NASA and I were born in the same year, and our common adventures since then have led us down paths to both seek the excitement of looking outward to space and the awe of looking down at the wonder of our home in the universe—mother Earth. I grew up in those early days of NASA, watching TV shows like Star Trek, movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the Kon-Tiki boat expeditions about early human exploration. I memorized the constellations, laying on the hood of our car on summer nights, looking up at the configurations of stars and pondering the early lore about them that I had learned in class. Carl Sagan was one of my favorite authors, along with assorted Sci-Fi storytellers and the ancient writers of Greek and Roman mythology who wrote about how the heavens came to be.

I’ve always had a sense of reverence and awe for our Earth—a special watery globe, teeming with life and patches of green and brown, that is perfectly matched to us. Or is it that we are matched to her? Humans were born here and need to understand her and care for her as we grow in our intelligence and abilities and, eventually, as we leave for other future homes beyond her embrace. I loved to read about early civilizations and the works of authors sharing insights about the environmental challenges facing our modern societies and earthly home. I’ve always been fascinated with our place as humans in the grand scheme of the world and the larger universe.

I’m a second-generation American with French-Canadian ancestors who were farmers, loggers, and trappers, and a Finnish grandmother who escaped during the Bolshevik Revolution to come to the US in her teens and never saw her Finnish family members again. Though I feel fully American with a respect and compassion for my heritage, the feel of immigrant status is not that far removed. Both of my parents repeated first grade because they weren’t fluent in English. Perhaps as a result of that experience, my parents held great respect and value for education and encouraged us to pursue our dreams and to go to college. They helped to instill a philosophy espoused by President John F. Kennedy when he announced that we would go to the moon… “…that we should do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard…” I still remind myself of that when I know I need to go beyond my comfort zone to keep growing as a person.

In my elementary years, I went through stages of wanting to be a teacher and then an archeologist, a meteorologist, an environmental scientist, and an engineer. I started college wanting to be either an aerospace engineer or a civil engineer, and I excelled. However, after taking an elective geology course, my passion for science peaked again. I changed paths and moved toward environmental science and actually pursued all three of my degrees in plant and soil science.

I was hired by NASA to be a remote sensing research scientist using satellite images and ground data to map changes to the Earth’s surface and to better und