Guardians of the Galaxy

Eleanor Helin '54 blazed a trail throughout her career, much like the asteroids she discovered and researched over the course of more than 40 years at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. A planetary scientist and astronomer, Helin was a pioneer in the search and survey of near-Earth asteroids—planetary bodies that occasionally pass near Earth and can pose a dangerous impact hazard. "We feel that about 65 million years ago, 恐龙和其他生物群被一颗大约6英里或10公里宽的小行星灭绝了。," she told a KCAL reporter in 1998. “我们希望避免这种情况发生在人类身上."

Before she trained her eye on the sky, 和琳利用她所学的地质学知识来研究矿物, rocks, and landforms on Earth. That changed in 1960, when she helped establish the Lunar Research Lab at Caltech "to help NASA know more about how and where to land on the surface of the moon,匹兹堡布尔天文馆和天文台的丹·马勒博说.

Her interest in meteorites and the impact origin of lunar craters led her to create the Palomar Planet-Crossing Asteroid Survey at Caltech's Palomar Observatory, 这个项目后来发现了数千颗各种类型的小行星, 包括全世界发现的近地小行星的30%. Starting in 1972, with an 18-inch Schmidt telescope, 贺林发现或参与发现了一些彗星和惊人的872颗小行星.

Four years after moving to JPL in 1980, 海林发起了国际近地小行星调查——一项协调近地观测的全球努力. On Aug. 9, 1989, Helin和她在帕洛马天文台的同事们做出了他们最大的发现之一, 捕捉到第一张小行星的二维图像——两个物体, actually, 在太阳系中脸贴脸跳舞,就像《正规博彩十大网站排名推荐》的科学作家李·戴伊(Lee Dye)所说的那样——当它接近2时.距离地球500万英里，是到月球距离的11倍.

技术的进步只会加大和林的研究力度. In 1995, 她成为近地小行星追踪(NEAT)项目的首席研究员, a collaborative effort of NASA, JPL, 空军使用位于哈雷阿卡拉的深空监视望远镜, Maui, Hawai'i, 连接到喷气推进实验室的计算机)导致了超过26个的探测,000 objects, including 30 near-Earth asteroids, 在它存在的头三年里.

Helin, 她在1998年入选了女性科技名人堂, 2002年从喷气推进实验室退休，7年后去世. 她一生中获得了许多其他荣誉, 包括1986年的NASA特别成就奖, 1992年获得牛津大学荣誉博士学位(她差一点就毕业了)。, 1997年，她因在NEAT项目中的努力获得了JPL卓越奖和NASA团体成就奖. “Glo”甚至有一个以她命名的天体:小行星3267 Glo，发现于1月. 1981年3月3日，天文学家爱德华·鲍尔在亚利桑那州弗拉格斯塔夫附近的洛厄尔天文台拍摄.

When science writer Nathalia Holt was pregnant with her first child in 2010, “我丈夫和我在想一个名字时遇到了困难," she told NPR last year. After thinking up Eleanor Frances, 他们用谷歌搜索了这个名字，第一个匹配出来的是埃莉诺·弗朗西斯·赫林, 还有这张20世纪60年代她在NASA领奖的美丽照片," Holt recalled. “我被这张照片惊呆了，因为我当时甚至没有意识到女性在NASA工作, much less as scientists."

她随后的研究揭示了一组女性, referred to as "human computers," who played a key role in the U.S. space program—including another Oxy alumna, Barbara (Wylie) Canright '40, 他在1939年帮助发射了最终成为喷气推进实验室的东西. 随后，霍尔特撰写了2016年的畅销书 《火箭女孩的崛起:从导弹到月球再到火星，推动我们前进的女性. Holt devoted the first chapter to Canright, whose contributions laid the foundation for subsequent generations of alumnae working on JPL's space explorations and earth science missions.

芭比·坎莱特的故事是得体与原创的完美结合. 这位俄亥俄州人在18岁时私奔，搬到了南加州, where her husband, Richard, enrolled in graduate school at Caltech. She took a job as a typist at the university and continued working on her bachelor's degree at Occidental as time permitted. Although gifted with numbers, 在20世纪30年代末，科学家的职业生涯对女性来说是不可行的, 因此，坎莱特为了自己的乐趣而学习数学课程. “她对生活有着无限的好奇心，喜欢学习新事物,女儿帕特里夏·坎特·史密斯回忆道, 她是西雅图的视觉和文学艺术家，在母亲去世后，她写了一本关于坎莱特的书.

