Sometimes, dreams do come true. They have for Erika Alvarez in realizing her dream of working for NASA.
When she was a high school student in West New York, New Jersey, Alvarez participated in a virtual aerospace science class each morning. The televised program introduced her to aeronautics, piloting and navigation, and space operations. She also got to build model planes and rockets. That was the beginning of her dream to work at NASA.
“This was my first introduction into the field, and I couldn’t get enough of learning about vehicles that fly and go into space,” said Alvarez, who last month was named to the Senior Executive Service position of deputy director of the Space Systems Department at Marshall Space Flight Center.
The aerospace science class led Alvarez to a Space Grant Consortium summer program at Penn State, where she worked in the astronomy department analyzing new data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
“While I found the science extremely fascinating and challenging, I always enjoyed the projects where we built prototypes, designed new systems, and broke hardware to understand failure mechanisms,” Alvarez said.
She would go on to pursue an aerospace engineering degree at Penn State. There, Alvarez met Guion Bluford, the first African American in space.
Read the full article on theredstonerocket.com
Original Post Date: 1.22.25
Image Credit:
Author Credit: Wayne Smith, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
