South Africa’s ‘underground astronauts’: Exploring darkish corridors in cramped situations
“I often don’t respond to that name,” she says. “I respond to ‘Bones.'”
Recently named a 2021 Emerging Explorer by the National Geographic Society, the 33-year-old first made a name for herself as a member of the second group of “underground astronauts” — so called because “we are going into spaces that very few people have gone before,” she explains.
The original crew, comprised of six female scientists, garnered the world’s attention in 2015 when they helped unearth the remains of a previously unknown human species. Now called Homo naledi, the remains were found deep in the Rising Star cave system roughly an hour’s drive northwest of Johannesburg.
Led by paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, it was a significant discovery that has since helped to fill some gaps in our understanding of human evolution.
In 2018, Molopyane answered the call to join the second generation of underground astronauts and return to the caves to “figure out what more Rising Star had to give,” she says.
It’s a…
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