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NASA Spotlight: Christina Hernandez, NASA Mars 2020 Rover Instrument Engineer

“I was in love with the beauty of space. It was my introduction to appreciating the beauty of complex, chaotic things—black holes, giant gas planets, or killer asteroids—that got my imagination riled up.“ -Christina Hernandez

Christina Hernandez, a space enthusiast and self-proclaimed nerd, is an aerospace engineer at our Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California where she works as an instrument engineer on our newest rover mission – Mars2020. The Mars2020 rover is a robotic scientist that is launching to the Red Planet next year. If you would like to launch to the Red Planet as well, you can Send Your Name to Mars along with millions of other people! Christina’s job is to make sure that the instruments we send to the Martian surface are designed, built, tested and operated correctly so we can retrieve allll the science. When she isn’t building space robots, she loves exploring new hiking trails, reading science fiction and experimenting in the kitchen. Christina took a break from building our next Martian scientist to answer some questions about her life and her career: 

If you could go to Mars, would you? And what are three things you’d bring with you?

Only if I had a round trip ticket! I like the tacos and beach here on Earth too much. If I could go, I would bring a bag of Hot Cheetos, a Metallica album, and the book On the Shoulders of Giants.

If you could name the Mars2020 rover, what would you name it and why?

Pilas, a reference to a phrase my family says a lot, ponte las pilas. It literally means put your batteries on or in other words, get to work, look alive or put some energy into it. Our rover is going to need to have her batteries up and running for all the science she is going to be doing! Luckily, the rover has a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) to help keep the batteries charged!

What’s been your most memorable day at NASA?

It’s been seeing three of the instruments I worked on getting bolted and connected to the flight rover. I’ll never forget seeing the first 1’s and 0’s being exchanged between the rover compute element (RCE), the rover’s on-board brain, and the instruments’ electronics boxes (their brains). I am sure it was a wonderful conversation between the two!

It’s a long journey to get from Earth to Mars. What would be on your ultimate road trip playlist?

Metallica, The Cure, Queen, Echo and the Bunnymen, Frank Sinatra, Ramon Ayala, AC/DC, Selena, Los Angeles Azules, ughhhh – I think I just need a Spotify subscription to Mars.

What is one piece of advice you wish someone would’ve told you?

Take your ego out of the solution space when problem solving.

Do you have any secret skills, talents, or hobbies?

I love reading. Each year I read a minimum of 20 books, with my goal this year being 30 books. It’s funny I increased my goal during what has definitely been my busiest year at work. I recently got into watercolor painting. After spending so much time connected at work, I started looking for more analog hobbies. I am a terrible painter right now, but I painted my first painting the other day. It was of two nebulas! It’s not too bad! I am hoping watercolor can help connect me more to the color complexities of nature…and it’s fun!

What’s a project or problem that you would love the ability to tackle/work on?

I would love to work on designs for planetary human explorers. So far, I have focused on robotic explore, but when you throw a “loveable, warm, squishy thing” into the loop, its creates a different dimension to design – both with respect to operability and risk.

Thanks so much Christina! The Mars2020 rover is planned to launch on July 17, 2020, and touch down in Jezero crater on Mars on February 18, 2021.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Some of them tell women to shut the fuck up if they dare to say their opinions.

It’s the 4th day of MerMay so here’s MerRey!!!

And some MMD videos have flashy lights and motion sickness too. Put a warning

Okay, now that I’m calmer. I could explain it better (maybe)

When I first discovered Vocaloid, I was very young, and with me being aspie, maybe I was even more naive than the average boy.

And that led me to see something that a boy or girl my age shouldn’t have never see

Someone in my fandom was 10, but faked their age just to fit in.

The fandom years ago wasn’t nice at all, and with we being really young, we made weird asks and we got treated harshily

I don’t want to talk about the fandom anymore, but I want to give you advice for the next video/fanart/song next:

Please, use trigger warnings. “Triggered” is not a meme, you could got triggered by something that scares you. If a video uses too many flashy lights, put a disclaimer in the beginning. If a song talks about something bad, put a warning in the beginning. If a song talks about something bad but it’s implied/open to interpretations, put a warning in the beginning and explain the real meaning in the beginning

Not only most of the songs were in Japanese/English (not everyone’s native language) but we couldn’t be able to understand if there was something dirty, we were too young.

Explain that Sh/ta e L/li doesn’t mean “cute boy” and “cute girl”, before young fans could look for pictures and got traumatized.

Explain that Y/ndere could be really scary and not “just a parody pf a clingy girl/boy” like I thought. Some y/ndere songs were really scary.

Explain them the risks of roleplaying online, that not everyone is a kid/teen and could have malicious intents

And tell them if they made bad experiences that it’s not their fault, and be there to help them.

Not every fan is American, and European fans don’t experience racism based on skin color, but on stereotypes. Some European kids would get confused if you draw your favorite vocaloid with darker skin. If they ask you about it, they didn’t make it to sound racist. It’s just something different between cultures

Don’t bully them because of unpopular ships, but tell them if is something illegal.

Some of Rin Len fans just saw them as robots/mirror images or something like Kokoro/Kiseki. Some of the Rin Len fans were so young they didn’t knew about tw//cest. Maybe they used it inappropriately without knowing the real meaning and then got exposed to something they never wanted to see(Some of us used inappropriately both English and Japanese words, like Arigatou instead of Ohayou,but we were learning, could you blame a young kid?)

And last, comparing Piko to Boku etc. was never funny at all. We were minors. And I don’t think an adult would find this funny as well.

Please, if you spot something young/immature in the fandom from now on, help them. They didn’t know a lot of things. Don’ t discriminate a fan because “has unpopular opinions” or “too annoying” or made “stupid asks”. Could be a literal kid,or somewhere in the autistic spectrum. And don’t use twitter to talk about them. If they are on tumblr, reply directly to them on tumblr. Even if you have to ask: Why did you tag my drawing as a ship?I never meant that. Don’t write on other social media “Uugh op wrote this as a ship it’s so stupid lol” because it’s rude.

I personally was never able to write fanfictions, and the most thing I did with my characters was… Holding hands??

TL,DR don’t be like the fandom was almost 10 years ago. Put trigger warnings, explain the real meaning of some terms, and be more patient.

Thank you for reading.By @cyberpiko

yes its 2020, yes i still love mmd

Hehe wave go vvvvmmmmm

I don't understand. Isn't the character 10? 10 years old can make a lot of mistakes and then learn from them. children imitate other people. A sentence like "no one needs help" doesn't come from a child naturally. I think he heard it from someone else (maybe he was bullied or from some science magazine).... I think. And someone really evil comes to apologize to an egg?

Was looking around the tv tropes page for Journeys and it's kinda sad how biased against Gou it reads. The kid makes a mistake one that the anime clearly sees it as a mistake and something he has to work on but for some he is a monster that abuses his pokemon

I just skimmed it, and…wow.

It’s not as bad as I was expecting, but it definitely has shades of demonizing him for struggling with empathy.

Let me make this clear: HAVING LOW EMPATHY DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE A BAD PERSON.

Empathy is not the same thing as compassion.

Empathy is not the same thing as sympathy.

Empathy is the ability to put yourselves in others’ shoes and understand the viewpoints/emotions.

God, can’t they just admit they hate neurodivergent people and go?