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Girl Geeks Launch Picosatellite
Anonymous Coward writes "Girl Geeks Launch Picosatellite
Artemis, a team of
Girl Geeks at
the Santa Clara University have designed and built a pico-satellite. An
EE Times article
says the Santa Clara women spent
over 5000 hours designing and building the satellite. Ham radio operators
will be able to tune in and listen to the telemetry from the satellite
to be launched from Vandenburg Air Force Base in Lompoc, California.
The girls took the name of their team from Artemis, the Greek hunter
godesss of the moon."
Maybe most of you already knew that women are good at math and science, but there are still plenty of people, including plenty of women, who haven't quite caught on to that. I'm writing this from the a women's college, and I've met a startling number of women here who struggle through their math and laboratory requirements, and while they will never say that math and science aren't a "girl thing" still don't believe that the statement can hold true for them. Most women I see majoring in sciences tend to be drawn toward softer sciences, like biology and psychology, as well; there's still a relatively prevalent feeling that areas like engineering are pretty much the boys' domain. Being a "geek" as a girl (in junior high and high school, especially) is very strongly discouraged; there was a lot more pressure for me as a teenager to "get away from that computer and get a life" than I saw in any of the guys I knew.
I freely grant that we've come a long way from my mother's adventures as a chemistry major in the late 60's and early 70's; most women don't get asked "You mean you want to be a chemistry teacher?" or told by their guidance counselors that they have no chance and should maybe look into something that they can handle. This doesn't mean that girls are quite convinced that this can be their realm, too. So to speak.
I'd be really, really happy if a group of female undergraduates designing a satellite wasn't a really big deal, or at least wasn't a big deal primarily because they were women... because things like that happened everywhere. But they don't. The fact that the final team was not, in fact, completely female (replacing the woman who left, I suppose) and the way that this was ignored by the news article does certainly say something. Basically, it's reflecting a desire to get a story about "girls and science" out, because "girls and science" is still news. That's why it's good to hear about things like this... not everyone quite gets it yet.