Farah Alibay
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Farah Alibay is a Canadian systems engineer at the
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...
who has worked on the
InSight Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect within a particular context. The term insight can have several related meanings: *a piece of information *the act or result of understanding the inner nature of things or of seeing intu ...
,
Mars Cube One Mars Cube One (or MarCO) was a Mars flyby mission launched on 5 May 2018 alongside NASA's ''InSight'' Mars lander. It consisted of two nanospacecraft, MarCO-A and MarCO-B, that provided real-time communications to Earth for ''InSight'' duri ...
, and
Mars 2020 Mars 2020 is a Mars rover mission forming part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program that includes the rover '' Perseverance'', the small robotic, coaxial helicopter '' Ingenuity'', and associated delivery vehicles. Mars 2020 was launched from ...
missions.


Early life and education

The daughter of immigrants from
Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
, Alibay was born in
Montréal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-p ...
,
Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
. She grew up in nearby
Joliette Joliette is a city in southwest Quebec, Canada. It is approximately northeast of Montreal, on the L'Assomption River and is the seat of the Regional County Municipality of Joliette. It is considered to be a part of the North Shore of Greate ...
, Quebec, and moved with her family to
Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
,
England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
for high school. French is her native language. The journey by the Canadian astronaut
Julie Payette Julie Payette (; born October 20, 1963) is a Canadian engineer, scientist and former astronaut who served from 2017 to 2021 as Governor General of Canada, the 29th since Canadian Confederation. Payette holds engineering degrees from McGill ...
to space inspired Alibay in middle school; as Payette was from her province, she served as a role model. She went to the
University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
, where she received her bachelor's and master's degrees in aerospace and aerothermal engineering in 2010. She earned her PhD in aeronautics and astronautics engineering from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
(MIT) in 2014. Her PhD research with advisor Dr.
Jeffrey Hoffman Jeffrey Alan Hoffman (born November 2, 1944) is an American former NASA astronaut and currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. Hoffman made five flights as a Space Shuttle astronaut, including the first mission to repair t ...
focused on the use of spatially and temporally distributed multi-vehicle systems for the exploration of planetary bodies in the solar system. In 2013, Alibay was awarded the AeroAstro Graduate Teaching Assistantship Award at MIT for her outstanding work as a teaching assistant in implementing
Concurrent Design Facility The Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) is the European Space Agency main assessment center for future space missions and industrial review. Located at ESTEC, ESA's technical center in Noordwijk in The Netherlands, it has been operational since early ...
software into the curriculum.


Career

After her master's degree, Alibay participated in the
NASA Academy The NASA Academy is NASA's premiere leadership training program for undergraduate and graduate students. Since its founding in 1993, the NASA Academy has brought together future leaders of the aerospace industry and exposed them to the inner work ...
internship at
Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC empl ...
through which she was introduced to the many
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
centres and activities. It was there that she discovered her passion for robotic planetary exploration. She interned at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory while she worked on her PhD. Following graduation in 2014, Alibay came to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory full-time. She started as the systems engineer of the Mars Cube One CubeSats mission, a companion mission to
InSight Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect within a particular context. The term insight can have several related meanings: *a piece of information *the act or result of understanding the inner nature of things or of seeing intu ...
.In 2016, she became a Payload Systems Engineer on the InSight mission, a
robotic Robotics is an interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist human ...
lander spacecraft that was designed to study the interior of the planet
Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...
, to where it lifted off on May 5, 2018. Before the launch, Alibay had been responsible for the proper integration and testing of all of the spacecrat's instruments. While the mission waited for the spacecraft to land on the surface of Mars, Alibay helped the teams prepare for operations, and she tested the detector equipment. To celebrate the landing on Mars on November 26, 2018, she had her hair dyed red to match the clour of Mars and of the InSight logo. In 2019, Dr. Alibay joined the
Mars 2020 Mars 2020 is a Mars rover mission forming part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program that includes the rover '' Perseverance'', the small robotic, coaxial helicopter '' Ingenuity'', and associated delivery vehicles. Mars 2020 was launched from ...
mobility team. Her duty was to ensure that the rover did not get lost on Mars. During surface operations after the February 18, 2021 landing, she was the Tactical Integration Lead and an interface between the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity. On April 19, 2021, Alibay was part of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory team that successfully made Ingenuity, the first powered-controlled aircraft to fly on another planet. She works on diversity and inclusion in STEM, both to increase them in her work environment and to prevent others from facing the challenges that she had as an
LGBTQ+ ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is ...
immigrant woman of colour.


Personal life

Alibay has spoken to the value of good mentors when she was an intern, and she mentors women interns as a result of those positive experiences. She indicated that a guidance counselor had once attempted to dissuade her from engineering since it is a male-dominated career. Her favourite moon is
Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...
's
Enceladus Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn (19th largest in the Solar System). It is about in diameter, about a tenth of that of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Enceladus is mostly covered by fresh, clean ice, making it one of the most refle ...
. She enjoys outdoor activities like hiking, camping, biking, and skiing, and also weight-lifting. She is also a Big Sister as part of the
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America Big Brothers Big Sisters of America is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to "create and support one-to-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth". Adult volunteers are matched with children from ag ...
program.


References


External links


NASA Biography of Farah Alibay (2018)

NASA Biography of Farah Alibay (2020)
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Alibay, Farah Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Jet Propulsion Laboratory faculty Scientists from Montreal Alumni of the University of Cambridge MIT School of Engineering alumni 21st-century women engineers Planetary scientists Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni NASA people American aerospace engineers American women engineers LGBT women LGBT scientists from Canada LGBT scientists from the United Kingdom 21st-century American women