Sarah Gillis
Sarah Gillis is an American engineer who has been selected for the Polaris Dawn mission as a mission specialist.[1] If the mission goes ahead as planned in late 2022, she will become the youngest American to reach orbit.
Sarah Gillis | |
|---|---|
.jpg.webp) | |
| Born | Sarah Levine 1994 (age 27–28) |
| Status | Active |
| Alma mater | University of Colorado Boulder (Aerospace engineering) |
| Space career | |
| SpaceX Astronaut | |
Current occupation | SpaceX Lead Operations Engineer |
Time in space | None |
| Missions | Polaris Dawn |
Early life and education
Gillis graduated from Shining Mountain Waldorf School in Boulder, Colorado in June, 2012. She obtained a degree in aerospace engineering from University of Colorado Boulder on the advice of her mentor, former NASA astronaut Joseph R. Tanner.[2]
Career
In 2015, while at the University of Colorado Boulder, Gillis began an internship at SpaceX, working on human-in-the-loop testing of the Dragon spacecraft before moving full-time to the astronaut training program.
She is a lead space operations engineer at SpaceX, responsible for overseeing the astronaut training program for the company's Crew Dragon vehicles. She prepared NASA astronauts for the first Demo-2 and Crew-1 missions and more recently directly trained Inspiration4 astronauts, the first all-civilian crew to go into orbit. Gillis is an experienced Mission Control Operator, who has supported real-time operations for Dragon's cargo resupply missions to and from the International Space Station as a Navigation Officer and as Crew Operations and Resources Engineer (CORE) for crew Dragon missions, the SpaceX equivalent of the NASA CAPCOM role.[3]
Gillis has been selected as a Mission Specialist on the Polaris Dawn mission, commanded by Jared Isaacman.[4]
Media Coverage
Gillis appears in episodes 3, 4 and 5 in the Netflix series Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space.
References
- "Jared Isaacman, who led the first all-private astronaut mission to orbit, has commissioned 3 more flights from SpaceX". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
- "Shooting for the Stars: SMWS Alum and SpaceX Engineer Sarah Gillis". Shining Mountain Waldorf School. September 28, 2021. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
- Jiménez, Jesus (September 15, 2021). "Sarah Gillis will be a key voice in the astronauts' ears as they head to orbit". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
- ""SpaceX Tourists Will Make Attempt at Spacewalk During Flight"", The New York Times, ISSN 0362-4331, retrieved February 16, 2022
See also
| Launch vehicles |
|  | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spacecraft |
| |||||||||
| Test vehicles |
| |||||||||
| Rocket engines |
| |||||||||
| Lists of missions | ||||||||||
| Launch facilities |
| |||||||||
| Landing sites |
| |||||||||
| Other facilities |
| |||||||||
| Support |
| |||||||||
| Contracts | ||||||||||
| R&D programs | ||||||||||
| Key people |
| |||||||||
| Related |
| |||||||||
* denotes unflown vehicles or engines, and future missions or sites. † denotes failed missions, destroyed vehicles, and abandoned sites.
| ||||||||||
Space tourist missions | |
|---|---|
| |
| Past missions Flown tourists |
|
| Scheduled |
|
| Projected |
|
| Cancelled missions / tourists |
|
| |
