 My name is Alyssa Carson. I am currently a 20-year-old college student studying astrobiology. I was kind of always interested in space ever since I was a little girl, and I was also interested in being an astronaut because I thought, why not go to space? Right now I'm leaning towards my grow bacteria in space, so looking for signs of bacterial life on Mars, testing those soil samples, and then eventually, let's say we do find something, running tests to actually classify that bacteria. I mean, if I was selected as an astronaut, I'd be able to do some of that in space would be the ultimate goal. We are starting to see more female astronauts, and I think that's really, really amazing because growing up I was in the environment where there were a good bit of females, but then I realized, oh, this isn't how it usually is. I couldn't find another girl with my major. I was, like, going around campus asking. I now met a couple, so, you know, we're growing. I like to think that everything in space always does come back to Earth. So for example, if we are trying to figure out this crazy thing like turning Mars into a second Earth, you know, one of the biggest things we're going to have to do that is we're going to have to clean up Mars' atmosphere. It's mostly carbon dioxide, so if we figure that out for Mars, we could definitely also clean up Earth's atmosphere at the same time. Although it does seem like a far disconnect, I do think that a lot of the things that we do in space always come back in some way for us to continue using those technologies. You know, it takes tens of thousands of people to send one astronaut into space. It definitely isn't a small task, and there's a lot of different positions that are super important. And so I think the next step really is getting more women across all of those jobs. There's no one way to be an astronaut. There's no one thing you have to study or you have to do. We want more people. We want more people to grow up and pursue STEM, so we'd probably be more than willing to help you and help support you in some way. And really just don't be afraid to talk about your dreams and just follow them.