Camille Wardrop Alleyne’s astronomical rise

Lead Editor-Newsgathering

ryan.bachoo@guardian.co.tt

In humanity’s quest to answer questions about the vast cosmos we are a part of, Trinidad and Tobago-born Dr Camille Wardrop Alleyne has been at the forefront of efforts to learn more about our galaxy.

The aerospace engineer, space scientist, and science ambassador spent three decades at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the United States.

It was her lifelong dream and a major accomplishment for someone who once “didn’t know there was a job as an astronaut.”

To pursue that dream, she left Trinidad when she was 17 and headed to Howard University to study mechanical engineering with an aerospace option.

She then pursued a Masters from Florida A&M University in mechanical engineering with a specialisation in composite materials. She would become one of two people selected in her programme by NASA to work at the Kennedy Space Center as a flight systems engineer.

Her time at the globally popular agency would be groundbreaking. Wardrop Alleyne would become the first person of colour to lead a major human space flight programme at NASA.

Just over a week ago, CAF—Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean—flew her into Trinidad to deliver a feature address at the University of the West Indies’ World of Work programme and to be one of three panellists for a fireside chat at the launch of the CAF Innovation Series.

She sat down with the WE magazine, recalling the mental and physical strength required to work at NASA.

She said, “It was not easy because the systems are not naturally set up for bringing in diverse talent. I have made sure to do a lot of work at the agency to make sure that others who look like me are coming up in the pipeline.” Wardrop Alleyne said that though she left T&T very early in her life, those formative years in her country proved crucial when she entered a company that “had very few people looking like her.”

Wardrop Alleyne said being surrounded by leaders in T&T who looked like her gave her a sense of ‘I can do anything.’

The former lead system engineer at NASA went further in remembering, “It’s a lot of that foundation that I had that gave me the fortitude, the tenacity, and the resilience to rise through the ranks at a place like NASA where most of the people don’t look like me. You need a certain level of determination and resilience to not just survive in that environment but thrive in that environment. I really credit my foundation growing up in T&T.”

Now retired, Wardrop Alleyne is targeting visiting space one day. She is confident space will some time in the future become as commercialised as the airline industry has become over time.

She added, “Now you could buy a ticket [to go to space]. Not everybody could buy a ticket; it’s still very expensive, but the fact that aviation was at this place in the beginning where very few people could buy a ticket to go trans-Atlantic or go from the US continent to Europe. It was very expensive, and very few people could afford it. The way you drive down costs is by having competition, so as more airlines came online, people had choices, and as you drive costs down, more people are able to afford it.”

She was confident that “it’s only a matter of time” before space travel becomes like air travel. Having watched the world from a different perspective, she is now using her knowledge and experience in aerospace engineering to come up with solutions to meet one of the world’s biggest modern challenges, climate change.

“What we don’t think about is how space is a vantage point to look at Earth and to study our home planet,” Wardrop Alleyne insisted.

She said space can hold the answer to how we confront some of the challenges climate change poses to the world, particularly Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

The technology, she said, can be used to predict and model weather patterns, which can in turn lead to putting policies in place to react in the case of a disaster, like moving people or fortifying structures and systems.

She acknowledged that for SIDS to find the climate finance to invest in such technologies can often be challenging, but she did point to consortiums around the world and international organisations that are providing access to the data. As the world continues to explore space and go to more planets further and further away, Wardrop Alleyne said she was confident one day humans will be able to live on another planet.

“It’s going to take some time. I don’t know if it will happen in my lifetime, but I think we’re moving towards that. I think as space travel becomes more accessible, I think we can do it. We do have some challenges to overcome. For example, the technology may be ready to go to Mars, but is the human body ready to go to Mars? Is the human body ready to sustain such a journey? I think we still have a lot of things to figure out in that realm to sustain human life outside of our Earth,” she said.

Wardrop Alleyne would take it a step further, saying she foresees in the next decade almost every country on Earth having some level of involvement and participation in space.

She added, “It may not look like NASA and the US. It may not look like sending astronauts to the moon. That is probably going to be a smaller subset of countries, but using space technology, for example, for solving problems here on Earth is something so many countries, developing and emerging markets, are seeing as valuable and something that is critical to sustainable development.”

Wardrop Alleyne added that such an involvement in space participation for SIDS could also look like having a group of university students learning to build a cube satellite that could be launched. “Just that training, that development is the road to more advanced studies,” she said.

From humble beginnings, Wardrop Alleyne had an astronomical rise in aerospace engineering, exploring a world above our planet that astounds those who look to the heavens. Now, she wants more people from developing countries like the one she came from to dare to reach for the stars, literally.

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