Goddard Engineering and Technology Directorate

There Are No Imaginary Boundaries for Dr. Ariadna Farrés-Basiana

Dr. Ariadna Farrés-Basiana is an astrodynamics and solar radiation pressure specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md, standing next to a model of the Nancy Roman Space Telescope. Photo courtesy of Ariadna Farrés-Basiana
Dr. Ariadna Farrés-Basiana is an astrodynamics and solar radiation pressure specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Photo courtesy of Ariadna Farrés-Basiana

Dr. Ariadna Farrés-Basiana would look up at the sky and marvel at the immensity of space when she was younger. Now, the bounds are limitless as she helps NASA explore the expansive universe by computing the trajectories and maneuvers to get a spacecraft into space.

Name: Dr. Ariadna Farrés-Basiana
Title: Astrodynamics and solar radiation pressure specialist,
Formal Job Classification: Scientific collaborator
Organization Navigation and Mission Design Branch (Code 595) 

What is your role at Goddard? What do you focus on?

I am part of the flight dynamics team. We are the ones in charge of computing the trajectories, maneuvers, amongst other things to get a spacecraft into space to its final destination. I am currently working on two main projects: the Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) mission, which is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) mission that will monitor space weather, and NASA’s Roman Space Telescope. I participate in both missions as part of the flight dynamics team. I am in charge of calculating the transfer trajectory, which would be the path through space that these missions must follow to go from Earth to Lagrange points L1 and L2. These are places in space where gravitational forces balance each other and a spacecraft doesn’t need to spend as much fuel to maintain its orbit. In addition to that, I work on station-keeping strategies, which are the routine maneuvers that we must do to keep our telescope in orbit.

What was your path to NASA?

My Ph.D. focused on solar sails, which is a way of navigating through space using the force of light emitted by the Sun as if it were wind that drives the sails of the spacecraft. I always thought that my contribution to NASA would be as a researcher or as a professor at a university. I had always dreamed of joining NASA, but I never thought it was possible. At the time, I was trying to find a position as a tenured professor at the University of Barcelona. While I was waiting, a professor of mine who had collaborated with people at NASA back in the ’90s called his former colleagues and told them that he had a Ph.D. student who was looking for a summer internship; then he asked if I could intern with them for a few months. And they said yes. I came to Goddard one summer as an intern and it was amazing. In the end I didn’t get the position as a tenured professor in Spain, and when I told my colleagues that I didn’t have a job, they asked me if I wanted to come and finish the research project I had started here, and after that I continued to extend my internship. In May 2017, I joined Goddard for the second time, this time as a full-time employee. What would have been only seven months of internship ended up being seven years that I have been here.

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