Driven by a Dream: Farah Al Fulfulee’s Quest to Reach the Stars

[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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