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ZL2VAL > ROVERS 08.02.04 22:53l 94 Lines 3621 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 820499ZL2VAL
Read: GUEST
Subj: Inspiration to younger girls
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Sent: 040208/2025Z @:ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC #:35405 [New Plymouth] FBB7.00g
From: ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
To : ROVERS@WW
Feb 8, 2004
Finding teen role models way out on Mars
It's a long way from Michigan to Mars, but Julie Townsend's made it.
Just 27 years old, she has one of most thrilling jobs around --
helping drive NASA's twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers on the Red
Planet as a precursor to the day when humans can kick up the dust
themselves.
"It's like a dream come true," says Townsend, an engineer at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It's overwhelming to
be part of it and the bigness of what we've achieved."
Townsend has many admirable traits. There's the razor-sharp
intellect, the high level of motivation and the enthusiasm that's
contagious even over the phone. And that makes her something we need:
A superb role model for teen and preteen girls at a time when too
many are fixated on low-rent, pop culture sleaze, and not on the
opportunities that await them in life.
You see, this generation of American girls is far behind in pursuing
science, math, engineering and high-technology careers. So far that
former astronaut Sally Ride, the first American women in space, has
started a crusade to get them hooked.
The numbers explain why.
A 2000 study by the Nation Center for Education Statistics shows the
number of boys and girls who like math and science is about the same
in fourth grade. But by the eighth grade, twice as many boys want
science careers.
Come high school, 70 percent of sophomore physics students are boys,
a finding that reflects the lack of women who are science and
technical professionals.
Ride is reaching out to young girls through science fairs --
including one she recently held at Brevard Community College in
Cocoa -- to show them that studying science and having a science
career isn't geeky.
She would do well to take Townsend along for show and tell.
As a Midwestern kid in public school, high SAT scores at age 13
qualified her for a summer science program at Purdue University that
she took "because it sounded cool." There, she got her first taste
of planets and rockets.
That led to college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
and a NASA internship during its ground-breaking Mars Pathfinder
mission in 1997, which convinced her that she'd found a home in
planetary exploration.
After graduate school, she joined NASA's Mars team and spent three
years developing computer software to diagnose and fix problems
aboard Spirit and Opportunity, and helped guide the probes on the
long Earth-to-Mars journey that ended in pinpoint landings.
Now she's involved in telling the rovers what to do as they cruise
the surface, excellent training for her goal of earning a Ph.D. and
developing new technology for other deep-space missions.
Her words to young girls come straight from the heart.
"What a lot of girls don't realize is that they can do anything they
want to do," she says. "The hardest part is figuring it out, but
once you do, just do it."
Townsend should know, because she's proving it on Mars.
Contact Glisch at jglisch@brevard.gannett.com or 242-3968.
=========================
73 de Alan, (Sysop ZL2AB).
AX25:ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
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Message timed: 09:22 on 2004-Feb-09 (NZ local)
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Points to ponder
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