Alyssa Carson has loved space since she was a little kid. Now, aged just 20, she’s set her sights on becoming the first-ever person to land on Mars.
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“I first got interested in space when I was really young. Obviously, I don’t remember everything when I was that young, but my dad does remember me coming and having some questions about space and about Mars,” Alyssa told Hack. When she was growing up, Alyssa loved space camps. In 2014, she was the first-ever person to complete the “NASA Passport Program” visiting each of NASA’s fourteen visitor centers across nine states.
“I had originally gone to the space camp in Huntsville, Alabama, in the US. They had someone from Space Camp Turkey…it sounded pretty exciting to go over to Space Turkey. So I ended up doing that…It was much more international. And that was really exciting, I was the only American there. I think we had kids from like 15 different countries.” Alyssa enjoyed traveling the world whilst learning about her number one passion and meeting like-minded people from various places. She says Space Camp was “heavily emphasized on international friendship”
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Almost 90 per cent of astronauts are men and Alyssa wants more women, especially young women, to go into the space industry.
“I was talking to a group of middle school girls, and one of them was like, ‘Hey, I love science in space, but I also love fashion, can I design spacesuits?’ [And my answer was] of course you can, that’s definitely something you can go into, maybe making the next futuristic trendy spacesuit. The spacesuits that SpaceX recently started using were actually designed by someone who typically designed superhero costumes.”
In response, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, also supports her spirit, but he warned that “It’s dangerous. It’s uncomfortable. It’s a long journey. You might not, you know, come back alive. But it’s a glorious adventure, and it’ll be an amazing experience,” He said this all in an interview.
