimes metaphorically, sometimes actually in space!) then the crew must pull together and overcome the adversity without losing their minds.

Autonomy: the further the crew travels from Earth, the longer the communications delay with mission control. By the time they reach Mars they will be on their own, unable to call home for real-time help.

We must select astronauts that have the qualities this mission demands, and not who we have always chosen as the default.

What the research says

I draw on several pieces of research into leadership and team dynamics in extreme environments:

(1) The Ice Maidens: six women from the British Army made history by skiing across Antarctica unaided. Antarctic expeditions are analogues for how teams might work together in space, and this showed how women develop strong camaraderie and care for each other to guarantee mission success.

(2) Women and men in space and Antarctica: There were 3 key papers I used as background reading here:

• Leon, G.R. and Sandal, G.M. (2003) 'Women and couples in isolated extreme environments: applications for long-duration missions', Acta Astronautica, 53(4–10), pp. 259–267. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0094-5765(03)00138-3.

• Bell, S.T., Brown, S.G., Abben, D.R. and Outland, N.B. (2015) 'Team composition issues for future space exploration: a review and directions for future research', Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance, 86(6), pp. 548–556. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3357/AMHP.4195.2015.

• Leon, G.R. (2005) 'Men and women in space', Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, 76(6, Suppl.), pp. B84–B88.

(It’s worth noting that Suzanne Bell is Lead Scientist at NASA’s Behavioral Health & Performance Lab, her Linkedin headline is literally “Leading Super Cool Space Projects that Get Humans to the Moon and Mars (and back)”).

(3) A meta-analysis of what the past 50 years of research into leadership tells us about who makes an effective leader:

• Paustian-Underdahl, S.C., Smith Sockbeson, C.E., Hall, A.V. and Saldanha Halliday, C. (2024) 'Gender and evaluations of leadership behaviors: a meta-analytic review of 50 years of research', The Leadership Quarterly. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2024.101811.

This last one makes some people uncomfortable. It draws on corporate leadership research, so in a strictly scientific sense it may not be directly generalisable to spaceflight populations. But its scale is hard to ignore: 180 studies across 50 years, with sample sizes reaching into the millions. Analogue mission research gives us depth in extreme environments; this gives us breadth. Together, they tell a consistent story.

My own analogue astronaut experience

Analogue missions are simulations that replicate what it’s like to live on the Moon or Mars. They’re used by space agencies to research the science, engineering and psychology of human spaceflight, and to train astronauts. LunAres in Poland, where I was last year, has trained astronauts including Dr Sian Proctor, who became the first African American woman to pilot a spacecraft as mission pilot on SpaceX's Inspiration4 in 2021.

If you would like to learn more about this then please read through my other articles:

• Inside an analogue space mission

• How to adapt to an alien environment

• The social life of a space habitat

• Inside the psychology of confinement

• Space to Lead: Psychological adaptation and resilience in analogue space missions (published by the BPS)

• How to thrive in space (published by the BPS)

If you’ve made it this far and haven’t watched the talk yet, go do that now :)

Then let me know what you think — I read and reply to every comment on the YouTube video.

And if you know a girl interested in space then show her the video too, and let’s see what we can inspire in the next generation of astronauts.