Virtual Youth Day: Working Together to Launch Artemis I (grades 9-12)

good afternoon thank you so much for joining us today my name is kristen domideo and i'm a space technology communicator at nasa's langley research center in hampton virginia today we have an amazing panel for you who i'll introduce here in just a moment each of these panelists works support nasa's artemis program which will send science experiments and technology demonstrations to the surface of the moon land the first woman and the next man on the surface of the moon and establish a sustained presence all of which will help us send astronauts to mars one day it takes a huge team of people with a wide variety of knowledge and skills to have a successful mission nasa isn't just astronauts and scientists we have engineers technicians artists accountants lawyers educators writers and more let's meet some of these awesome people behind our art in this mission we've got amber favre jose ortiz nina toppin and carrie scott with us today we're going to take a few minutes for the panelists to introduce themselves and then we'll kick off the questions let's get started hi i'm amber fabray i am the deputy lead for the langley sls aerodynamics team and i am so happy to work on the sls program which stands for space launch system uh which is the rocket or family of rockets that will carry those capsules with astronauts and cargo up to the moon and beyond eventually and hello all my name is jose ortiz i'm a systems engineer and i've been with nasa since 1981 it's been a long time i'm originally from puerto rico and that's what i studied engineering i'm an electrical engineer so i got my my bachelor degree and i really owe my career in engineering to a high school math teacher that really sent me through the world of mathematics so i am supporting the gateway program and that is the um kind of space station that's going to be around the moon that is going to serve as the point for assembly of the of the lander and and missions from there to the moon we'll talk more later thanks hi i'm nina tappan aka salty and shrink wrap queen i do have a few nicknames i've acquired i've worked for nasa for 28 years i've supported 36 space flight projects and yes i do keep a list i am a program specialist specializing in life cycle logistics um used we used to call that project logistics and i am very excited to be here today and tell you about what we do hi i'm kerry scott i'm the deputy principal investigator for the sci-fly team that's the scientifically calibrated in-flight imagery group here at nasa langley and we are responsible for collecting engineering quality data sets um for the space launch system and other vehicles that go up to space and come back great thank you all so much let's get started with some questions stem jobs are a growing field 15 of the 20 fastest growing occupations require significant math and science preparation so what helped you prepare for your job at nasa and how did you get your start let me go with that um i uh like i mentioned in my introduction i had a very good teacher math teacher that recently he passed away but he was so good he took the time uh uh he used uh he teached me the trigonometry and all the uh the basics before i went to engineering school i didn't have to take the pre-calculus i went straight into calculus and he he gave me a very strong foundation to engage in engineering and i finished my my degree so um then i always wanted to work at nasa i mean it was it was it was always on tv you know of the the apollo program and and the excite the excitement of exploration so um i had the opportunity to become a co-op back in those days it was called the pro co-op program and um it was a couple of us that came back in 1981 to nasa langley as a co-op student and um and that really gave me a taste of what nasa was about because i worked in some of the wind tunnels at langley uh collecting some data for uh for those for those tunnels so i went back to school i finished my degree and sure enough i had i had an offer from from nasa to come back to work so that's really how i got my my foot into nasa and my interest and i'm really really happy to be here as par as part of this team thank you i think nina did you want to respond yeah i did um my experience was a little bit different i came to nasa later in life after i had already started a family and i was kind of tired of just working jobs i really wanted a career and i actually went back to the community college thomas nelson community college and started in electronics and got into the co-op program also that they had for technicians and from there i was accepted into the nasa apprentice program which was a six-year apprentice program where we took additional college courses and also hands-on because i always liked working with my hands and how i got in from electron i never did electronics i got a degree in it but i never did it when i came to nasa they said they came to me and said we really need some technicians to work in the laser lab would you be willing to learn that and i said i didn't know anything about lasers and nasa said that's okay we'll teach you we'll we'll get you the classes and we will teach you so you one thing you have to do is be really open-minded and from that um i i said yes of course i'll try that and from there um doors just kept opening nas different managers from nasa would come to me and say would you be willing to try this job we think you'll be really good at this and so i actually moved around a lot um from lasers to you know and eventually getting into logistics and i love logistics moving you know the whole challenge of it the multitasking but my biggest advice to you is to be open-minded when you go to an employer be open-minded and maybe a manager sees something in you that they think that you're going to be really good at and take a chance because it's it has really worked out well for me great thank you so much amber yeah um my i guess how i came to it might be a little different um i wasn't as much inspired in high school i had a math teacher i wanted to skip the ap classes and go to the community college and take community college classes instead because they were free and i was super poor and it seemed like a better way than to pay for ap courses so uh he told me i don't think you'll do very well i don't i just don't think you know that you'll be able to be an engineer to do those classes so i went ahead and