Earlier in the day, NASA spotlighted one of the engineers that supports NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, or CCP, which is the name of the program that underlies NASA and SpaceX’s joint partnership on these astronaut flights.
Crystal Jones is the deputy manager of NASA’s CCP ground and mission operations, which is charged with “assessing ground systems for crew safety for both lunch ops and recovery,” among other tasks, Jones said.
She shared her backstory:
“I did always know that I wanted to work as NASA, ” Jones said, “ever since I was a very young girl.”
But since she was a preteen, she said, her parents’ drug and alcohol abuse impacted her life in a “severe way.”
“We ended up homeless had to stay in an abandoned bus and eventually transitioned to a homeless shelter,” she said. “After that time, we never seemed to be able to recover as a family.”
But Jones said she used school computers to learn how to apply for colleges and financial aid. She ultimately got a bachelor’s degree in astrophysics from the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida — which is just a 40-mile drive from NASA’s launch facilities. Ultimately, she earned a bachelor’s in astrophysics and a masters in space systems.
Later in life, her parents overcame their addictions, though her mother passed away earlier this year.
“This necklace that I’m wearing is made with her ashes,” Jones said on NASA’s livestream. “And I wear it for every launch in her memory.”
