As a scientist, some of the things I'm most proud of are the discoveries I've made. And
not huge discoveries, not ground-breaking
things but the small.. small discoveries,
where you've finally figured out something. You've been staring
at the data for so long, and all of a sudden
it made sense. And you realize that you've
just figured out something that no one else,
ever, in the history of mankind has ever figured out before. And those are really special moments.
I'm Sarah Noble. I work for NASA.
And this is my story.
My parents have always been incredibly supportive, even when they don't really understand what it is I'm doing.
I talk science at them and they nod and smile. But they've always been super encouraging
and told me I can do whatever I wanted and be whoever I wanted. I have always been a
a space nerd, since I was very young.
I remember I was about ten when I decided
I was going to be an astronaut. Most ten year olds want to be an astronaut. But I sort of
never grew out of it. I actually started college as an aerospace engineer, because it was the
only major that had the word "space" in the title. I found a new path and fell in love
with the science, and actually as an undergrad, had an internship at NASA Johnson Space Center,
where I fell in love with research. Every
day there's new and exciting science, new
places we've never been - we just went past Pluto, finally saw a new world that we've
never seen before. Every day is an amazing adventure. I was always so interested in absolutely
everything. Science was always there, but
science is not my only love. I'm an artist,
still, I actually minored in both art and
political science in college, because, why
not? People always seem to be surprised when I tell them I'm an artist as well as a scientist
and I think to me that's very strange. Because to me, they are two side of the same coin.
They are both about creative problem solving. And so I really think they are not that different.
They're both about finding solutions and thinking creatively. I think so many of us at NASA
are very influenced by science fiction, and,
you know, Star Trek and the art of Chesley
Bonestell and some of the original great space artists out there. I think a lot of us - our vision of what these
worlds are and the worlds we haven't been to yet and the worlds we haven't yet explored
come from art. And so I think that if you're
going to feed imagination, you have to start
there. You have to encourage art, you have to be a part of that creative process. I think
I've been pretty lucky in my career, that
the places that I've been at NASA have been
very welcoming of women and in my current group we are almost 50-50. And so, once you
get to a certain point, there's enough women around, that you stop noticing.
I'd stop walking into meetings and noticing that I'm the only woman there. So I think we are clearly making
progress. We're not, of course, there yet.
There's always more work to do, but I think
things like "Women at NASA" is helping show that we're out there and we're not alone.
