Tiera Guinn- the Wonder Woman of Rocket Science
She is also a leading engineer and designer who brings to life one of the most powerful rockets ever built—NASA’s Space Launch System, which will send the Orion spacecraft and its crew into deep space.
“Having a role in bringing the rocket to this point— I felt like a rock star,” “It nearly brings tears to my eyes, because I saw it start on paper, physically crawl into the engine section, help integrate the pieces, checked and balanced it via documents, and approved it to travel to the Kennedy Space Center.” —- says, Tierra Fletcher
With an aspiration to become a rocket scientist at age 11, Fletcher was first introduced to aerospace engineering through the Lockheed Martin program.
Her excellent computational skills were something that distinguished her from kids of her age, she could mentally calculate the tab earlier than it got to the register when shopping with her mother. Her parents encouraged her to calculate things in everyday life.
“People in the STEM field—we can’t underestimate the impact that we can have on a student,” says Fletcher. She and her husband, fellow aerospace engineer Myron Fletcher, both sharing the same interests, started a group Rocket with the Fletchers’ showing youth the STEM sector and its increasing diversity.
She has also co-authored the book Wonder Women of Science, which depicts the stories of 12 “amazing scientists who happen to be women,” Tierra Fletcher includes MIT Media Lab director Dava Newman, SM ’89, SM ’89, Ph.D. ’92, a former deputy administrator of NASA, and Mareena Robinson Snowden, Ph.D. ’17, the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from MIT.
In 2017, she got Good Housekeeping’s Awesome Woman Award, which recognizes women who are contributing to impact and influence the world by overcoming social constraints. She also won the Black Engineer of the Year Award in 2019
SOURCE – https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/08/24/1057320/wonder-woman-of-rocket-science/
Staff Reporter
