NASA's Purges Female Scientists as Wealthy Women Blast to Space
While Billionaires Send Their Friends on Space Joyrides, America's Premier Space Agency Quietly Dismisses the Women Scientists Working to Save Our Planet
As Jeff Bezos's fiancée Lauren Sánchez and pop star Katy Perry geared up to float weightlessly in a Blue Origin capsule, celebrating what was billed as the "first all-woman spaceflight" since 1963, NASA quietly dismissed its chief scientist, a renowned female climatologist, along with nearly two dozen others. These firings are just the beginning of what the agency's spokeswoman calls "a phased approach to a reduction in force."
The contrast couldn't be more stark: while wealthy people took a ride to the edge of space for a few weightless minutes, decorated women scientists—those whose life's work has been understanding our planet and its climate systems—were being systematically removed from their posts at America's premier space agency.
The PR Stunt Heard 'Round the Galaxy
The Blue Origin flight that launched six women to the edge of space on April 14 has been celebrated as a feminist triumph. The company promoted it as the "first all-woman spaceflight" since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova's historic solo journey in 1963.
The Blue Origin passengers included CBS presenter Gayle King, pop star Katy Perry, filmmaker Kerianne Flynn, activist Amanda Nguyen, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, and Lauren Sánchez: Bezos's fiancée who arranged the flight. The event received breathless media coverage. As one participant shouted during the livestream: "Oh my goddess!"
But this space tourism venture wasn't about advancing science or breaking barriers (at least not primarily). As cultural critic Amanda Hess aptly noted in The New York Times, the flight "proves that women are now free to enjoy capitalism's most extravagant spoils alongside the world's wealthiest men." It was, quite literally, a billionaire's girlfriend and her friends taking an 11-minute suborbital joyride.
While Blue Origin pitches the flight as encouraging girls to pursue STEM careers, the passengers weren't there as space professionals but as "storytellers" chosen specifically for their ability to market the experience afterward. Their central mission was to experience weightlessness, view Earth from above, and livestream it—essentially making them "payload specialists with a specialty in marketing private rockets."
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The Quiet Purge at NASA
Meanwhile, on March 10, NASA began implementing a very different kind of space program for women. Katherine Calvin, the agency's chief scientist and a renowned climatologist who contributed to key UN climate reports, received notification she was being terminated. The agency also eliminated the Office of the Chief Scientist, the Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy, and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Branch.
These dismissals are part of the Trump administration's systematic dismantling of climate science infrastructure and diversity initiatives across the federal government. NASA spokesperson Cheryl Warner confirmed more cuts are coming, describing the initial 23 layoffs as merely "the beginning" of a "phased approach to a reduction in force."
The administration has already pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement for the second time and dismissed hundreds of employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the nation's other key climate research agency.
The Death of Programs to Promote Women in Space
Perhaps most telling is what's vanishing from NASA's public presence. The agency has removed its "First Woman" graphic novel series from its website—a publication that featured Commander Callie Rodriguez, a fictional female astronaut leading a diverse space crew to the moon.
The Artemis program's public description has also been gutted. The program previously promised to "land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before." That inclusive language has now disappeared entirely from the agency's website.
These removals follow a January executive order from President Trump instructing agencies to shut down all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and to report colleagues who might attempt to "disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language" in workplace communications.
A History of Erasure
The pattern is depressingly familiar throughout the history of women in space. When Valentina Tereshkova made her groundbreaking 1963 flight, spending three days in space and circling Earth 48 times, Life magazine reduced her achievement to appearance, describing her mission as: "A blue-eyed blonde with a new hairdo stars in a Russian space spectacular."
For decades, women's contributions to space exploration have been minimized, sexualized, or erased entirely. The story of NASA's "human computers"—Black women mathematicians like Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson—remained largely unknown until Margot Lee Shetterly's book "Hidden Figures" was published in 2016, more than half a century after their critical contributions to the space program.
When Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983, she faced questions from the press about whether spaceflight would affect her reproductive organs or if she planned to bring makeup into orbit. NASA hadn't even designed spacesuits properly sized for women's bodies—a problem that persisted until 2019 when the agency was embarrassingly forced to cancel an all-women spacewalk because it didn't have enough properly-sized suits.
The Real Stakes
Beyond the symbolic erasure lies a deeply concerning reality: NASA's role in climate science is irreplaceable. The agency operates a fleet of Earth-monitoring satellites, conducts airborne and ground-based studies, develops sophisticated climate models, and provides open-source data to researchers worldwide.
The dismissal of leading climate scientists like Calvin threatens this critical work at a time when climate change poses an existential threat. While billionaires send their friends on joyrides past the Kármán line, the scientists who monitor our rapidly warming planet are being systematically removed from their posts.
For Blue Origin and other space tourism ventures, an all-women flight is a marketing opportunity. For NASA's female scientists, their work is about something far more urgent: understanding the very systems that keep our planet habitable in the face of accelerating climate change.
The message is clear: in today's America, women are welcome in space as long as they're there as celebrities, influences, or companions of billionaires, not as scientists whose research might contradict political narratives about climate science.
As we celebrate the spectacle of wealthy women experiencing four minutes of weightlessness, we must not forget the women scientists being silently pushed out of the institutions where their expertise is needed most.
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References
Science X. "NASA Fires Chief Scientist, More Trump Cuts to Come." March 12, 2025.
Hess, Amanda. "One Giant Stunt for Womankind." The New York Times, April 14, 2025.
Naughtie, Andrew. "NASA Removes Graphic Novel Featuring Female Astronaut as Trump's Diversity Purge Continues." Euronews, April 12, 2025.
Molloy, Maddie and Victoria Gill. "Blue Origin Crew Safely Back on Earth After All-Female Space Flight." BBC, April 14, 2025.
How do we break this down? A bunch of entitled, wealthy women go up into space for a fraction of time, thanks to the single billionaire owner of America's biggest sweat shop chain across the country. All of them discount past ACTUAL female astronauts and act like they accomplished something. Do I have this right?
These women are so incredibly out of touch