#MondayMotivation — Hacking Space Exploration with Ariel Waldman
Need some #MondayMotivation? Well, here it is! We take a look at the career of renowned space hacker Ariel Waldman.
Despite having no official astrophysics or engineering background, Ariel Waldman knew she wanted to be involved in space exploration, and she not only went on to work for NASA but then opened up space exploration to everyone through Spacehack.org and Science Hack Day.
Ariel’s interest in space exploration was sparked by watching a documentary back in 2008 called When We Left Earth, which featured the first engineers that were responsible for sending the first human beings into space. In it they explain that they knew nothing about rocketry or how to design a spacecraft and this is what inspired Ariel to contact NASA. She describes it as a geeky fan girl moment “I decided to randomly send NASA an email and if they needed someone like me I was around,” she told the Inspirefest 2015 crowd. “I was then able to get a job at NASA with that email.”
From working at NASA, Ariel realised that she didn’t need to work there to explore space so she founded Spacehack.org, a directory of ways people — ordinary people as well as techies and academics — can engage in space exploration.
Ariel is also the global director of Science Hack Day, an event that brings together scientists, technologists, designers and people with good ideas to see what they can create in one weekend.
Over 20 countries now take part in Science Hack Day,and last weekend (14–15 November 2015) UCD hosted Science Hack Day Dublin, with Ariel there to help hack some creative science experiments.
Watch Ariel’s inspiring keynote from Inspirefest 2015
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