With all the (rightful!) vitriol surrounding the Space Flight today, please don't let the conversation ignore Amanda Nguyen (because the media certainly has..).
Ms Nguyen went to Harvard and interned at Nasa twice. She conducted research on exoplanets for the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.
While she was a student at Harvard and interning with Nasa in 2013, she was raped. This paused her dream of becoming an astronaut and experiencing space travel. As a result of her strength and compassion in response to that attack, Ms Nguyen decided to leave Nasa and engage in activism work that challenged the narrative around victim-survivors, and ultimately she created Rise - a non-profit organisation which aims to protect the civil rights of sexual assault victims and rape survivors.
In 2016, the Sexual Assault Survivors' Rights Act passed through the Senate and the House of Reps, and was signed into law by Obama. The law protects, among other rights, the right to have the evidence of a rape kit preserved without charge for the duration of the statute of limitations, and the right to be notified before the destruction of evidence held in your case so you can apply for it to be kept and archived.
Amanda Nguyen is a brilliant and amazing person who was able to experience a tiny edge of a dream she had given up on. Please be gentle with her story when (rightfully) protesting some of the other women involved.
