Content note: this article contains references to rape that readers may find upsetting.

When Amanda Nguyen’s parents fled from Vietnam to America as boat refugees, using celestial navigation to find their way to freedom, they could never have imagined the stars would play an equally important role in their daughter’s life, albeit in a very different way.

“In the US, my parents became engineers – my dad an aerospace engineer – so in many ways the stars and space have saved them and helped them survive,” says Nguyen. “That context was central to my upbringing.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Nguyen got into STEM from an early age before heading to Harvard University to study astrophysics with dreams of becoming an astronaut. However, her life trajectory changed dramatically when she was raped and encountered a broken criminal justice system.

“When I found out that my rape kit, which is the evidence collected in the hospital after a rape, could be destroyed, untested, after six months, I had to make a choice: pursue my dream of going to space or justice. I put my dream on hold and decided to fight for my rights,” says Nguyen.

Nguyen went on to create Rise, an organisation that fights for sexual assault survivors and was responsible for drafting the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act, a bill that was passed unanimously.

“When President Obama signed the bill, over a million people reached out to me,” says Nguyen. “Because of this response, I delayed my dream of becoming an astronaut once more to advocate for a worldwide survivor bill of rights.”

It took six months to pass the US law, but the United Nations law would take another six years to bring to fruition. Along the way, Nguyen picked up a Nobel Peace Prize nomination and was named one of Time magazine’s women of the year in 2022 for her activism work.

“At the United Nations general assembly in 2022, when the gavel struck and the entire world stood up for this issue, that’s when I decided to honour the dreams of the person I was before I was hurt,” says Nguyen.

Nguyen was accepted as a scientist astronaut candidate at the International Institute of Aeronautical Sciences (IIAS), and in March 2024, it was announced she would join a Blue Origins flight later this year, making her the first Vietnamese and Southeast Asian woman in space.

How does it feel to be returning to your original dream of becoming an astronaut all these years later?

I’ve always kept that dream in sight, even when the hour was dark. One of the biggest lessons I hope people will take from seeing me go into space is that we all have challenges and sacrifices we’ve had to make in our lives, but our dreams still exist and we can honour that person at any point in our lives. It’s never too late. People will only take your childhood dreams as seriously as you take them.

Of course, I had times of doubt. In my class of eight at the IIAS, everyone else was currently working in STEM as cardiologists, oncologists, engineers or test pilots. I’d been out of STEM for 10 years, but I still graduated top of my class.

What does training to become an astronaut involve?

The training is like boot camp – half of it is academic, half of it is physical. One of the physical tests is to do maths while in a hyperbaric chamber with the oxygen being gradually lowered. Another takes place in a neutral buoyancy lab, where you’re blindfolded and strapped into a chair, then lowered into the water and turned upside down. Your goal is to unbuckle yourself, punch the window out and swim to the surface.

Then there’s the high G-force test, which is where they put you in a jet and fly you through different parabolas [flying upward and downward arcs that create weightlessness to simulate the microgravity of space] or you have to perform barrel rolls while the instructor ramps up the G-forces.

Everyone has to endure a stress test, too, but you don’t know when this will be and it’s different for everyone. The instructors observe you in class and when they see you at your weakest point, they’ll deliberately put you into the most physically demanding test. My stress test ended up being on the high G-force test – I’d pulled an all-nighter for an exam, and when my teachers saw that, they moved my high G-force test up to that day.

I often found the skills I learned through my civil rights activism helped me during physical astronaut training. There are so many situations where you have to stay calm amid chaos and crisis, just like when I testified at the United Nations in front of the world. There was no room for error at that point. It wasn’t just for my own human rights; it was for the 1.3 billion other rape survivors around the world.

In the lead-up to your launch with Blue Origins later this year, how are you physically and mentally preparing for the trip?

I’ll be carrying out several scientific missions on the trip, one of which is about biology, and I’m flying germinated seeds with me, so I’m currently working closely with the scientists on my payload team to figure out how best to do this. We also rehearse every step from L-minus seven all the way up to L-minus one [the seven days that precede launch]. This particular mission is in tandem with the Vietnamese National Space Centre, and they’ve asked me to address Vietnam in space, so I’m also thinking about the words I’ll say to address them.

Physically, I’m doing a lot of core strength exercises because that’s how you handle the G-forces, and every week I have to weigh in, because every single gram matters when you’re flying. There’s also the practical side of things, like writing a will.

As a woman in what is still a male-dominated field, have you ever encountered or seen sexism in the industry?

Unfortunately, yes. Very early on, when I was at NASA, I remember somebody saying to me that they didn’t believe I worked there. An older colleague there advised me to wear my class ring from Harvard because that would signal to male colleagues that I belonged there. The women in the industry look out for each other because, unfortunately, sexual harassment has been reported in the STEM world in abundance. I have a group of women astronauts called Space Sisters, and because so few women have flown to space, naturally all of us are trailblazers in our own communities. This seems to outrage a certain group of misogynists, so we’ve learned to rally around one another because we don’t just want to be the first, we want to open the door for more women.

How does it feel to be a role model to women and girls everywhere?

To every woman or girl who looks at me, I hope that what they first and foremost see is that they’re safe to be who they want to be. I know that what I look like will be what millions of young Asian girls will dress up as for Halloween. There’s a tendency to label women: you’re either a scientist or you like fashion. So often as women, we hide our light because the things we like are infantilised and trivialised. I want women and girls to know that you don’t have to compromise yourself, which is why I’ll be showing up on the most important day of my life, making history while looking the way I want to look.

It’s for this reason that I was so drawn to e.l.f. Cosmetics’ Show Your(s)e.l.f. campaign. There are so many places where I’m the only person who looks like me in the room, whether that’s in the STEM community or when I’m testifying at the United Nations. I used to feel like I needed to assimilate and fit in to survive, but by showing up authentically as myself – whether that means wearing red lipstick or full glam – it helps me feel more like myself and more confident in these moments.

Will skincare and beauty remain a priority to you in space?

Skincare and beauty are at the forefront for me. I’m vividly aware that there will be millions of people looking at those photos of me, and that they’ll be going into history books. I’ve already been talking to mission control, to my astronaut trainers and to my make-up artists about exactly what my make-up can look like, what I’ll have with me and how I’ll take care of my skin in space.

How do you think you’ll feel when you finally get to look back on Earth from space?

I know I’ll probably tear up. We all get to take a zero G indicator with us, which is a small item, usually something like a stuffed toy animal, and when it floats you know you’re in space. My zero G indicator is a promise that I wrote to myself when I left the hospital after my rape kit procedure, and it says never, never, never give up. Looking at that piece of paper over Earth will be a physical manifestation of keeping a promise to myself; it’ll be a full circle moment.

Images: e.l.f Cosmetics. 

Amanda is working with e.l.f Cosmetics on its Show Your(s)e.l.f. campaign @elfcosmetics and @elfcosmeticsuk