“Flying to space on Unity 25 to float above my home planet felt a bit like uncovering a secret that our human mind is not naturally prepared to see — the place I see every day but have never truly gazed upon. I could not have expected how highly defined and pristine our atmosphere appears, a thin protector of all life as we know it. As a visual artist, the experience for me was highly visual sensory — the clarity, the contrast, the brightness, the hyperrealism of it all. It was resplendent,” shares Astronaut 007 Jamila Gilbert, mission specialist on board the Unity 25 spacecraft and senior manager of internal communications at Virgin Galactic. “I can still see the planet in full clarity if I close my eyes. Naturally, the magnitude of the planet struck me; it was both the largest entity I’ve ever gazed upon, and also was somehow painted small – a brilliant blue mass dwarfed by the infinite depth of blackness around it.”

Jamila, a New Mexico State University graduate with a degree in languages and linguistics, became one of the first 100 women and one of fewer than 20 people from Latinx backgrounds to break out of Earth's atmosphere and enter space.

As a visual artist and a multilingual communications professional rather than someone with engineering or aeronautical aspirations, she shares that she never imagined herself traveling into space. However, she knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when she was offered the opportunity to work for Virgin Galactic in 2019.