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.

First Amanda Nguyen rewrote laws – now she's going into space