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By NASA
Farah Al Fulfulee was just four years old when she started climbing onto the roof of her family’s house in Iraq to gaze at the stars.
“It scared me how vast and quiet the sky was, but it made me very curious. I grew a deep passion for the stars and constellations and what they might represent,” she said.
Her father noticed her interest and began bringing home books and magazines about space. Al Fulfulee first read about NASA in those pages and was fascinated by the agency’s mission to explore the cosmos for the benefit of all humanity.
“Right then I knew I had to be an astronaut! I must go to space myself and get a closer look,” she said. “I knew I must find a way to go and work for NASA and fulfill my dream, working with other people like me who had a passion to explore the universe.”
Farah Al Fulfulee poses outside the Sonny Carter Training Facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee As a girl growing up in the Middle East, Al Fulfulee had few opportunities to pursue this dream, but she refused to give up. Her dedication to schoolwork and excellence in science and math earned her a spot at the University of Baghdad College of Engineering. She completed a degree in electronic and communication engineering — similar to American electrical and computer engineering programs — and graduated as one of the top 10 students in her class. “We had a graduation party where you dress up as what you want to be in the future,” she recalled. “I wore a spacesuit.”
Farah Al Fulfulee celebrates her graduation from the University of Baghdad while wearing a spacesuit costume. Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee Al Fulfulee was ready to launch her career, but Iraq did not have a developed space industry and finding work as a female engineer was a challenge. She accepted a project engineer position with a prominent Iraqi engineering firm in the information technology sector and spent four years working for the company in Iraq, Turkey, and Jordan, but she was disappointed to discover that her role involved very little engineering. “I was the only female on the team,” she said. “It was not common for a woman to work in the field or with customers, so I was always left behind to do office work. The job was not fulfilling.”
Still determined to join NASA, Al Fulfulee kept looking for her chance to come to the United States and finally found one in 2016, when she moved to Oklahoma to be near her sister. A new challenge soon rose: Without a degree from an American school or previous work experience in the United States, engineering opportunities were hard to come by. Al Fulfulee spent the next six years working in quality assurance for a human resources software company while she completed a MicroMasters program in software verification and management from the University of Maryland and honed her English and leadership skills.
Her big break came in 2022, when she landed a job with Boeing Defense, Space, and Security as a software quality engineer. “I was so excited,” she said. “I knew I was much closer to my dream since Boeing worked in the space industry and I would be able to apply internally to work on a space program.”
Farah Al Fulfulee participates in a NASA study that evaluated and compared the use of virtual reality and physical mockups to assess space vehicle and systems designs. Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee Less than one year later, Al Fulfulee became a system design and analysis engineer for the International Space Station Program and joined the Station Management and Control Team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. She helps develop requirements, monitors performance, and validates testing for electrical systems and software supporting space station payloads. She also designs hardware, software, and interface specifications for those systems. Al Fulfulee has served as the team’s point of contact, delivering verification assessment and data assessment reports for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 and Crew-10 missions, as well as the upcoming Axiom Mission 4 flight. She is currently working to support testing and verification for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11.
“I could not be happier,” she declared.
She is also not stopping. “I won’t quit until I wear the blue suit.”
Farah Al Fulfulee tending to her backyard garden.Image courtesy of Farah Al Fulfulee Al Fulfulee has been an enthusiastic volunteer for various NASA studies, including the Exploration Atmosphere Studies that tested spacewalk safety protocols in an analog environment. She is pursuing a master’s degree in Space Operations Engineering from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She is an avid gardener and learning how to grow produce indoors as a volunteer experimental botanist with the Backyard Produce Project, noting that such knowledge might come in handy on Mars.
She is also helping to inspire the next generation. Earlier this year, Al Fulfulee was a guest speaker at the Women in Tech & Business Summit in Iraq – an event designed to encourage Iraqi women to pursue technology careers. “I was the only person representing women in space,” she said. “It was a really moving experience.” Al Fulfulee provided practical advice on breaking barriers in aerospace and shared her story with the crowd.
“I know my path is long and across the continents,” she said, “but I am enjoying my journey.”
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We propose to use the photophoretic levitation and propulsion mechanism to create no-moving-parts flying vehicles that can be used to explore Earth’s upper atmosphere. The photophoretic force arises when a solid is heated relative to the ambient gas through illumination, inducing momentum exchange between the solid and the gas. The force creates lift in structures that absorb light on the bottom yet stay cool on the top, and we engineered our plate mechanical metamaterials to maximize this lift force and payload. The levitation and payload capabilities of our plates typically peak at ambient pressures in the 0.1-1000 Pa range, ideal for applications in Earth’s mesosphere and Mars’s low gravity and thin atmosphere. For example, in the Earth’s mesosphere (i.e., at altitudes from ~50 to ~80 km), the air is too thin for conventional airplanes or balloons but too thick for satellites, such that measurements can be performed for only a few minutes at a time during the short flight of a research rocket. However, the range of ambient pressures in the mesosphere (1-100 Pa) is nearly optimal for our plates’ payload capabilities. Phase 2 of the proposal focuses on the scalable fabrication of Knudsen pump structures that will enable missions with kg-scale payloads in the mesosphere as well as trajectory control with 1 m/s velocity control in existing stratospheric balloon vehicles.
