Nagin Cox facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Nagin Cox
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Cox in 2018
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| Born | 1965 |
| Alma mater | Cornell University |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Jet Propulsion Laboratory North American Aerospace Defense Command |
Zainab Nagin Cox (born in 1965) is a super smart engineer who works with spacecraft at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). She helps control robotic missions that explore space. In 2015, an asteroid was even named "Nagincox" after her! She has also won a special award called the NASA Exceptional Service Medal.
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Early Life and School
Nagin Cox was born in Bangalore, a city in India. She grew up in different places like Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Kansas City, Kansas in the United States. When she was in high school at Shawnee Mission East High School, she loved watching shows like Star Trek and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. These shows made her excited about space!
She went to Cornell University and studied engineering and psychology, finishing in 1986. Later, in 1990, she earned another degree in space operations systems engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology.
What Does a Space Engineer Do?
After college, Nagin Cox started working for the United States Air Force. She helped train pilots who flew F-16 jets. She also worked at the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which watches for things in space.
Since 1993, Nagin Cox has been a spacecraft operations engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). This means she helps control robots that travel far into space. She has worked on many exciting missions, including:
- Galileo, which explored Jupiter.
- InSight, which landed on Mars to study its inside.
- Kepler, which looked for planets outside our solar system.
- Mars Curiosity, a rover that is still exploring Mars today!
Nagin is a "tactical mission lead." This means she is in charge of the teams that send commands to spacecraft, receive data back, and plan what the robots will do next. It's like being the director of a space movie, but it's real life!
Because of her amazing work, an asteroid discovered in 1996 was named 14061 Nagincox in 2015. She has also won several awards, including the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal twice!
Inspiring Others and Space Exploration
Nagin Cox really cares about getting more people, especially girls, interested in science, engineering, and working at NASA. She has been on the board of directors for the Griffith Observatory, a famous place where people can look at the stars.
She travels all over the world as a speaker for the United States Department of State. She talks about her job and NASA's robotic missions. For example, in 2014, she visited Pakistan, Rio de Janeiro, and Bahia in Brazil. She wanted to inspire young women from these places to study science and engineering.
In 2017, she gave a popular TEDx talk called "What time is it on Mars?" In this talk, she explained how scientists keep track of time on another planet. The talk was so good that Wired magazine chose it as one of the best science talks, and almost two million people have watched it! In 2018, she visited Kuwait to talk about their plans for a Mars mission in 2021.
See also
In Spanish: Nagin Cox para niños
