Actually, I wanted to be a pediatrician until I was about 16 years old. I was always interested in space, but I didn t really know about opportunities to turn that interest into a job. When I was 16, I took my first physics class. I was lucky enough to have a great teacher, and everything was so understandable and easy. That was when I really considered engineering, as a way to pursue space, she explains in her profile.
A Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University and her MS and PhD from MIT in Aeronautics/Astronautics followed before she joined Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where she has worked on multiple missions such as Cassini (mission to Saturn) and GRAIL (a pair of formation flown spacecraft to the Moon). She has worked on Mars 2020 since almost the beginning of the project in 2013, including as its GNC operation’s lead at JPL in Pasadena, California.
and look at the messages from the ground because we have a huge ground team that s working overnight to prepare changes or the details of the tests that we ll be performing over the course of the day. so first thing i do is check out that and see what s changed. but on any given day it can be so dramatically different. one day we might focus on science. another day we might be repairing the carbon dioxide removal system. another day soon jack and i will do a space walk. we talked about last saturday we did robotics operations. i love the diversity of the different activities that we do, plus, you know, we have over 200 investigations ongoing on board the space station. there is also just the living and on board the space station, it is such a unique and novel environment. nothing we re used to on the ground and it is so special to just be in zero gravity.