Amanda Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American astronaut who was part of the all-female team. Blue Origin spaceflight, has spoken of her depression after she experienced a “tsunami of persecution” following the flight during which she became the first Vietnamese woman to go into space.
Nguyen, 34, was on April's historic 11-minute flight, crewed by pop star Katy Perry, journalist Gayle King and the journalist and wife of Blue Origin's founder. Jeff BezosLauren Sanchez. The flight has been heavily criticized for its environmental impact, with critics questioning its purpose and use of resources.
For Nguyen, who is a civil rights activist for survivors of sexual assault and a bioastronautics researcher, she said the backlash against the flights resulted in her professional accomplishments and dreams being “buried under an avalanche of misogyny.”
In the long term statement shared on Instagram on Tuesday, she said that when King called to see how she was feeling after the flight, “I told her that my depression could last for years.”
She said the volume of news coverage and social media reaction to the trip was so “unprecedented” that even a “small amount of negativity is overwhelming.” “It amounted to billions of hostile impressions,” she said, “an onslaught that no human brain could withstand.”
“I didn't leave Texas for a week, unable to get out of bed. A month later, when a senior Blue employee [Origin] called me, I had to hang up because I couldn’t talk through my tears,” she wrote.
IN Guardian interview In March, Nguyen said she put her lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut on hold after another student raped her at university, and she continued her years-long fight for justice that she called “all-consuming.” In 2019, her activism on behalf of victims of sexual violence led to Nguyen being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 2022 she was named one of Time magazine's Women of the Year.
The attack after the space flight left her feeling like “collateral damage,” Nguyen said: “My moment of justice was crippled.”
“In moments of deep grief this year, I turned again to a familiar place, to her – my survivor self – who found the strength to fight. How terrible that I had to use this skill again,” she said.
Now, eight months after realizing her dream of going into space, Nguyen said the “fog of grief has begun to lift” and thanked those who supported her and sent her well wishes. “Vietnam saved me… You all saved me,” she wrote.
Nguyen, whose parents came to the US as refugees after fleeing Vietnam after the fall of Saigon, continued: “When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, bombs fell on Vietnam. This year, when my refugee family looked up at the sky from a boat, instead of bombs they saw the first Vietnamese woman in space.
“We arrived on boats and now we are on spaceships,” she said.
Despite the backlash, she said it was “stunningly good what came out of it.” [the flight]”, including media attention for her research in women's health and opportunities to meet with world leaders in connection with her advocacy on behalf of rape victims.
“It's the greatest gift of this holiday season to feel the fog lift,” Nguyen wrote. “I can tell Gail it won't take years.”
She ended her post with a photo of her as a young Harvard student with the caption: “For her.”
