Thirty-four-year-old Jamila Gilbert imagined the count-down in her head long before the flight window opened on May 25 at New Mexico’s Spaceport America. “You hear a countdown from 10, 9, 8, 7... and then our pilots say ‘release, release, release,’ and the mothership pulls away and the spaceship is released,” Gilbert explained. “For just a few seconds you are free falling, then the rocket motor ignites and you head to space.”
A 2011 graduate of New Mexico State University with a bachelor’s degree in languages and linguistics, Gilbert joined Virgin Galactic in 2019. In her day job at the space travel company, she leads the internal communications team. In her role as a mission specialist on the Unity 25 spaceflight mission, Gilbert’s role was to evaluate the customer experience.
“I was able to evaluate the journey as a customer would – from the time of purchasing a spaceflight ticket to receiving Virgin Galactic Astronaut wings following a spaceflight,” she said. “And, perhaps most importantly, I had the privilege of experiencing a sense of wonder and awe that only spaceflight can deliver -- I saw Mother Earth from space and became a child once again. A joyous, awe-stricken, giggling little kid experiencing pure and unfiltered lightness and elation.”
She is one of only 16 Hispanic and LatinX people and among the first 100 women ever to go to space. In addition to speaking four languages and as a Latina with roots to the Purépechan indigenous group in Central Mexico, Gilbert brings different perspectives to the experience of spaceflight than other crew members with backgrounds in engineering and aerospace.
“One of the really neat opportunities of commercial spaceflight is that you don't have to be trained from a technical background, and you receive your spaceflight training just days leading up to your flight,” Gilbert said. “The spaceflight itself was a very fun, thrilling, and comfortable experience for me. And that comfort is going to be opening up the door to so many more people, folks from very diverse backgrounds and so many different countries that perhaps do not have governmental space programs. From research flights to incredible life-changing journeys, opening space is going to make a difference.”
Her spacesuit was equipped with several pockets for personal effects, so she took up photographs, some New Mexican turquoise, some drawings created by her nieces, and some small watercolors that she painted.
“As a visual artist, the experience for me was highly visual sensory — the clarity, the contrast, the brightness, the hyperrealism of it all. I could not have expected how highly defined and crystalline our atmosphere appears against the depth of space. It truly left me speechless.”
Speaking four languages has helped Gilbert experience other cultures, but she also discovered unknown career options at NMSU. “I knew I liked the arts. I knew I loved going to museums but I never had thought about the conservation of ethnographic materials or paintings or sculpture,” she said. “When I learned NMSU had one of only two museum conservation programs in the U.S. with an undergraduate degree, it was incredible. (Professor) Silvia Marinas Feliner opened my eyes to this whole other world that I didn’t know existed.”
Thanks to Marinas Feliner’s mentorship in museum conservation, Gilbert had the opportunity to work at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian for a summer internship. Another unforgettable experience to join her first spaceflight.
“People want go into space for different reasons,” Gilbert said. “Maybe they want the thrill of rocket power, to go where very few have gone before, or to gaze back down at Earth. For me, flying to space was important for a variety of reasons, but it reminds me of something my mother shared about education being something that you can never lose. Even if you lose every material possession, you can never lose your education -- unforgettable experiences such as spaceflight have something in common with that.”
Ride along for Jamila Gilbert’s spaceflight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4Icv0v8uLk
Watch a short video of Gilbert talking about her excitement prior to her first space flight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XODF80rzJ3s
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