What are some of your daily responsibilities and basic skillsets used within your position?

“As a project manager, I spend a significant portion of my time interfacing with customers and team members in meetings and discussions. Although I’m not in the nitty gritty of the technical details anymore, being able to understand and speak the language is critical to my being able to communicate effectively. Organizational skills and attention to detail are also very important. There’s a lot of information to keep track of on a day-to-day basis, and it’s essential for me to always be aware of what our customers need and how we’re going to achieve those goals.”

Where do you see the trend heading for women entering STEM fields over the next 5 years and why?

“I’m optimistic that the number of women entering STEM fields will continue to increase, due to the growing presence of female role models and the continued encouragement from both men and women to have women in these fields.”

What are some of your daily responsibilities and basic skillsets used within your position?

“In addition to verifying the orbit of the spacecraft each day, I use software to help calculate potential maneuver possibilities. This requires analysis and problem solving skills. Even though the physics for determining the orbit is always the same, the effects of space weather when propagating the orbit forward in time plays a very impactful role that needs to be accounted for. I also use programming skills to understand existing computer programs and scripts and to create my own to help solve problems.”

Where do you see the trend heading for women entering STEM fields over the next 5 years and why?

“I believe that it will continue to become easier for women to go into STEM fields. There are so many programs and so many women in STEM helping to work to increase overall awareness. From the many new engineering toys being designed for girls to the powerful women becoming successful entrepreneurs and CEOs, there is increased exposure to what women can do. I see a bright outlook for more girls and women to explore whatever their interests may be and become hugely successful.”

What are some of your daily responsibilities and basic skillsets used within your position?

“As the task lead I am responsible for ensuring that all the required task work is completed successfully and is of superior quality. Our task provides daily operations, analysis, maneuver planning, and risk mitigation maneuver planning. We also provide software support including development and testing. On a day-to-day basis, I attend a lot of meetings. I work with multiple GSFC customers to ensure we are always meeting their needs. I lead the weekly customer status meetings and provide monthly task reports. Communication skills are critical, as are technical skills. I draw on my technical skills and experience to make decisions and mentor team personnel. I have written operations concepts, developed procedures, and verified flight dynamics systems for mission support. I have provided launch and early orbit support for multiple missions as the flight dynamics lead, and performed maneuver design, analysis, and routine operations for many others. I have also generated vehicle performance estimates and reviewed and verified launch contractor-provided analyses to ensure launch vehicle requirements are met.”

Where do you see the trend heading for women entering STEM fields over the next 5 years and why?

“I don’t really have any perception of a STEM ‘trend.’ I never felt that any field or position was out of my reach when I entered the workforce; there were always many women in engineering and management positions at NASA GSFC, even 30 years ago.”

What are some of your daily responsibilities and basic skillsets used within your position?

“My role is a little less traditional than the other STEM roles around a.i. solutions, but I often have to use my knowledge of queries and expressions when working on the back end of our HR Information System to pull reports and make updates. It can get very tedious sometimes, as one wrong letter or symbol will cause an error on the entire report, but it is always refreshing when getting the correct end results to provide to my team!”

Where do you see the trend heading for women entering STEM fields over the next 5 years and why?

“Women are underrepresented in STEM fields. I sincerely hope that this changes in the next 5 years as more women become interested in STEM fields and seek opportunities in these areas.”

What are some of your daily responsibilities and basic skillsets used within your position?

“My daily responsibilities can vary day-by-day from working real-time operations or providing operations SME support, developing new mission material and documentation, managing the CARA operations team, or developing and presenting training material or other CARA-specific information.

Critical thinking and data analysis are necessary when performing real-time operations since we take a large amount of data and must determine whether a spacecraft should perform an avoidance maneuver. The consequences of a bad decision could potentially be loss of a mission, so making an informed decision is very important. Additionally, both written and oral communication and writing skills in general are important as I work with new missions and train new personnel.”

What extra-curricular activities outside the classroom would you recommend to further a student’s interest and education in STEM fields?

“Look for volunteering opportunities teaching kids STEM. There are many students who need help and by teaching others you can teach yourself both within STEM as well as communication and skills that are needed for mentoring. Through University of Maryland I joined the InnoWorks group which worked with local elementary and middle schools teaching STEM as an after-school activity.”

What are some of your daily responsibilities and basic skillsets used within your position?

“I work with our spacecraft customers and launch vehicle providers to define requirements and follow the evolution of these requirements throughout the mission. I provide verification and validation of these requirements using system dynamics and control and modeling software like MATLAB and Simulink.”

Where do you see the trend heading for women entering STEM fields over the next 5 years and why?

“The atmosphere is changing, that’s for sure. It’s a slow change, but slow change is often what sticks. I’m hopeful for a time when women are not few and far between in highly technical or management positions. I see more and more young women being empowered to pursue careers in the technical fields and that’s great news of things to come!”

What are some of your daily responsibilities and basic skillsets used within your position?

“On both of my projects, MMS and Restore-L, Goddard Enhanced Onboard Navigation System (GEONS) is used onboard spacecraft which primarily utilizes GPS signals to achieve accurate navigation solutions. The MMS mission has been in operation phase since March 2015. The four MMS spacecrafts are in a tetrahedron formation on a highly elliptical orbit. I am part of the team that monitors the spacecrafts’ navigation solutions. The Restore-L mission is set to perform in-orbit servicing on Landsat-7 satellite. On Restore-L, I am part of the team that carries navigation analyses and simulations to configure GEONS for flight. The key to be successful in aerospace engineering is to develop critical thinking and have the desire to understand and pursue complex topics in math and physics.”

What extra-curricular activities outside the classroom would you recommend to further a student’s interest and education in STEM fields?

“I am from Iran and the schools’ culture and curriculum are different from the U.S. Growing up, I studied hard at school and after school. I realize that there are many opportunities available to the students at U.S. schools to help build their skills. I encourage every student to join one of the science clubs available at their school and explore their potential beyond the textbooks.”

What are some of your daily responsibilities and basic skillsets used within your position?

“Some of my skills are a lot of reading and some investigating. Working in Quality, we ensure that processes and procedures are being followed per the Missile Defense Agency guidance.”

What extra-curricular activities outside the classroom would you recommend to further a student’s interest and education in STEM fields?

“I would recommend getting involved in professional organizations such as National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), Society of Women Engineers (SWE), IEEE Women in Engineering, etc. Involvement in these organizations in your present and past collegiate years mold and prepare you for your professional career development. Also, many of these organizations offer conferences for career building practices that prepare you for job interviewing skills and assist you with your career path development.”

What are some of your daily responsibilities and basic skillsets used within your position?

“My current position is very technical: I’m designing the maneuvers that will keep the Deep Space Gateway in orbit around the Moon or send it from one orbit to another. I write computer simulations using FreeFlyer and other software packages. I’m also developing, with my research partner, a custom design and visualization program for spacecraft under the influence of multiple bodies at once- the Earth and Moon, for example, or Jupiter and Europa.

On a daily basis I use my understanding of orbital mechanics—how bodies move around in space under the influence of various forces. I do my work with computers—I’m either scripting up my own simulations in FreeFlyer or MATLAB, or using dedicated astrodynamics programs like the Deep Space Trajectory Explorer or Copernicus.

Another vital skill for my job is communication. Whether I’m speaking to upper management about broad concepts, explaining technical details to colleagues, or writing and presenting conference papers, it’s incredibly important to be able to clearly explain my work, ideas, and conclusions.”