Check out today’s article in Nature online, and Wednesday in the print version of Nature: NASA faces dearth of mission leaders, by Eric Hand.
That article, my friends, discusses my poster at last week’s science conference. I had to wait until it was published to tell you!
Toddler Planet is written by Susan Niebur, four time cancer survivor, astrophysicist, and mom of two happy little 4 & 6 year old boys. Susan is now fighting metastatic breast cancer in her spine, neck, ribs, and hips, with chemo and pain meds, still looking for that "new normal."
Susan also pins and writes blogs about inspiring women in planetary science and the challenges and joys of mothering through cancer.
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Cool!
Congrats on a wonderful achievement for both you and your work! Nature! I can’t wait for the book…
Wow, your work is so interesting! Congratulations!
Woohoo!!! This is awesome! You’re awesome! Way to go!
“NASA faces dearth of mission leaders” I hope you/we can be changemakers
Wow, congratulations!!! I’m sure some people at my agency (GAO) will be reading this.
How nice to have your work recognized by Eric Hand. Your work continues to have influence.
At the beginning of the article, I would’ve thought that the issue was to force older scientists to include younger scientists – and I was thinking it would be done in much the same way that PhD students work with Professors. My thought was that you could force this sort of apprentice like relationship, and that would groom more (younger!) people to be in a position to lead future missions. But then I got confused. At the end of the article, it says that PIs, deputy PIs, etc., don’t take on even a second project as a PI. So, that leaves me thinking people are good for exactly one project, so maybe the apprentice-style model doesn’t work. Really interesting work. And even more interesting in the context of some of your other examples of women having a hard time getting lab time, etc. Is there a group of women out there ready to lead projects? If so, are they being overlooked by NASA? Or is the profession just so riddled with an attitude of not helping others out, that it shoots itself in the foot with respect to trying to prepare people for what seems like a really big opportunity at NASA? Much to think about here.
Great!
Wow. I am SO impressed! (Not surprised, ‘cos I already knew you were a high-powered famous scientist 🙂 ). I am going to make sure I get a copy of Nature this week and wave it around telling people I know you!
Congrats on getting recognized and keep up the good work! PI qualification is a tough and sometimes controversial subject.
It is interesting though that the example and picture are of Deep Impact. Although it was ultimately successful, DI is typically used as an example of how not to run a program. As such, its probably not the best example of an inexperienced PI successfully executing a mission. DI suffered from cost overruns and launch was delayed a year (not always an option for a planetary mission). The mission was considered for termination more than once. That’s part of the irony of this business – PI’s are beat up for cost overruns during development but then all is forgiven if the mission succeeds.
Very interesting, Susan – congratulations!!