Name: Your Neighborhood Space Engineer | Janelle Wellons | TEDxTIU
Uploaded: 2025-07-30T14:50:21.000Z
Duration: 16 min 24 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I never imagined or planned on having a career exploring the Milky Way.

How many of you knew what you wanted to be when you were growing up?

Maybe some firefighters or a vet, maybe a doctor.

Well, for me, it was either going to be a lawyer, an author, or a marine biologist.

I mean, don't get me wrong, that's cool, but it also sounds a little silly because, come on, how many people have ever actually had a chance to explore space?

Of the billions and billions of people who have ever lived, only a little over 600 have left our planet.

I was wondering, how many of us have let go of a big dream because we feared the risk of failure, of not being enough?

Yet, here I am, a real space engineer, and I have a story to share with you.

I spent five years exploring the solar system with NASA.

I flew to the moon, I matched the surface temperature, spotted signs of ice, and witnessed the start of a new lunar presence.

I flew over our planet's blue seas, saw its depths, and witnessed the changes that our climate is going through over time.

I even went to Saturn with the Cassini spacecraft, where I saw its dumpling-shaped moons and eternal storms reaching the size of three Earths.

I even witnessed the end of that mission, what we dubbed the grand finale, where Cassini dove between Saturn and its rings for one last time, pointing down to us here on Earth before it burned up in the atmosphere, losing its signal forever.

But right now, I'm looking forward to an upcoming mission.

It's going to be doing a global health study, and I'm really excited about it because for the first time ever, I am going to see a rocket launch.

And for the first time, I'll be seeing this rocket launch because for the first time ever, I won't be working.

I won't be in the Mission Control Center monitoring the science instruments health and safety data on monitors around the room.

I won't be looking at plots of temperatures and sensor data and currents.

I won't be on voice comms with my colleagues to announce the moment that our spacecraft separates from the launch vehicle.

I won't be there because after five years of exploring where our humanity has never gone before with NASA, I quit.

When I attended an introduction to aerospace engineering class at my alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, I had no idea that my life would be changed forever.

My professor, he was at the front of the class explaining the syllabus for the semester, and he talked to us about what we'd be learning.

We're going to learn a little bit about the equation.

We're going to learn about how planes fly.

And we're even going to learn a little bit about the history of space flight.

And he showed us this image of astronauts fixing the Hubble telescope.

And he turned to us and said, that astronaut is me.

Suddenly, I'm in the same room as somebody who has left our planet.

It was in that moment that I decided to dream big.

And it was in that moment that I decided I wanted to be a space engineer.

And as a space engineer in training, I was learning a lot.

I learned about landing rovers on the Martian surface, just like NASA JPL.

I learned about sending probes to Jupiter, like NASA JPL.

This NASA JPL place kept coming up a lot.

A leading center on all things space robotic exploration.

Sorry, in all things space robotic exploration.

So naturally, this NASA JPL place was somewhere that I wanted to be.

So then that begs the question, why did I quit?

Did you ever notice that the older that we get, the more risk adverse we become?

And by that, I mean that we avoid any negative outcome, potentially negative outcome that may come our way.

Now, I'm not basing this on any specific scientific research, but instead on our lived experiences.

When you have things that you love that you don't want to lose, you'd be hesitant to risk them.

It's healthy to have some risk aversion in our life.

But I also think that sometimes we are risk adverse to a fault.

We will avoid taking any risk, even if there is no tangible thing to lose.

Why not go for that maybe the confidence in ourself.

It makes me think that we tend to focus on the question, what if it doesn't work out?

But I challenge us to change our thinking to what if it works?

Now, some of you may be wondering why I ever signed up for that introduction class back at MIT.

Now, what if I told you it's because I was inspired by cartoons like Jimmy Neutron and Dexter's Lab.

And because I thought black holes are pretty cool.

You know, I wasn't like my classmates who were pilots already or who could name every Saturn rocket that's ever flown or the military jets.

Instead, I just did it because I wanted to.

I asked myself, what if I could become a real that dared mighty things, pushing the frontier of where humanity has never gone before?

And when I was staying up late at night, working on problem sets and studying for tests, trying to figure out how deep space communications worked, I kept coming back to that question, but what if I can succeed?

So, after this, last year, I gave a lecture at the University of Tokyo to an introduction to science class.

And as part of this lecture, I also talked about rejection.

I had been rejected not just once, but twice to NASA before they finally let me in.

And after this talk was over, this young man, a student, he approached me and he had tears in his eyes.

And when I started talking to him, he explained to me that he was struggling in his classes and he was feeling really down on himself and like his future was just uncertain.

Here in Japan, I feel like there's this expectation to maximize your successes while minimizing any risks.

This expectation to stay on the predetermined path and to color inside the lines, so to speak.

You see, all my life, I felt like I had embraced risk taking.

I even flew across the country, leaving behind my friends and family to go work for NASA.

But one day, when this company, located here in Japan, reached out to me, offering me the chance of a lifetime to be a flight director for their maiden mission to land on the moon, I froze.

This was a chance to become the first non-government entity to have a landing on the moon while thousands and thousands of people watched from all over the globe, it and me, live in the mission control room as our spacecraft started its descent to the lunar surface.

This offer, this incredible offer, I turned it down.

It was like there was something pressuring me.

Like there was a weight on my chest that was holding me back.

And I suddenly became one of these what if it goes wrong kind of people.

I thought about all of the people and the inspiration I'd be leaving behind at NASA.

I thought about not fitting in in a Japanese workspace.

I thought about having to prove myself as a competent engineer at a company trying to do something incredibly hard.

But after a year of stewing in these negative thoughts, I actually started to notice my thought pattern and consider the opposite.

What if I go on a journey of self-discovery?