did uh calculus one and two while i was still in high school and then i went to embry riddle aeronautical university for aerospace engineering so i i kind of just went off in the hole let me just prove you wrong uh direction very stubborn so i mean i think that's that's initially what really pushed me to work really hard and you know i really enjoyed being at embry riddle just being really uh really immersed in the aerospace and aeronautical culture and really great place to learn and then i went down into grad school and came out here to langley and worked with old dominion university and i got my start at um the langley full-scale wind tunnel which has now been torn down and decommissioned and all that but that is where i started my career as a an intern during my undergrad and then a graduate research assistant in graduate school and uh i i think langley is just such an amazing place to work and you know i i feel like all those all those educational institutions did great things for me but what i've learned here at langley and just through communication with many great mentors and all the great people who are um just passionate about their work here has been really really helpful wonderful wonderful people and kerry hi yeah i have a i guess a similar story to nina i was in a different career altogether actually was in education and was really enjoying being a teacher i taught high school and junior high students and i guess i owe some of this to a particular student who um one day during a question and answer session i was asking my students what kind of career did they envision for themselves and what did they always want to be and one student asked me well what about you mr scott what what did you always want to be and i told him i wanted to be an astronaut and he looked at me and very seriously said why don't you do that and i thought pretty hard about it it kind of stuck with me and so i decided to go back to school and um you know i had a physics degree and i decided to go back to school for for the engineering uh education and um selected some internships and and here i am so i i do owe at least some of the credit to to my students while i was a teacher that's incredible i love it thank you all for sharing it sounds like a lot of preparation um went into your careers here so um it started early with a lot of you too it sounds like in high school and college not everybody um but what were you like in high school um does anyone want to talk about um what your high school experience was like and is there anything that you would tell your teenage high school self now that you're at nasa and doing what you're doing amber all right um so i i think well in high school it's uh i was the captain of my dance team i was a dancer i danced from the time i was three all the way into college i actually started a dance team at denver riddle because there wasn't a dance program there at all surprisingly not really but um and so i was really into all of that i was in the art classes i was really into all the things that i think at the time i felt like i should be into there was a technology lab with a little tiny wind tunnel in it and i actually didn't take those classes because i didn't feel like i fit in in that in that environment in that group whatever so uh i would say i think you know looking back and talking to my 16 year old self i think that i would just encourage myself to like do the things that i was interested in no matter who was involved and to just go for it and you know be that awkward person and just kind of own it i guess instead of being trying so hard to fit in where you thought you were supposed to fit in i don't know if that makes sense absolutely absolutely thank you jose yeah uh so going back to those days i was i was very shy i was very shy but i really enjoyed studying so i was like uh if you you know if the word nerd existed back then i was one of those uh i was always studying in school uh one thing that i really liked was playing chess so i i always wanted to challenge anybody and i really challenge the teachers uh so i learned a lot um uh from you know from some of my teachers uh some of the basic movements of of chess but again you know just just um uh very shy uh not not very outgoing i i was one time i was um part of uh of the directors of a class and i really didn't it wasn't really for me to be involved you know in activities like that i was more into the books things like that all right thank you all right oh carrie go ahead please oh i just uh i was probably less interested in school and more interested in extracurricular stuff so i would probably tell myself two things one is to focus on studies [Music] as early as possible and two would be to uh invest in certain companies i think we'd all we would all do that if we could talk to our uh younger selves thank you um so money can be a huge motivator for people not for everybody and college and stem majors out there right now are out earning other college grads but like i said money doesn't motivate anybody what motivated all of you what inspired you um to end up here at nasa carrie oh amber oh sorry everyone reads the hand at once um let's start with nina she didn't answer the last question okay like i said before i was looking for a career and what i found was i enjoy challenges i enjoy when somebody says you can't do something or that's too hard or you know you come up with a new way and it's you can't do that and one thing that's really cool about nasa is that it's very diverse and they're willing to um you know listen to new ideas and try new things and so i really uh really thrive on that i love it when they when you come up with a new idea and they say it won't work and you know it works great right and so i really enjoy working with a different um different group of people and we work across the agency not just people at langley but other centers i have built some really strong bonds that's why i have these nicknames uh which is a whole other story but um it's i really enjoy the diversity and the openness everybody seems to have an open mind and they're willing to listen and try new things and so for me that's really fun great thank you jose oh sure um so when i when i was in my fourth year of engineering electrical engineering i i had the opportunity to go to hewlett-packard texas instruments i had those offers as well but then nasa said well we'll pay you for your graduate school and that that did