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.

When it comes down to it, the space industry is about building stuff. That’s Alexa Villa’s specialty. 

Brenden Swanik is building Voyager by day, and telling the industry’s story by night.

“My career began with a simple childhood wonder, and has since become a mission to bridge policy and technology in the commercial space sector,” she said.

For Victoria Woodburn, space has always been about more than rockets and distant planets. It’s about people—how societies harness space technologies to solve problems on Earth, and how global collaboration can shape a sustainable future beyond our planet.

When Kayla Simon first saw a fictional astronaut rescue effort in 2015’s The Martian, she knew she wanted a space job. “I want to be the person who has the headset on, that helps drive teams,” she recalled of her reaction.

Mroz grew up watching Star Wars and Star Trek, and hiking in remote areas “where I felt much closer to the sky than anywhere else,” she said. As she got older, however, struggles with mathematics put her dream of being an astronaut in doubt. 

Esquerra has been playing with rocket physics since he was 10 years old.

Unlike many of his peers, Anirudh Sharma didn’t grow up dreaming of working in the space industry. Founding the Indian space surveillance company Digantara—Sanskrit for “space”—at 19 was, in his words, “very accidental.”

When Roohi Dalal joined the American Astronomical Society (AAS) as its deputy director of public policy in 2024, she never imagined she’d be leading the fight for space science just one year later as NASA science budgets are in the federal crosshairs.