Farah Alibay | |
---|---|
![]() Systems engineer Farah Alibay | |
Born | |
Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Organization(s) | Engineering career |
Discipline | Systems Engineering |
Employer(s) | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
Projects | InSight Mars Cube One Mars 2020 |
Farah Alibay is a Canadian systems engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory who has worked on the InSight, Mars Cube One, and Mars 2020 missions. [1]
The daughter of immigrants from Madagascar, Alibay was born in Montréal, Quebec. [2] She grew up in Saint-Charles-Borromée, Quebec, and moved with her family to Manchester, England for high school. [3] French is her native language. [1] The journey by the Canadian astronaut Julie Payette to space inspired Alibay in middle school; as Payette was from her province, she served as a role model. She went to the University of Cambridge, where she received her bachelor's and master's degrees in aerospace and aerothermal engineering in 2010. [4]
She earned her PhD in aeronautics and astronautics engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2014. [4] Her PhD research with advisor Jeffrey Hoffman focused on the use of spatially and temporally distributed multi-vehicle systems for the exploration of planetary bodies in the solar system. [5]
In 2013, Alibay was awarded the AeroAstro Graduate Teaching Assistantship Award at MIT for her outstanding work as a teaching assistant in implementing Concurrent Design Facility software into the curriculum. [6]
After her master's degree, Alibay participated in the NASA Academy internship at Goddard Space Flight Center through which she was introduced to the many NASA centres and activities. It was there that she discovered her passion for robotic planetary exploration. [3] She interned at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory while she worked on her PhD. [7] Following graduation in 2014 Alibay was hired on as a systems engineer to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory full-time. Her first project was the Mars Cube One CubeSats mission, a companion mission to InSight. [3] [7]
In 2016, she became a Payload Systems Engineer on the InSight mission, [3] a robotic lander spacecraft that was designed to study the interior of the planet Mars, to where it lifted off on May 5, 2018. Before the launch, Alibay had been responsible for the proper integration and testing of all of the spacecrat's instruments. While the mission waited for the spacecraft to land on the surface of Mars, Alibay helped the teams prepare for operations, [7] and she tested the detector equipment. [8] To celebrate the landing on Mars on November 26, 2018, she had her hair dyed red to match the clour of Mars and of the InSight logo. [9]
In 2019, Alibay joined the Mars 2020 mobility team. [1] Her duty was to ensure that the rover did not get lost on Mars. During surface operations after the February 18, 2021 landing, she was the Tactical Integration Lead and an interface between the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity. On April 19, 2021, Alibay was part of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory team that successfully made Ingenuity, the first powered-controlled aircraft to fly on another planet. [10] [11] [12]
She works on diversity and inclusion in STEM, both to increase them in her work environment and to prevent others from facing the challenges that she had as an LGBTQ+ immigrant woman of colour. [1]
Alibay has spoken to the value of good mentors when she was an intern, and she mentors women interns as a result of those positive experiences. [7] She indicated that a guidance counsellor had once attempted to dissuade her from engineering since it is a male-dominated career. [13]
Her favourite moon is Saturn's Enceladus. [7] She enjoys outdoor activities like hiking, camping, biking, and skiing, and also weight-lifting. She is also a Big Sister as part of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America program. [3]
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center in La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in 1936 by Caltech researchers, the laboratory is now owned and sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and administered and managed by the California Institute of Technology.
An aerobot is an aerial robot, usually used in the context of an unmanned space probe or unmanned aerial vehicle.
A Mars rover is a remote-controlled motor vehicle designed to travel on the surface of Mars. Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to weather winter months, and they can advance the knowledge of how to perform very remote robotic vehicle control. They serve a different purpose than orbital spacecraft like Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. A more recent development is the Mars helicopter.
A Mars sample-return (MSR) mission is a proposed mission to collect rock and dust samples on Mars and return them to Earth. Such a mission would allow more extensive analysis than that allowed by onboard sensors.
Maria T. Zuber is an American geophysicist who is the vice president for research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also holds the position of the E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Zuber has been involved in more than half a dozen NASA planetary missions aimed at mapping the Moon, Mars, Mercury, and several asteroids. She was the principal investigator for the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) Mission, which was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Jezero is a crater on Mars in the Syrtis Major quadrangle, about 45.0 km (28.0 mi) in diameter. Thought to have once been flooded with water, the crater contains a fan-delta deposit rich in clays. The lake in the crater was present when valley networks were forming on Mars. Besides having a delta, the crater shows point bars and inverted channels. From a study of the delta and channels, it was concluded that the lake inside the crater probably formed during a period in which there was continual surface runoff.
The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission was a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars. It was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Space, was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and two of its three scientific instruments were built by European agencies. The mission launched on 5 May 2018 at 11:05:01 UTC aboard an Atlas V-401 launch vehicle and successfully landed at Elysium Planitia on Mars on 26 November 2018 at 19:52:59 UTC. InSight was active on Mars for 1440 sols.
A Mars aircraft is a vehicle capable of sustaining powered flight in the atmosphere of Mars. So far, the Mars helicopter Ingenuity is the only aircraft ever to fly on Mars, completing 72 successful flights covering 17.242 km (10.714 mi) in 2 hours, 8 minutes and 48 seconds of flight time. Ingenuity operated on Mars for 1042 sols, until its rotor blades, possibly all four, were damaged, causing NASA to retire the craft.
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