it for me because i wanted to continue studying so uh so when i first came in i immediately signed up for for my master's degree and nasa picked up the bill and that was great for me all right that's great gary um yeah i mean i think there's elements of all that here with me as well um a big one for me though is the idea of contributing to the advancement of the human race you know our our knowledge our exploration in some small way you know i know that what i do for the agency is contributing to the advancement of our species and that's pretty exciting to me um you know it helps that nasa is an awesome place to work it helps that i love spaceships and space travel since i can remember words um and it helps that we get to actually work with all the cool companies who are involved in space travel and um right now i think we're looking at you know we're right in the middle of kind of a new space age a a re invigorated space race so to speak and um you know mars is the target it's it's just very exciting to be a part of that so i feel very fortunate um that that i get to contribute in that way that's beautifully said thank you and amber yeah i um i actually was here for grad school and then left and actually started my official career with lockheed martin and working there was a great place to launch my career um but coming back and and being here again and even my experience in grad school one of the most powerful things about nasa is that it's i would say 90 some percent of the people i work with this job is their dream job they have spent their career working to get where they are and they would not want to be somewhere else and there's just something about showing up to a team full of people every day who really want to be there and who absolutely think this is the best place that they could be working so it's it's so powerful to work with just these amazing people who really really love their jobs so i think that's the biggest thing for me that's great and i in my job as a communicator i get to interview people like you all every day meeting new people across the agency and their enthusiasm like you said amber your enthusiasm is contagious and it is definitely a motivator and something that is super exciting about coming to work or working from home every day thank you um um so work is a big part of life but it's not entire and it's not your entire life so does anyone want to share anything that you do outside of work any hobbies or i don't know hidden talents or anything like that that you want to talk about jose so of course um so i play the guitar and that that's something that i usually do during the day you know after a meeting or something a very tense meeting or something i just grab the guitar and play a couple of songs songs but in addition to that i like to do repair work so uh maintenance and homes and anything that breaks that's kind of a hobby on the side and um and i really enjoy doing that fixing things um so great thank you i wish i was good at fixing things amber so i'm a yoga teacher and i actually own a yoga studio so i have a whole other career i guess that's like on the side but um i really love yoga it's been life changing and life-saving tool for me as far as staying balanced and emotionally mentally spiritually all of those things and then being able to offer that in our community locally through the studio has been also very awesome great thank you so much um jose mentioned his guitar playing a lot of people uh find inspiration in the arts so um are any of you readers or music fans what's the last book you read or what kind of music do you listen to while you're working anybody want to share carrie yeah of course i like science fiction um i the last book i read was uh project hail mary by andy weir uh he's the same author who wrote artemis and the martian so it's a bit different than those if you like science fiction i would say maybe give it a shot great thanks in amber yeah um so i read a lot of yoga and kind of self-help style books i guess and um and occasionally some sci-fi and other things but the last book i read was actually untamed by glennon doyle which was an amazing um kind of a feminist book but really great um and uh when i'm working i i really like to listen to kind of uh meditation music there's a playlist on spotify called uh deep thought i think and it's it's kind of like these binaural beats and really great for getting into code and things that i might be working on that require me to not hear words in the background maybe um and if i'm doing words i really love bird talker so um kind of folk rock type music that i i really get into great thank you so this is my last question to you all and i hope that you all answer this um leslie what excites you most about the artemis program returning to the moon sending the first woman sending the first person of color um the prospect of landing humans on mars in the not-too-distant future um you talked a little bit about what excites you about working at nasa but what specifically about artemis which you're all contributing to is is exciting okay amber yeah so i would say um just all of it i mean it's if you think about how quickly we went from the wright brothers to everybody flying on jets all the time to go on their vacations and all those things how quickly that happened and then we kind of had a stall out and you know and and we've made it we went to the moon but it's it's if you think about the the steps and the massive pace that we were moving at now we're moving you know we're moving in the direction of big much bigger things um we've got commercial space flight happening and i realize that some people feel like that's not a great thing because we're making space accessible to the ultra rich but um remember when we first started using jets to fly around the world that was the ultra rich that were traveling that way and who knows maybe within my lifetime people will be hopping on you know a space flight to travel from one part of the world to the other very quickly um so we artemis is just so important to creating the technology that's really going to push those advances what we do at nasa really affects everybody in their everyday life and it's so exciting to be a part of such a big effort that's going to make that huge impact so wonderful thank you jose yeah i am always amazed of the talent and the people that work and the creativity that they all have because to be able to design something