Watkins, Jessica (1988-…), is an American astronaut and geologist. She became the first Black woman selected for an extended mission in space. Watkins and three other astronauts launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on April 27, 2022. On her stay aboard the ISS, Watkins served as a mission specialist.
Jessica Andrea Watkins was born in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on May 14, 1988. Her family later moved to Lafayette, Colorado. She enrolled at Stanford University, in California, in 2006. Watkins led Stanford’s rugby team to win the 2008 national championship. Watkins was a member of the United States Women’s Eagles Sevens Rugby team, competing in the 2009 Women’s Sevens Rugby World Cup in Dubai. Watkins earned her bachelor’s degree in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford in 2010.
Watkins earned a doctorate degree in geology at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2015. Watkins then conducted research at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). At UCLA, she studied landslides on the surface of Mars. At Caltech, she helped plan missions for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity.
As an undergraduate, Watkins participated in an internship for NASA at the Ames Research Center outside of San Jose, California. She compared simulated Martian soils with data gathered by the Mars lander Phoenix. In 2009, Watkins served as the chief geologist for a simulated mission at the Mars Desert Research Station outside Hanksville, Utah. As a graduate student, she interned for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. 
In 2017, Watkins was selected for astronaut training. In 2019, she participated in a simulated space mission at the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) Aquarius habitat, on the ocean floor off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. NASA has also selected Watkins to train for a future Artemis crewed mission to the moon.
