First crew - Christina Hernandez

 

An honors graduate in aerospace engineering at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Christina is my latest choice to become a candidate for the first Martian bound space crew.

From an early age Christina’s father Frank, tried to get his daughter interested in mathematics when he was studying to be an electrical engineer. She remembers her dad bringing home circuit boards and even trying to teach her calculus as a young girl.

She loved school and always wanted to learn and by the time her father graduated from college when she was in the fourth grade, engineering was part of her everyday vocabulary and she knew she wanted to be an engineer like her dad. (Although not an electrical engineer)

Attending the California Academy of Math and Science in Carson, California, an academy that only accepted the brightest students in L.A. Christina gained the confidence to see herself in science and engineering and went on to attend Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in California, where she chose to study aerospace engineering. Although college was tough for her, she graduated with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in aerospace in five years and a job offer at JPL.

After working on a series of other tasks and studies Christina eventually joined the Mars team, and worked on the Mars Perseverance rover's payload. 

Serving as one of Perseverance’s payload systems engineers, she worked on three out of the seven science instruments,  MEDA (weather station), RIMFAX (radar) and PIXL (spectrometer). She was able to strategically guide three instrument teams (MEDA, RIMFAX, and PIXL) through various phases of hardware development and integration and test, including preliminary and critical design review.

I have selected Christina as another candidate for the first Mars mission as there will be a need for engineers. Although she is not yet an astronaut the hardest part of becoming a part of the mission crew is behind her. (Experience and education in a needed specialists position.)

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