UWA student makes history with NASA internship, sets sights on helping humanity with space science

Growing up in the Kimberley and Goldfields, Alaxandrea O’Brien dreamed of one day making scientific discoveries to benefit humanity.

A lofty ambition for anyone, but the sky’s the limit for this proud Dulgubarra-Mamu and Jirrbal woman after becoming the first WA student to be selected in a pioneering space program that has taken her all the way to NASA.

The University of WA environmental engineering student was selected for Monash University’s National Indigenous Space Academy program, and is now among eight First Nations tertiary students headed to the US and UK for 10-week placements at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and RAL Space.

Speaking to The Sunday Times from California, the third-year student said the opportunity meant “the absolute world” to her.

“Growing up in the Kimberley . . . never did I ever think that my love for science and space would end up in me working on projects for the benefit of all humanity,” O’Brien says.

It’s not an exaggeration. As part of the placement, O’Brien has been paired with a scientist or engineer mentor at JPL, and has been working on real-life projects developed to contribute to current space missions.

“I’m essentially starting on a project to work with satellite data from some revolutionary spacecraft that we have up above in our outer atmosphere at the moment,” O’Brien explains.

“We’re looking at seeing through dense vegetation to map our water dynamics, which is something extremely aligned with my degree.

“With our changing climate, we have extreme flooding events and extreme droughts all of the time, so to be able to get knowledge as it’s first being received ever, and then apply it, is definitely the best thing about this (experience) so far.”

O’Brien will apply what she learns in an honours thesis next year, combining the cutting-edge environmental science being done at JPL with the deep wisdom accumulated by 60,000 years of Indigenous land management.

“For me, it’s one and the same,” she says.

“What I look at in my degree is full-systems thinking and how everything is interconnected — from the waterways to the country, the land, to the health of the environment, the movement of our species, and then our own quality of life in relation to that.

“And everything that I’ve grown up getting taught by my own elders, and from elders in the communities in which I’ve had the privilege of growing up on . . . so to be able to draw on and appreciate all of that, and bring it all together in my own degree and career pathway, I see it as just the culmination of that knowledge into the modern world.”

It’s no secret women are underrepresented in STEM, both as students and career scientists, let alone First Nations women, so O’Brien takes her status as a role model seriously.

And, as someone who readily admits science and maths were her worst subjects throughout high school, O’Brien stresses the importance of holding onto those dreams.

“I’m kind of envisioning younger me when I’m thinking about this, but if you can dream it and you can see it, then you can do it,” she says.

“Don’t let not knowing the final answer, or not knowing how to get there, stop you or get in the way, because you never know what opportunity will quite literally fall in your lap, and you never know what people will lift you up and empower you through different moments.

“Never let anyone tell you no, and don’t be afraid of getting it wrong.”