Scientist Spotlight: Alice Bowman aka MOM (Mission Operations Manager) for NASA’s New Horizons Pluto mission out of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD.
Seeing a mission from inception through creation then 3 billion miles away for a rendezvous with a foreign celestial object is quite a compliment to ones’ resume. For Alice Bowman - supervisor of the Space Department’s Space Missions Operations Group at APL - it was all in a decade’s work.
In the above image photographed at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory on July 11, 2015 (three days before New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto), we see 25% of the New Horizons’ #PlutoFlyBy team. It’s worth noting who all of these spectacular #womeninscience are. Kneeling from left to right: Amy Shira Teitel, Cindy Conrad, Sarah Hamilton, Allisa Earle, Leslie Young, Melissa Jones, Katie Bechtold, Becca Sepan, Kelsi Singer, Amanda Zangari, Coralie Jackman, Helen Hart. Standing, from left to right: Fran Bagenal, Ann Harch, Jillian Redfern, Tiffany Finley, Heather Elliot, Nicole Martin, Yanping Guo, Cathy Olkin, Valerie Mallder, Rayna Tedford, Silvia Protopapa, Martha Kusterer, Kim Ennico, Ann Verbiscer, Bonnie Buratti, Sarah Bucior, Veronica Bray, Emma Birath, Carly Howett, Alice Bowman. Not pictured: Priya Dharmavaram, Sarah Flanigan, Debi Rose, Sheila Zurvalec, Adriana Ocampo, Jo-Anne Kierzkowsk Sheila Zurvaleci. Credits: SwRI/JHUAPL
As calculations are performed, trajectory accounted for, and data examined, Alice Bowman is the last to receive spacecraft commands before they are sent on a 4.5 hr (light speed time) journey to New Horizons. The significance of Bowman’s role in leading the charge as a pivotal figure in the mission: she’s the first female Mission Operations Manager in the history of NASA. In fact, the New Horizons team may have the most women in NASA’s history as well.
(Above) Photo of Alice taken during the New Horizons (final) hibernation wake-up on December 6, 2014. Bowman said, “It looks like I was either asking for a different configuration or asking about the telemetry I was seeing on the displays.” Image Credit: SwRI/JHUAPL
Kimberly Ennico, an astrophysicist on the New Horizons mission who calibrates its space instruments, comments on the gender-gap in science:
“We’re not equal. I’m sorry to say we’re not there yet. I think when we get to the point in which we don’t need to call attention to whether you’re a woman or a man, that’s when we have succeeded.”
Well said. And in several interviews conducted with New Horizons’ team members, it’s repeatedly clear that the “gender diversity” amongst them is hardly recognized until someone comes along and points it out. As Alice Bowman states:
“This isn’t remarkable—it’s just how it is.”
Indeed, it’s all about the science, as it should be, and we applaud the efforts of NASA, APL, and respective contractors who made the #PlutoFlyBy an extraordinary success and worldwide participatory event. Leslie Young, a deputy scientist on the team who serves as the encounter planning leader on the science team reiterates this further:
“Girls will be inspired to be scientists and boys will grow up to be ‘gender blind,’ seeing women in science as the norm.”
So here’s to Alice “MOM” Bowman for her dedication and inspiring heroism in the field of planetary science and space exploration. All over the world, there are young people who will remember this historic feat of human ingenuity and regard New Horizons’ MOM for their interest and passion for science.
Recommended: ‘Everything Was New and Pretty Wondrous’ (HuffPost)
Related: ‘Ponderlust Ep. 19 – We Heart Pluto’ & Ep. 15 – #DearPluto
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