Woman of the Week – Alyssa Carson

While most 17-year-olds are choosing what to do after high school graduation, Alyssa Carson is pretty certain she wants to go into outer space.

But not just outer space. She hopes to be the first human to step foot on Mars. She has been completing NASA space camps for years. At age 7, she went to NASA space camp in Huntsville, Alabama. She loved the program so much she went back 18 times. At 12, she became the first person to complete all of NASA’s space camps after finishing programs in Quebec, Canada, and Izmir, Turkey, in addition to the Alabama camp. At 16, she became the youngest recruit to enter and graduate the Advanced Possum Academy with Project PoSSUM (Project Polar Suborbital Science in the Upper Mesosphere). Someone her age is usually not chosen for this program, but program administrators saw her skills as exceptional.

The PoSSUM program has allowed her to get hands-on astronaut training and experience, from space suit training to decompression training. She’s also taking college-level space-related courses in addition to her high school course load.

Source: Instagram.com/Nasablueberry

She was the first student to complete NASA’s Passport Program, which requires someone to visit all 14 of NASA's visitor centers and have their passport stamped at each location. She’s been invited to speak on numerous panels and attend space-related events many times throughout her teens. In 2014, she was asked to be on the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) 10 panel in Washington D.C. to discuss the future of exploring Mars in the 2030s, which is her ultimate goal.

While there, she hopes to spend her early thirties living on the planet, looking for signs of life while growing food and conducting experiments.

While NASA will not consider anyone under 18 to become an astronaut, she has the right groundwork to make her dream a reality. NASA requires astronauts to complete a college degree, at least three years of pilot-in-command time on a jet aircraft and pass the physical requirements.

Some reports say NASA is grooming her to complete this mission, which is not true. Though she has worked with the organization in a significant capacity, if she wants to go into space with NASA, she’ll have to apply the same as any of us would. She also has noted in interviews that she would be open to exploring space with private organizations like SpaceX or Boeing.

For now, Carson will attend college and continue taking every opportunity she can to inch closer to her Mars exploration dream. She documents her journey on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.