Will Pomerantz

@pomerantz.bsky.social

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Head of Space at AeroVironment - my team makes Mars helicopters. Co-Founder, Brooke Owens Fellowship and Patti Grace Fellowship. Former planetary scientist. Husband, Dad, and Den Leader

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#NASA's #Perseverance rover continues to make tracks westward, up the former shore of the former lake in #Jezero crater, #Mars. These are shots from the rover's navcam, taken at each drive's end, for sols 1136, 1137, 1138 and 1140 (yesterday, 2024-05-05). Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ Martian Observer

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HiPOD: Gullies in the Depths of Hellas We targeted a relatively fresh crater where previous images from the Context Camera showed gullies. This confirms their presence and will allow scientists to compare them in detail with gullies elsewhere on Mars. uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_08... NASA/UArizona

📰 The Ongoing Triumph of Ingenuity The Space Review is running this piece at the top of this week's edition. It's written from my perspective as the relatively new head of the AeroVironment team that worked with NASA JPL to create Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter. 🚁

The Space Review: The ongoing triumph of Ingenuitythespacereview.com

There's under a week remaining to apply for a Karman Fellowship! If you believe space has the power to be used to global benefit; if you are a realist about our industry's financial status, dual-purpose applications, inspirational power, and current flaws: apply! www.karmanproject.org

The Karman Project | For a cooperative future in spacewww.karmanproject.org We foster independent dialogue between global leaders in tech, science, business, politics and the arts who want to positively impact space.

If anyone ever tells you that poets and scientists are fundamentally cut from different cloth, please don’t believe them. (Words from the wonderful Mary Oliver, who just never missed, did she?!?)

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Your kids have independently derived the "moon's haunted" meme!

Our kids are glad that my wife is now an officially certified NASA Flight Director, as they can now ask her important questions like “Mami, have you checked to see if there is a ghost on the space station?”

🧵: When I attended ISU, I was one year out of undergrad. A pleasant year spent working as a planetary scientist had nevertheless shown me that I didn’t want to pursue a lifelong career in that field. I knew I had the space bug, but…

This year’s International Space University Space Studies Program might well be the best one yet. If you are trying to find your place in the space industry, or if you're moving into a new role in the industry, I highly recommend you consider applying. Due April 30 www.nasa.gov/news-release...

NASA Joins Rice University for 2024 Space Studies Program - NASAwww.nasa.gov March 4, 2024

One specific person I wanted to thank is AJ Bekoe. AJ is a wonderful PGSF success story. She got her first aerospace internship through our program, and did so well that she'll start a full time job there soon. AJ just joined our PGSF Executive Board. Our first alum-turned-exec -- not our last!

I love the technology as much as anyone else -- but technology is and never was not the point (or not the whole point, at least) of Star Trek. So, I'm grateful to the companies, volunteers, and donors who have supported our mission with the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship.

From 20+ years in aerospace, I have seen that our community has a long way to go before our actions match our ambitions -- so many people working in aerospace want some variant of a Star Trek future, but act as though technological contributions are their only personal role in getting us there.

This came after two additional rounds of screening through our Fellowship. If your immediate reaction was to assume that perhaps these students had been handed spots, rather than that they'd earned them, I suggest you take a moment to reflect on why that might have been your assumption.

Because there is so much political churn and confusion these days about programs that embrace the value of diversity, I'll point out that every one of these candidates had to go through the normal hiring process with one of the most selective companies in the world.

Having come to know these Fellows through our lengthy application process and through our first group meetings, I am extremely impressed by their talent, their drive, and their humanity. I look forward to working alongside them in this industry for a long, long time.

Earlier this month, we announced our newest class of Patti Grace Smith Fellows! These extremely impressive students are taking their first steps towards aerospace careers with summer internships, one-on-one mentorship, scholarships, and a new cohort of peers with similar passions.

Thinking of JPL friends today. A lot of good folks – mostly in engineering (I think especially autonomy), but other as well – are looking for their next career steps now. JPL is a special place that had a tough day today, and I wish all those impacted luck and peace as they find their next steps.

(Check the ALT text on that image details about the imagery in that patch. ) As Diana said, the word somos "speaks of community, of who we are as people, of what we value, of what we have gone through to become, and of what we can do together." Oh my, do I love her for that philosophy!

For her callsign, Diana selected "Somos Flight." "Somos" is a Spanish-language word that means "we are." I think her choice of name and her rationale behind it speak to the important and very human perspective she brings to Mission Control and the Flight Director team.

“As a team, we [on those Mars missions] learned how to think like explorers, how to entertain the crazy ideas, how to be true to each other, how to challenge each other, how to search for the truth as we're challenging each other, & how to stay focused on what we can do & not on what we cannot do."

This moment marks the culmination of ~18 months of training here at JSC, but also builds upon a lifetime of perspective and particularly the on-the-job experience she gained exploring Mars at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

I am incredibly proud of my wife, Diana Trujillo! On Friday, she had her 'pinning ceremony,' which marked the start of her first official shift running Mission Control for the International Space Station at the Johnson Space Center as NASA's 108th Flight Director.

Our kiddos were not born in Buffalo like I was, so the fact that they have absorbed my Bills fandom has at times seemed almost cruel. But tonight? When our older boy snuck out of bed to watch with me as the Bills won the division? That moment right there felt pretty good.

That’s a new lunar lander, a new rocket, a new booster-stage engine, and a new NASA/commercial Industry partnership, all getting a major test at the same time. Exciting, nerve-wracking, and inspiring in equal measure!

I’ve got my fingers crossed for for friends at Astrobotic, ULA, Blue Origin, and NASA. I have a bit of insight into just how much effort and creativity has been put into Peregrine, Vulcan, BE-4 & CLPS. Getting to the launch pad is one great milestone; I hope there are many more to come for them!

Omitting books by authors I know personally or professionally (which this year means omitting books by Tucker, Vance, Cambias, Grush, and El-Badry Nance -- all of which I genuinely enjoyed), my top two for the year were: How Far the Light Reaches by @sabs.bsky.social and Dog Songs by Mary Oliver

Here's a list of everything I read for pleasure last year -- keeping this list has been an annual tradition for me practically since the days of the Pizza Hut BOOK IT challenge! As always, the list is in chronological rather than ranked order.

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Happy 2024! In this new year, I am hopeful for a path forward for #MarsSampleReturn. This article by the awesome @philplait.bsky.social says it all and says it well! (also access by subscribing at badastronomy.substack.com and linking via his Nov 6 article) www.scientificamerican.com/article/here...

Here's How to Bring Mars Down to Earth: Let NASA Do What NASA Does Bestwww.scientificamerican.com Increasing NASA’s budget would ease pressure and allow it to dream even bigger

“Whoever you are, no matter, how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over, announcing your place in the family of things.” Excerpt from the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

Hearing my team's work compared to the work of the Wright Brothers on their legendary 1903 Flyer -- from the curators of the very museum that has the 1903 flyer on display -- gave me goosebumps. Now, here's hoping that Ingenuity gets the kind of following act that the 1903 Wright Flyer did!

During testing at JPL, this prototype, which was built by my team at AeroVironment for NASA JPL (well before I joined the team!), was the first vehicle ever to achieved controlled flight in Mars atmospheric conditions -- a critical step on the path to Ingenuity's phenomenal mission success.