Misty Pearson

Misty has had a long time fascination with space. When she was 12 years old she watched a shuttle mission with John Glenn who was one of the original astronauts and was going up again. It was then that Misty proclaimed to her parents that she wanted to be an astronaut and they both encouraged her dreams. Even at a young age they looked for opportunities to allow her to pursue this passion.

Her dad was especially instrumental in helping Misty because he has also had a love for space exploration. He acted as a guide directing to Misty to hone in what it was she really loved about space and what she wanted to pursue. After graduating High School Misty went to LeTourneau University where she decided to pursue mechanical engineering. A lot of her journey involved just eliminating what she knew she didn’t want to do. She knew the military was one route to NASA and she didn’t feel called to that. Math wasn’t really something that she got excited about either. There were a lot of classes and aspects of space travel that Misty couldn’t see herself committing to.

It wasn’t until an internship in Houston in the summer of 2008 that Misty truly found her calling. She had a friend who connected her with a woman that worked at NASA in operations. Their motto in this department is “Plan Train Fly”, meaning they plan the mission, train the crew, and fly the mission. That was the moment Misty realized this was it!

Now she is working a slightly higher level of operation integration working through problems and finding solutions. She still loves her job and the fact that it’s not all data and engineering, but that she also gets to work very closely with the astronauts and actually have interaction with them.