The first person to set foot on Mars should be a woman, said a leading engineer at Nasa's Space Vehicle Mock-up Facility. Allison McIntyre, Chief Astronaut Trainer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, told BBC 5 Live: “My centre director is a woman, my former division chief is a woman, we have female astronauts, but we haven't put a woman on the moon yet.”
Allison believes by putting a female astronaut on the earth’s next planet, Nasa could do justice to women who missed opportunities in the previous space missions.
“I think the first person on Mars should be a woman”, said Allison, referring to the Apollo missions in the late 1960s and 70s, that already sent 12 men to walk on the moon's surface.
The BBC 5 Live documentary covered the special roles played by Nasa's women members in space exploration. Women astronauts have played significant role in space misions, though only fewer women have orbited compared to men. Since Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman cosmonaut who went to space in 1963, several female astronauts have undertaken space jouney.
Emily Nelson, a flight director at Nasa, said: “When we went to the moon last, our ability to stay there for any length of time was really limited." Now women are capable of living long period as proved by Karen Nyberg who spent six months in space on the International Space Station.
Women may have suffered discrimination in space missions in the past. But in 2013, for the first time ever, Nasa chose an eight member new astronaut team consisting of an equal number of men and women.
Inspired by President Barack Obama, Nasa's earlier plan was to send fist human to Mars between 2030 and 2040. However, it is not clear yet whether Nasa wants to send people to the Red Planet soon, as President Donals Trump wants the agency to focus on the moon mission instead.