“On a professional and personal scale, I feel like I beat the statistics a little bit. I’ve seen people come out of the Cambodian Civil War my parents and I lived through, and they weren’t able to get an education or be where they want to be. I can appreciate that I am where I am.
“My favorite part of my job is seeing our team of scientists, engineers, and technical experts come in and think beyond what we know here on Earth. It’s us trying to grasp what it would be like in a different environment, a different planet, and attempting to solve really hard problems to get there. The team has been absolutely brilliant in working together and trying to take our program and the human species to the next level. Another favorite thing is being able to understand our planetary differences. You read about it in school and understand the different compositions associated with our planets, but to get the data and see how it all fits together – it’s truly mind-boggling how vast the universe is and how much we still do not know overall.
“If I had a chance to go to the Moon – absolutely. If I had a chance to go to any planet – absolutely. It comes with risk, but it also comes with so much learning. We only get to see a small perspective of our world and growing it little by little – even if it’s just to the Moon – is worth it. We don’t realize how small we are in the grand scale of things, and if I can open my perspective even more, why wouldn’t I?”
—Teang “Anne” Tripathi, Extravehicular Activity Office VISE Hardware Manager, Johnson Space Center
Image Credit: NASA / Norah Moran
Interviewer: NASA / Tahira Allen