Alyssa Carson is a busy 14-year-old girl. She plays soccer. She has ballet and piano lessons. She hangs out with friends from Baton Rouge International School.
But that isn’t why the world has been paying so much attention to her.
Since age 3, Alyssa has had her eyes on one goal—being an astronaut. More specifically, she wants to be the first human to visit Mars.
When you ask her, “Why Mars,” she rattles off a few reasons, deadpan, as if to say “Why not?”
“Mars is the planet closest to Earth that humans can go to, and it could be another planet to live on,” she says. “The goal is making it suitable for colonization.”
Her inspiration came from watching an episode of The Backyardigans, a cartoon about young animals that use their imagination to visit far-off places via their backyard.
By age 7, she attended her first space camp and fell in love with the idea of visiting outer space. Just two years later, she met astronaut Sandra Magnus, who spent 134 days in orbit. It was then Alyssa knew her dream of becoming an astronaut was attainable.
“[Magnus] was telling me how she decided to become an astronaut at 9 years old,” Alyssa says. “[She] fulfilled her dream and went into space. She started working on her dream at a young age.”
Alyssa is taking a cue from Magnus, working on the space travel dream over the summer. She’s visited space camp at the Kansas Cosmosphere. Her father took her to Ohio University to study with the International Space University program. She’s trained in Hunstville, Alabama, before studying rocketry at the Virginia Space Flight Academy.
When she talks about her school plans, she mentions words like “Cambridge” and “M.I.T.” She says she’ll get a double master’s and attend the International Space University in France.
If all goes according to plan, she could see her dream come true, but it won’t be until she’s 32 in 2033, which is when NASA hopes to get humans into Mars’ orbit.
Even she can’t help but laugh at her estimation of the Mars voyage.
“My friends think I’m crazy sometimes, but they’re very supportive,” she says. “When I’m around them, they don’t see me as a girl going to Mars. I’m just Alyssa.” nasablueberry.com
Sure she’s only 14, but Baton Rougean Alyssa Carson is already working on a superior résumé to get to Mars.
• She has been to NASA Space Camp seven times, Space Academy three times and the Robotics Academy and the Aviation Challenge Mach II once. She is the first person to complete all the space camps in the world. The camps are located in Huntsville, Alabama; Turkey and Canada.
• She has completed the NASA passport program, visiting all the NASA centers in the United States.
• She can speak four languages: Spanish, French, Chinese and Turkish.
• She delivered a TEDx talk in Kalamata, Greece, about her mission to go to Mars. Check it out below:
