In third grade, Caroline Reid was inspired by a lesson about planets: “I remember seeing the images of Saturn and just saying, ‘It’s so beautiful, and it’s so cool that we can capture those images.’”
As the mission director of Rocket Lab’s upcoming Mars mission, she’s now leading exploration of the solar system she admired as a kid. The spacecraft operations engineer is responsible for each bus for NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission, a pair of spacecraft set to launch no earlier than this year.
Cosmic kin: In true little sister fashion, Reid followed in the footsteps of her older sister, who chose aerospace engineering as her college major. “That’s when I realized I could make space my job,” Reid said. Reid pursued astrophysics at the top-tier University of California, Berkeley—the first step on her path to spacecraft operations.
“I get to be at the intersection of science and engineering, and building the thing that allows the scientists to make the discoveries that they want to make,” she said.
Touching down: Reid quickly got hands-on experience after graduating in 2020. At what is now called Lanteris Space Systems, she got her first experience being “hands-on, commanding a satellite.” Next came a stay with JPL’s Deep Space Network scheduling group, gathering data for interplanetary spacecraft teams.
Now at Rocket Lab for the past two years, Reid said she enjoys being “in the trenches” with operations: “You’re all pushing together as a team, and that collective push is such a bonding moment.”
In the quickly evolving space industry, Reid said her approach for career growth will be sticking to her core values: “Pushing humanity forward, and just enabling science to happen so that we can learn about our universe.”
