Alyssa Carson
“Always follow your dream and don’t let anyone take it from you.” — Alyssa Carson
.Ever since she was a little girl, Alyssa Carson has had her heart set on the stars. At only 3 years old, she told her father, “Daddy, I want to be an astronaut, and be one of the people that go to Mars.” He had no idea that this seemingly offhand statement would actually become the birth of a meaningful lifelong endeavor.
- “Everything that I’ve been doing is just trying to get a mix of
- everything that would be needed,” she continues. “With a
- mission to Mars, yeah you’ll have your specific
- assignment, but you’re going to have to know how to do
- everything, so that’s what I’ve been working on.”
Though she is undecided on who she would want to represent when going to the red planet, NASA is the guide for getting to space. But, she’s not too worried about that. For now, she says, she is focusing primarily on school.
“Astrobiology can apply to a lot of things,” says Carson. “I’m still figuring out what I would want to do with that degree … I was talking with someone who was working with the payloads that were on the International Space Station which would be really cool.
“But something else that’s at Florida Tech that I want to look more into in terms of astrobiology would be actual farming and crop growth that could potentially be used as a food supply for the missions,” continues Carson. “Also, the other aspect of it that interests me is any sort of bacterial life and the possibilities of bacterial life being in water samples on Mars and how possible that would be.”
Even as Carson tells me she’s “just focusing on school” at the moment, everything she says relates back to her main goal: making it to Mars. Of course, everything she does — just about — is done to achieve that goal.
Carson, obviously, is a big believer in pushing space exploration, not just because it’s a cool thing to do, but because it has done and will continue to do a lot of good for our everyday lives.
“A lot of people see planning for Mars as us just putting a bunch of dollar bills in a rocket, sending it to space and just never coming back,” she quips, “But there are so many benefits in the number of jobs that are created … and also the amount of research and resources we will be bringing back and also the technological advances that are made, which are then used for everyday life.
At just 18 years old, Alyssa’s list of accomplishments includes witnessing 3 Space Shuttle launches, attending Space Camp 7 times, Space Academy 3 times, Robotics Academy once, youngest to graduated Advanced Space Academy, and multiple Sally Ride Camps. In 2012 and 2013, she furthered her education at Space Camp Turkey and Space Camp Canada, becoming the first person to attend all three NASA Space Camps in the world. Alyssa is also the first to complete the NASA Passport program, visiting all 14 NASA Visitor’s Centers stretching across 9 states. In January 2013, NASA invited her to be on the MER 10 panel in Washington DC to discuss future missions to Mars live on NASA TV. She was later selected as one of seven ambassadors representing Mars One, a mission to establish a human colony on Mars in 2030. In October of 2016, Alyssa was the youngest to be accepted and graduate from the Advanced Possum Academy, officially making her certified to go to space and an astronaut trainee.
More than anything, Alyssa is driven by an insatiable desire to live life to the fullest; to break through the ceiling of possibility and make a positive and lasting impact on the world.
Inspiration
“Everything I’m doing, none of that is required,” says Carson. “Basically I wanted to get involved with as many things and see what I’d be interested in … very early on I realized, and [this] is what space camp helped me figure out, the path I wanted to take. So I was always a bit more interested in the sciences and flying or going down the military route …
About Alyssa
Alyssa: I first got interested in space when I was around three or so. My best guess as to what sparked my interest is the cartoon 'The Backyardigans'. The show has these friends who go on imaginary adventures in every episode and one of the episodes was a mission to Mars. I had the poster for that particular episode hung in my bedroom for years. My dad remembers me coming and asking a bunch of questions about space and Mars. From that moment my passion for space never faded.