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 colour 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 (FFRDC) in La Cañada Flintridge, California, Crescenta Valley, 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 uncrewed 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.
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.
Mars 2020 is a NASA mission that includes the rover Perseverance, the now-retired small robotic helicopter Ingenuity, and associated delivery systems, as part of the Mars Exploration Program. Mars 2020 was launched on an Atlas V rocket at 11:50:01 UTC on July 30, 2020, and landed in the Martian crater Jezero on February 18, 2021, with confirmation received at 20:55 UTC. On March 5, 2021, NASA named the landing site Octavia E. Butler Landing. As of 14 October 2024, Perseverance has been on Mars for 1298 sols. Ingenuity operated on Mars for 1042 sols before sustaining serious damage to its rotor blades, possibly all four, causing NASA to retire the craft on January 25, 2024.
Mars Cube One was a Mars flyby mission launched on 5 May 2018 alongside NASA's InSight Mars lander. It consisted of two nanospacecraft, MarCO-A and MarCO-B, that provided real-time communications to Earth for InSight during its entry, descent, and landing (EDL) on 26 November 2018 - when InSight was out of line of sight from the Earth. Both spacecraft were 6U CubeSats designed to test miniaturized communications and navigation technologies. These were the first CubeSats to operate beyond Earth orbit, and aside from telecommunications they also tested CubeSats' endurance in deep space. On 5 February 2019, NASA reported that both the CubeSats had gone silent by 5 January 2019, and are unlikely to be heard from again. In August 2019, the CubeSats were honored for their role in the successful landing of the InSight lander on Mars.
The Near-Earth Asteroid Scout was a mission by NASA to develop a controllable low-cost CubeSat solar sail spacecraft capable of encountering near-Earth asteroids (NEA). NEA Scout was one of ten CubeSats launched into a heliocentric orbit on Artemis 1, the maiden flight of the Space Launch System, on 16 November 2022.
Ingenuity, nicknamed Ginny, is an autonomous NASA helicopter that operated on Mars from 2021 to 2024 as part of the Mars 2020 mission. Ingenuity made its first flight on 19 April 2021, demonstrating that flight is possible in the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars, and becoming the first aircraft to conduct a powered and controlled extra-terrestrial flight. It was designed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in collaboration with AeroVironment, NASA's Ames Research Center and Langley Research Center with some components supplied by Lockheed Martin Space, Qualcomm, and SolAero.
The Planetary Missions Program Office is a division of NASA headquartered at the Marshall Space Flight Center, formed by the agency's Science Mission Directorate (SMD). Succeeding the Discovery and New Frontiers Program Office, it was established in 2014 to manage the Discovery and New Frontiers programs of low and medium-cost missions by third-party institutions, and the Solar System Exploration program of NASA-led missions that focus on prioritized planetary science objectives. The Discovery and New Frontiers programs were established in 1992 and 2001 respectively, and have launched fourteen primary missions together, along with two missions launched under the administration of the Planetary Missions Program Office. The Solar System Exploration Program was established alongside the office, with three missions planned for launch under the new program.
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Julie Wertz Chen is an American aerospace engineer. She has been a systems engineer for the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP), Cassini, and InSight Mars missions. She is currently working on the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission.
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J. "Bob" Balaram is an Indian-American scientist and engineer currently working for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He is the chief engineer and designer of Ingenuity, the first extraterrestrial aircraft, that was attached underside of car-sized Perseverance rover that successfully landed on the Mars in February 2021.
Maya Nasr is a Lebanese postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. She previously received her BS'18, MS'21, and PhD'23 in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research areas include aerospace engineering and international space law, policy, and politics.
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| Authority control databases: Academics |
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