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Women in Space Exploration (Virtual)

Celebrate Women's History Month

Explore the vital role women have played in aviation and space exploration, featuring trailblazers and pioneers, with expert insights from Michelle Nichols of Chicago's Adler Planetarium.

Women have been involved in getting people to space for decades. We’ll start by exploring some trailblazers who helped popularize and advance air travel, and then we’ll spotlight women who were pioneers in the era of rocketry and space exploration.

Michelle Nichols is director of public observing at Chicago's Adler Planetarium, where she has worked for more than 30 years. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Master of Education degree in curriculum and instruction from National-Louis University. Ms. Nichols leads all of the Adler Planetarium's telescope, observatory, and public sky observing initiatives and events. Before landing at the Adler Planetarium, Michelle worked at U.S. Space Camp (Titusville, FL), the Astronaut Memorial Planetarium (Cocoa, FL), and the Staerkel Planetarium (Champaign, IL). Since 1999, Michelle has been a popular local speaker, giving hundreds of presentations to more than 150 public libraries, community organizations, and senior living facilities in the Chicago suburbs, Indiana, and Alabama.

Ms. Nichols has also served as an advisor for several children’s books: Superfast Rockets, Space: Surviving in Zero-G, Ellen Ochoa: Reach for the Stars, and The Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion, as well as the Scholastic News Nonfiction Readers series. Astronomy Lab for Kids (2016) was Michelle's first book as author.

Photo: NASA. Dr. Mae Jamison, the first African American woman in space aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor in September 1992

Armchair Travels is generously funded with a gift from the Rutherford Family Trust. This program will not be recorded.

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