19-Year-Old Has Already Been To Every NASA Space Camp, Wants To Be First On Mars

Carson set her sights on Mars when she was just 3 years old, inspired by an episode of The Backyardigans that focused on astronauts visiting the red planet, she told smalltalk.

That led young Carson down a rabbit hole of research into Mars, and before long, she was hooked.

At 16, she also graduated from the Advanced PoSSUM Academy, a highly specialized program that trains students in things like upper atmospheric research, bioastronautics, and human space flight operations.

Graduating from the PoSSUM Academy made her the youngest person ever certified to go to space and an official astronaut-in-training.

She's been actively trying to inspire more people since she was 12, when NASA invited her to speak on a panel on future missions to Mars. So, when she isn't in class or just being a teenager, Carson is working to engage the public with appearances at schools and making videos for social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

"We're kind of translating space talk and doing science experiments on TikTok. It's definitely a lot of the science geeks trying to learn this new TikTok thing, but it's about being entertaining while talking about science," she told Business Insider.

"I got 'Blueberry' because the second time I went to space camp, when I was really little, I wanted one of the blue flight suits that I saw everyone wearing because I wanted to be an astronaut, so I wanted to look like one. I was too short and small to fit in any of the flight suits, so my dad ended up finding this knockoff, like not really the right shade of blue," she told Business Insider.

"When I wore it everyone told me it made me look like a blueberry. So after that, throughout the day and the rest of the time at space camp, they would just say, 'Oh, Blueberry, can you do this?'"

She's still completing her PhD in astrophysics at the Florida Institute of Technology, and when she's done that, she plans on applying to NASA the next time they put out a call for astronaut applicants.

NASA has plans to be on Mars in the 2030s, and Carson wants to be on that mission.

"Mars has so many opportunities that we just don’t fully comprehend yet," she told smalltalk. "And I think that getting to Mars is that next step of understanding that hopefully on the mission to Mars we can learn more about the water, the resources, the atmosphere with opportunities are with Mars and also with getting to Mars we’re developing so many other technologies that we eventually develop and use for everyday life."

h/t: Business Insider, smalltalk