First Vietnamese American to fly into space

AMANDA NGUYEN

Amanda Nguyen training for the historic on all-female space flight.

Amanda Nguyen, who transformed personal trauma into landmark legislation for sexual assault survivors, will be joining the history-making flight of the first all-female space crew. She will also be making additional history as the first Vietnamese and Southeast Asian woman in space.

"I really think back to my family and how they were refugees in Vietnam. If they could go through that journey, I can go through this, too," Nguyen said in an interview with CBS Morning.

Multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is expected to lift off this spring, carrying the precedent-setting all-female space flight organized by Lauren Sánchez, who is engaged to Bezos. Sánchez, a pilot, journalist and vice chair of the Bezos Earth Fund, “brought the mission together” and will also be on the flight, according to Blue Origin.

Nguyen, a bioastronautics research scientist, was in on her way to become a NASA astronaut when she decided to veer from her dream to become an advocate for sexual assault survivors. And what an advocate she was, becoming a 2019 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded TIME’s Woman of the Year and drafting the Sexual Assault Survivor Bill of Rights, which was passed unanimously by chambers of Congress.

Nguyen and Sánchez will be joined by journalist Gayle King, singer Katy Perry, Aisha Bowe, a former NASA rocket scientist and CEO, and Kerianne Flynn, a film producer.

FYI: If you want to  fly in a future mission of Blue Origin, click here.

A date for the flight has not been set but it is planned to launch this Spring, according to Blue Origin. It will be the 31st flight for the New Shepherd rocket which has room for six passengers. The suborbital vehicle is fully autonomous therefore doesn't need a pilot.

During the mission, Nguyen will attempt to conduct two science experiments — one in partnership with the Vietnamese National Space Center and another focused on women's health.

Nguyen is not the first Asian American woman into space. That honor belongs to Indian American Kalpana Chawla, who flew as a mission specialist in 1997. Chawla died on her second flight, February 1, 2003 when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated re-entering Earth's atmosphere.

BLUE ORIGIN

The 33-year oldd Nguyen was born in Washington DC, the daughter of immigrants from Vietnam. She earned a Bachelor of Arts at Harvard University, graduating in 2013. Nguyen interned at NASA in 2011 and 2013. She conducted research on exoplanets at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

"My parents are boat refugees from Vietnam. We came on boats, and now we're on spaceships," she told Pivotal.

"To me, that represents the resiliency of our community, but I hope it also inspires other people to know that they belong in these spaces," she continued. "I’m the first, but I won’t be the last. I want young Vietnamese, Southeast Asian, Asian-American women to see this and understand that they deserve to dream big. Even if those dreams are literally out of this world, we can achieve it."

Nguyen's sexual assault occurred when she was 22 by an acquaintance. That incident  caused her take a necessary detour in her life plans: to seek justice stead of pursuing her dream of going into space.

"I originally wanted to be an astronaut. Being an activist was born out of necessity," she told Pivotal.

"After ten years of fighting for my rights, I finally get to honor the person that I was before I was hurt," Nguyen told CBS.

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