Elizabeth Congdon has always been captivated by space — her eyes glimmer when she recalls attending Space Camp several times as a youngster. So it's easy to imagine how she must've felt when, after graduating from Stanford University with a degree in mechanical engineering, she landed a job just months later working with for the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory on NASA's Parker Solar Probe.
Ms. Congdon served as lead engineer for the probe's thermal protection system, or heat shield, and spent a decade preparing the component for the August 2018 launch. On Monday, she spoke to excited sixth graders about her work, its unique challenges and thrills, the probe's current journey toward the sun, and what scientists hope to learn from it.
"The Parker Solar Probe is actually one of the very first missions that NASA was tasked with," Ms. Congdon explained, "but it took 60 years for us to develop the technology to get there."
During its seven-year mission, the probe will get closer to the sun than any prior spacecraft. Scientists hope its research will help unlock the mysteries of the sun's corona, or outermost layer of atmosphere, and solar wind, the charged particles that stream from the sun.
"There's so much about the sun we don't understand, like why the surface is colder than the atmosphere around it, so we're going to go there and try to understand," said Ms. Congdon.
Students were riveted by the engineer's talk, and asked dozens of questions afterwards. When asked about her favorite part of the job, Ms. Congdon replied, "It takes people with incredibly specialized experience all coming together for long hours to do something like this. My favorite part of the job is spending this time with them."
Science teacher Janeth Eby, who organized the guest lecture, is thrilled with how it went. She explains, "I am always excited to bring in female scientists and engineers to talk to the girls so they can see that scientists are ordinary people and so, hopefully, they can see themselves going into a STEM field. I think Elizabeth really stood out as a speaker because she is so approachable and knowledgeable. It was evident by the number of questions they asked that the girls felt very comfortable talking to her and their interest in the topic was clearly evident."
Monday's talk officially kicks off the sixth-grade science unit on space, which covers the earth-moon-sun system, planets in the solar system, relation to the greater universe, exoplanets, and the search for life beyond earth. Students will even make a scale model of the solar system that will hang around the Lower School.
Learn more about the Parker Solar Probe on the official webpage.