Then, in 1940, 康莱特得到了一个不寻常的机会，这将使她走上历史的道路. After arriving in Pasadena, 她和理查德很快就和三个年轻人弗兰克·马里纳成为了朋友, Jack Parsons, 还有埃德·福尔曼，他在加州理工学院被称为自杀小队. 这三个人对火箭很感兴趣，花了几个小时试图在这门新兴的科学中建造一个工作装置. In 1939, 美国国家科学院认可了他们的努力, awarding the men—who were working under the formal name of the GALCIT (Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology) Rocket Research Project—$1,000 to pursue their research. The following year, the grant was increased to $10,000, 理查德和芭比被邀请作为数学家加入这个项目.

It was a fateful decision. Over the next three years, the group worked feverishly to realize their dream—a rocket plane powered by a jet engine strong enough to keep the aircraft aloft. The science community was skeptical, 以至于当这群发明家决定成立一个研究所时, they avoided the word rocket altogether, 而是将他们的组织命名为喷气推进实验室.

As the men conducted their experiments, Canright dutifully crunched the numbers, calculating the thrust produced by each rocket engine and connecting the data to flight results in hopes of discovering what was required to make the JPL test plane fly. Finally, on Aug. 12, 1941, the team achieved success, 利用火箭将他们的飞机从地面提升到通常所需距离的一半.

In the coming months, 坎莱特会继续计算这些数字, eventually determining how many rockets were needed to lift a bomber into the sky before turning her attention to calculating the potential of rocket propellant, 这项工作最终将用于完善美国拥有的火箭.S. Navy.

随着1943年的到来，康莱特在这个组织的参与也结束了. She was pregnant, 而且当时还没有产假, her only option was to resign from JPL. 她完全离开了职场，把注意力转向了妻子和母亲的生活.

76岁的黛安·埃文斯开始了她与喷气推进实验室的关系 作为Oxy的一名大四学生，从事学术兼职或“APT”." The position offered her an introduction to the lab's remote- sensing technology—something Evans says she wouldn't have gotten access to otherwise.

After receiving a geology degree, 埃文斯继续在华盛顿大学读研究生, earning a Ph.D. 然后回到喷气推进实验室，得到了一份她无法拒绝的工作.“在过去的20年里，她一直在实验室里从事遥感技术的工作, 通过飞机和航天器上的机载和星载雷达研究地球.

“当你在飞机上向外看的时候, 你可以看到眼睛敏感的地方," Evans explains. "In remote-sensing technology, 我们制造出对肉眼看不到的东西敏感的传感器, 比如从卫星上可以看到的海平面上升.“雷达对纹理和断层也很敏感, 结合低分辨率卫星图像, 使科学家能够从太空绘制更精确的地质图.

“这里有各种不同的技术, 一个人可以有好几份工作，但永远不会离开喷气推进实验室," Evans says. Prior to her current appointment, 历任雷达科学组主管, 作为JPL的星载成像雷达项目的项目科学家, 担任科学与信息系统办公室副主任, 作为地球科学项目的首席科学家.

当时的喷气推进实验室主任查尔斯·埃拉奇在2001年成立了地球科学与技术理事会, naming Evans as its director, "That was a huge step for me,2012年3月，埃文斯在喷气推进实验室举行的关于太空探索领域女性领导者的圆桌讨论会上说. “通过在董事会中拥有真正优秀的人才, 我们已经完成了很多任务，也开始了很多新的任务(比如Aquarius), 一个与阿根廷和巴西的合资企业，绘制海洋表面的盐度图，并获取科学数据."

During that same roundtable discussion, 埃文斯对太空探索的未来充满热情, 尤其是女性的机会. “当我看着这个团队，我想到你们在未来几年将能够取得什么成就, it's going to be really exciting," she said. “我们将从火星带回样本, we're going to be getting data streaming from some of the moons of the outer planets—whether it's Enceladus or Titan or Europa—and I think one of the coolest things is we're going to be looking at atmospheres of Earth-like planets around other stars. The Kepler mission [launched in 2009] has opened up this whole new world to us of how many planets might be out there that are just like our planet."

与教友的随意交谈 at the Unitarian Fellowship of the Foothills in 1975 landed undergraduate Louise Stoehr '78 M'80 a summer job at JPL—and once hired, she says, "I simply stayed."

In her early days at the lab, Stoehr worked in image processing, taking image data provided by JPL spacecraft and running it through the appropriate programs for processing according to the scientists' needs. The summer of '76 was especially intense, she recalls, 当时科学家正在为维京号轨道飞行器的首次着陆做准备. “我们的团队负责处理来自轨道飞行器的所有照片, which arrived on large nine-track tapes, 这样科学家们就可以决定在哪里着陆."

