While in grade school, NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins dreamed of exploring outer space .

Later, Watkins found her passion in geology, and excelled in sports. Her life changed when she received a phone call in 2017.

“I got the phone call (asking me if I) want to come down to Johnson Space Center,” she said. “It was really quite a moment of realizing that (childhood) dream.”

Three years after joining the astronaut corps, the Lafayette native was assigned to NASA’s Artemis Team, with its goal to reach the moon by 2024.

If assigned to the future moon landing mission, Watkins would be the first woman to take a step on the moon.

“It’s very exciting to have that be a possibility, especially for me as a planetary geologist, you know,” she said. “I did a lot of my graduate work on the geology of other surfaces, so to be able to go and actually put boots on those surface would be a dream come true.

“Even being a part of the (astronaut) corps and thinking about going to another planetary body is pretty amazing.”

The Artemis Team is made up of nine women and nine men from the astronaut corps, all with a different expertise.

“We are a team that we all come with different strengths, different skill sets and it’s really the combination of all those skill sets that’s going to allow us to be successful and accomplish the goals we want to with Artemis,” Watkins said.

Watkins specializes in geology and has conducted research on Mars soil simulate that supported the Phoenix Mars Lander mission, while also focusing her doctorate research at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on the emplacement mechanism of large landslides on Earth and Mars.

“She’s just an incredible person, she’s really smart in what she does,” said fellow Artemis Team member and Coloradan Matthew Dominick.

Watkins was born in Gaithersburg, Md., but spent most of her younger years in Colorado and considers Lafayette her hometown.

In grade school, she fell in love with geology, and basketball, soccer and rugby.

Watkins left Colorado to attend Stanford University.

Whenever she gets back to Colorado to visit her parents in Lafayette, she enjoys hiking, rock climbing, snow and skiing, she said.

One of her most treasured activities recently is sharing her love of geology with one of Dominick’s daughters.

“She’s definitely a budding geologist, which makes me so excited. He’s definitely super supportive of it by getting her on the phone with me, and it’s so fun for me to hear her excitement, and her passion for it,” Watkins said. “It’s really awesome to just engage with her and kind of provide some perspective of what we’re doing here, and it’s really about inspiring the next generation, getting them engaged and on board and excited about the STEM fields.”

Watkins hopes that young girls and children of color see what she’s doing and know that they too can accomplish anything.

“I think representation is really important in whatever form it looks like, so somebody who looks like you, has the same background as you, came from the same place as you; whatever connection you can make can be helpful … in starting to see those paths of possibilities,” Watkins said.

“To be able to see yourself in somebody else’s (boots) and see those dreams become a reality and start to understand that those can be a reality for you as well … (and I hope) that the next generation of explorers can be inspired (by us).”