that a place that you've never been before you got to have a way to do that design on paper or models before you can start testing and and it's just exciting to be uh working on on those new things um you know there's a big difference you know um on in technology it's advanced quite a bit but we still need to make sure that it all it all works but um but the people make the difference for me um and i and i just any piece of the artemis program you know the sls the uh the lander the gateway and uh i was part of the orion um program working on a launch award system that whole system is is very sophisticated is uh it's it's it's a lot of work a lot of very talented people working on that uh on both sides nasa and the contractor team to put a thing like that together but i'm just honored and privileged to be part of of the artemis program thank you nina i have some of the same feelings as jose and for me it's not why are we going there but why not i mean and i think it's incredible just incredible that we're sending a diverse crew because america and the world is so diverse and so you know we need to send send how we are you know the people that we are but it it does take an incredible amount of um you know nasa is a lot of times a one-stop shop we dream it we think it we plan it we build it we launch it and so for me it's just exciting to do what some people say can't be done and you know who would have thought 30 years ago that we have velcro i mean like you know if somebody said hey why not we love velcro you know we love super glue think of all these things your cell phone all of these space technologies that came out of you know uh spin-offs that nasa and other government agencies have come up with so you know why not go there and why stop at mars that's that's great incredible i love it carrie yeah totally why not um yeah i for me it's really exciting just as a space geek the fact that you know we're putting things we're going to mars we're going to be there um but the the real i guess excitement is um to imagine my son growing up in a time where walking on mars is normal or doing you know getting a job in you know as a space mechanic or something is regular i i just to me that's really exciting um to kind of inspire the imagination of you know the next generations um you know i guess you know they say one of my favorite quotes is imagination is more important than knowledge so you know we don't know yet what cool things are going to come from discoveries that are made but hopefully you know we get to kind of inspire and ignite the imagination of this next generation that's coming online so that's that's the really exciting part for me amazing thank you so much thank you all so much for your time and providing all of your insight um i want to open it up to any closing thoughts that anyone would like to share anything i didn't ask you that you want to talk about your job or anything like that please nina okay so just to clarify in case you don't know what a life cycle logistics person is we spend years and years developing these uh satellites and rockets and we spend millions of dollars many a lot of the time and you have hundreds of thousands of people that have have built these so if you don't lift it if you don't package it if you don't transport it correctly then it's all for nothing that's what i do i develop the plans i decide how we're going to lift it what cream we're going to use whether we're going to put it on a truck or an airplane how we're going to get it to the launch site how are we going to get there safely so that we have not wasted all of these years so that's what a life cycle logistics person does and and i love it definitely something probably a lot of people didn't know was a job opportunity at nasa jose so i just want to offer uh some words of encouragement you know to the young audience that's watching us uh just continue um i think nina said something uh earlier that is very true have an open mind and also um discipline and you're gonna have to work you're gonna have to work and work hard and and and you know you have to make sure you uh you do well in your classes you you get your good grades because that's gonna put you on the top and yeah and it's gonna open doors for you well said jose thank you carrie yeah that's that's great advice um i i think uh something that really helped me along because i'll be honest some classes i didn't score in the top percentages but some things that really helped me along in my career were internships i would say getting as much internship experience as you can um from as early as you can for from as many places as you can is going to be really beneficial part of that process is learning what you don't want to do and part of it is uh building your skill sets um some of which you know you may not think are important uh but will definitely can translate you know into career success so um you know keep working hard and you know put your best foot forward in everything that you do and eventually you'll get to where you want to go thank you thank you that's great and amber yeah i guess um i i wanted to just point out how important it is to get used to and really comfortable with failure because that's that's what we do we just try things and see what works and that means we fail a lot of times before we figure out the right way and um really science is about proving your hypothesis wrong so sometimes you're like on a mission to create failure right so um i just i feel like when we're young we all have this avoidance of failure and that's kind of ingrained in us so it's it's probably really a good idea to just get used to failure and know that each failure puts you one step closer to that success that you're looking for wonderful that was really well said as well thank you all so much i just really appreciate your time thank you to our panelists thank you to our viewers for joining us today i hope you can see yourself working at nasa one day there are plenty of ways to get involved through stem engagement internships and careers and jobs so please visit nasa.gov for more information on how you can get involved thank you

Channel: NASA Langley Research Center

Views: 235

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: NASA, Langley Research Center, aeronautics, exploration, science, research, technology, engineering

Id: 3xHuQHq1Ps0

Length: 31min 1sec (1861 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 18 2021