Jessica Meir is an interesting person. She is Swedish-American-Israeli, born to a Swedish American mother and to an Iraqi Israeli father. One can probably not imagine a more diverse set of cultures merging into one person. Meir seems to be brilliant, as she is an assistant professor of Anasthesia at Harvard, while also being an aquanaut and an astronaut. See her Wikipedia page for more details.

Jessica Meir will now be Israel's second astronaut, after Ilan Ramon, to go to space. She will join a Russian cosmonaut and the first astronaut from the United Arab Emirates to be leaving from Kazakhstan on September 25 to the International Space Station and is training now for that trip.

We will be following the story closely and we wish Jessica Meir a successful period of preparation for the trip and a successful trip, and obviously we hope both ways work and she comes home safely. She will make many home countries proud, considering her background.