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I would say, as a child, I was always interested in all things kind of science-related. I liked
rocks, I liked dinosaurs, I liked planets. But my pivotal moments, I think I had two of them, and
the first was the space shuttle program and, Sally Ride, and the fact that, you know, she was the first
American woman in space, and I really wanted to do that. But the second was the Voyager flybys.
And while I don't really have memories of the Jupiter flyby, I distinctly remember
the Uranus flyby in 1986.
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And getting these images of these alien worlds, these funny moons,
that, you know, all different colors, all sorts of things going on there that we didn't understand.
And really that cemented, for me, I wanted to study space science.
There was no other question that's what I was going to do.
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So as a planetary scientist, I study the planets in our solar system, primarily the outer planets, and I'm
interested in their atmospheres, and how they work, and what they can teach us as
a laboratory for atmospheres all over the place, including the Earth.
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My background is a little interesting. I actually originally wanted to study Mars geology.
But when I started my graduate school career, I had an opportunity to work on Jupiter data,
particularly with Hubble, calibrating some of the early images before Hubble
had its corrective optics, right before the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impacts into Jupiter.
And then we had this great encounter, where we had all these cometary pieces hitting it. But it was
a new camera on Hubble, after the corrective optics, so you know, "Wow, all these great new images!" And I
kind of got sold into, "This is really what I want to do, study the atmospheres of planets."
"Hubble Space Telescope's been looking at Jupiter for the past 25 years, and this particular image taken just
a few days ago, we can see the dynamic cloud bands, all the swirling clouds and colors on Jupiter, of
course, and the Great Red Spot, but we also see wave features, and smaller storms in the atmosphere so
we're learning a lot about Jupiter's weather, basically, by doing these Hubble observations."
"In addition to her work with the Hubble Space Telescope, Dr. Simon has also worked on..."
"The Cassini Mission to Saturn // Composite Infrared Spectrometer"
"Landsat 9 Earth Observation Satellite // Thermal Infrared Sensor"
"OSIRIS-REx Mission to Asteroid Bennu // Near-Infrared Spectrometer"
"Lucy Mission to the Trojan Asteroids // L'Ralph Visible Camera and Near-Infrared Spectrometer"
I would say, I'm not really good at looking towards the future of envisioning exactly where I'll be in
10 years, but, you know, I want to see more missions to the outer solar system, I think we have a lot
left to do out there. And I am looking forward to the day when we are ready to launch a mission
to Neptune, or even another mission to Saturn, and I certainly hope to be part of those missions.
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