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This project will investigate one of the key fundamental challenges associated with directed-energy light-sailing technology, similar to solar sails but powered by a laser beam pointed at the sail instead of by the sun. The effort will first mathematically model, then design, build, and test a prototype diffractive light sail. The three-dimensional, origami-inspired light sail could potentially unlock higher thrust, passive beam riding stability, and higher maneuverability via its ability to transform its shape.
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By NASA
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
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This effort will aim to demonstrate the feasibility of directed-energy propulsion through a combination of computational simulations and prototype testing. The project will model the interactions between lightsail material and a laser beam that can be pointed at the sail to propel the spacecraft. The results of the modeling will be used to fabricate an optimized sail for testing with a 30W laser. A successful demonstration would pave the way for ultrafast spaceflight within and beyond the solar system.
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By NASA
NASA’s Jason Hopper is shown at the E Test Complex at NASA’s Stennis Space Center.NASA/Danny Nowlin Jason Hopper’s journey to NASA started with assessing the risk of stepping into the unknown.
One day, while taking a break from his hobby of rock climbing at Mississippi State University, a fellow student noticed Hopper reading a rocket propulsion textbook with a photo of a space shuttle launch on the cover.
Rocket propulsion – the technology that propels vehicles into space, usually through liquid rocket engines or solid rocket motors – is a highly complex field. Engineers rigorously test the propulsion systems and components to understand their capabilities and limitations, ensuring rockets can safely reach space.
“A guy just walked up and randomly said, ‘Hey, my dad works testing rocket engines,’” Hopper recalled.
Hopper, an aerospace engineering student at the time, did not know about NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. He soon would learn more.
The fellow student provided him with contact information, and the rest is history.
A Meridian, Mississippi, native, Hopper graduated from Mississippi State in 2007 and made his way to America’s largest rocket propulsion test site in south Mississippi.
On the other side of Hopper’s risk of stepping into the unknown came the reward of realizing how far he had come from reading about rocket propulsion work to contributing to it.
The career highlight happened when Hopper watched a space shuttle launch, powered in part by an engine he had fired up as a test conductor working at NASA Stennis.
“You cannot really put it into words because it permeates all through you, knowing that you are a part of something that big while at the same time, you are just a little piece of it,” he said.
Hopper transitioned from his contractor position to a civil servant role as test conductor when he joined NASA in 2011.
His work as a test conductor throughout all the NASA Stennis test areas and as test director at the E Test Complex has benefited NASA and industry, while giving him a good perspective on the value of the center’s work.
Among the projects he has played a large role in include the J-2X engine test program, build up for NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) core stage hot fire ahead of the successful Artemis I launch and multiple projects throughout the E Test Complex.
“We offer operational excellence that I would argue you cannot get anywhere else,” Hopper said. “NASA Stennis is a smaller, family-oriented center renowned for excellence in rocket propulsion testing. It is a small place, where we do amazing things.”
Propulsion test customers at NASA Stennis include government and commercial projects. The NASA center is engaged in two projects to support the agency’s SLS rocket – testing of RS-25 engines to help power SLS launches and of NASA’s new exploration upper stage to fly on future missions to the Moon.
Current commercial companies conducting work at NASA Stennis include Blue Origin; Boeing; Evolution Space; Launcher, a Vast company; Relativity Space; and Rolls-Royce. Three companies – Relativity Space, Rocket Lab, and Evolution Space – are establishing production and/or test operations onsite.
After leaving south Mississippi for a four-year stint at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Hopper returned to NASA Stennis as risk manager of NASA’s Rocket Propulsion Test Program Office.
In his day-to-day work, Hopper assesses risk around two questions – what is the risk and what do I really need to be focusing on?
Making decisions through this filter helps the Poplarville, Mississippi, resident make the best use of the agency’s rocket propulsion test assets, activities, and resources.
“With a risk perspective, if things are high risk, we need to address these items and focus our attention on them,” Hopper said. “If we lose a national test capability, that impacts more than just NASA; it impacts the nation because NASA is a significant enabler of commercial spaceflight.”
Hopper helps oversee the maintenance and sustainment of propulsion test capabilities across four sites – NASA Stennis; NASA Marshall; NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky, Ohio; and NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
By establishing and maintaining world-class test facilities, the agency’s Rocket Propulsion Test Program Office ensures that NASA and its partners can conduct safe, efficient, and cost-effective rocket propulsion tests to support the advancement of space exploration and technology development.
Hopper looks to the future with optimism.
“We have an opportunity to redefine kind of what we as NASA and NASA Stennis do and how we do it,” he said. “Before, we were trying to help commercial companies figure things out. We were trying to get them up and going, but now we are in more of a support role in a lot of ways and so if you look at it, and approach it the right way, it can be very exciting.”
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