After the Viking project, 斯托尔曾短暂参与过旅行者号任务, 然后转到喷气推进实验室的推进部分和伽利略项目, a probe to be sent to Jupiter. 这位年轻的德国少校的职责是:把特派团的所有技术和法律文件翻译成英文. "The German aerospace manufacturer Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm provided the propulsion subsystem for Galileo and they sent all of the correspondence related to the project—formal test results, failure reports, faxes, etc.——德语，这显然对我们说英语的科学家没有任何帮助."

After more than a decade at JPL, 包括在伽利略项目中担任了五年的技术翻译, she left to pursue her Ph.D. 在德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校攻读德国研究. A key element in that decision, she recalls, was "the day the assistant director of JPL took a day of vacation and requested that I be the person to teach him the system I had been working on. 就在那时，我意识到我应该与人合作，特别是与学习者合作. 是时候重新找回自己的激情了."

Software engineer Irina Strickland '97 她每天都在喷气推进实验室从一系列0和1中提取信息，这是一项让她很开心的任务. 她于2015年8月加入该实验室，此前她作为雷神公司的承包商在那里工作了13年.

A mathematics major at Occidental, Strickland现在是JPL仪器软件和科学数据系统的小组主管, 负责管理实验室海量地面数据系统的多仪器检索工作. She works directly with JPL scientists, 编程他们的算法，以便处理从仪器中检索到的数据.

“数据来自不同的航天器碎片，我们将其转换为人类可读的信息," explains Strickland, 他还拥有瓦尔登大学工程管理硕士学位. "For example, a series of zeros and ones come down to us and after they're processed we have information on volume mixing ratios for ozone, CO2, etc.，然后科学家将其用于气候研究等. I love programming. 这很有趣，你每天都能获得自己的小胜利."

For more than two decades—including four years at the San Diego Air and Space Museum and nearly eight years at the USC Pacific Asia Museum—Amelia Chapman '93 has led informal education initiatives in museums. 2015年春天，我有幸加入了NASA博物馆联盟, Chapman, who majored in studio arts at Oxy, didn't hesitate. "Working in education for a typical museum, 你可以影响几百人," she says. "Through JPL, you can reach thousands."

非正规教育包括人们在学校以外学习的所有场所, Chapman explains, and the Museum Alliance is the "front door" to NASA for individuals and organizations seeking to inspire new generations through exposure to space exploration and scientific discovery.

Among the Alliance's main tools is a public events calendar listing everything from the dates of Cassini mission events to virtual visits with science, technology, engineering, 以及戈达德太空飞行中心的数学专家. 查普曼和她的同事们还维护着一个由教学资源组成的网站, 并提供专业发展机会，将教育工作者与NASA的专家联系起来.

查普曼也为西方学生提供一些非正式的教育, 通过喷气推进实验室的校园职业日来提高她所在部门的知名度. "I was the first non-science or engineering alumna to participate in the lab's annual career information seminar for Occidental students," she notes proudly. "It's important for people to realize that there are numerous career opportunities here in addition to the more traditional science and engineering roles."

Just as it did for Evans and Stroehr decades ago, Oxy继续为希望体验喷气推进实验室体验的本科生提供一个跳板. Emma Crow-Willard '11, for instance, transferred from Bates College to Occidental after a single year so that she could work at JPL while studying geology and theater: "I was interested in looking for aliens," she admits with a chuckle.

She spent three years at JPL using images gathered from the Cassini mission probe to create a geological map of Saturn's moon Enceladus. “我们的重点是有可能存在生命的行星体——我们在寻找液态水," says Crow-Willard, who is now pursuing a master's in environmental management at Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

This semester, Stephanie Angulo '19, an undeclared major from Sonoma, and Ellen Shin '17, a mathematics major from Burbank, 作为学生独立研究计划的一部分，你是否每周在喷气推进实验室实习15小时, founded in 2003 to encourage JPL scientists to mentor local college students and help them prepare for careers in science and engineering. Angulo is analyzing current alarm-system designs for the Deep Space Network operating facilities and developing potential new prototypes for future designs.

"Aside from the project, 喷气推进实验室的气氛和我想象的完全不一样," she blogged on the Oxy admission website. “DSN的设计团队非常合作，而且双关语," she added, ，而日本人之间表情符号的使用率也高得惊人."

弗格森在2016年夏季杂志上写了“Showgirl Must Go On”.