 Hi, I'm Kate Young, and you're listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these boiler makers? Join me as we feature students, faculty and alumni taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. The reputation that Purdue has to get you confident and able to do the work that is best in the world is unparalleled. I was like, you're a Purdue! I was so excited to be there when it really is just such a huge opportunity to take advantage of this major benefit that the state of Indiana offers you. Many people across the world know the strong ties between Purdue University and space. Thanks to one of Purdue's most famous alumni, Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon. Purdue now has 27 astronauts in our cradle, and nearly one-third of all U.S. spaceflights have included a Purdue graduate. For Purdue alumna Amy Ross, NASA and human spaceflight is an all-in-the-family venture. Her dad, Jerry Ross, graduated from Purdue with a bachelor's and master's in mechanical engineering and served in the Air Force before eventually becoming a NASA astronaut. Jerry later set records by flying on seven shuttle missions and performing nine spacewalks. And Amy followed in her dad's footsteps. She attended Purdue and has been working for NASA for nearly three decades. She shares a few different paths she was interested in during high school and what ultimately made her want to join the Boilermaker community. Oh, and you'll hear Amy discuss her love for animals, and a certain little one joined her on her This is Purdue virtual interview. So really, we had two guests, NASA's space suit engineer Amy Ross and her kitten. What made you want to go to Purdue? Well, when I was in high school, I was trying to decide what I wanted to do. And I knew I wanted to do something that I would enjoy. And so I thought about the things that I enjoy. I love animals, so I thought about being a veterinarian. I read a lot, so I thought about being a librarian. And then my dad has always been deeply involved in the space program and I loved the enthusiasm he had for it. I loved what the space program does for the country. I thought that that was a very meaningful place to spend my career. And so those were the three options I had. I worked at a vet clinic one summer and not knowing any better as a 17 year old. I thought small animal clinic isn't for me. So I didn't know that I could drive to Houston and be a zoo vet or something. I just, we didn't do that at the time. We didn't drive that far to go to work. So I kicked that option out. But it's probably okay because I am a bleeding heart for animals. And I'd probably get myself in all kinds of fixes trying to help all kinds of animals if I were a veterinarian. You'd have 20 dogs at this point. Well, right now I've got a bunch of cats. Oh my gosh. This is thunder and he's five weeks old. Oh, yeah, he's tiny. Yeah, he's here because I have his bottle and he might want it soon. Well, that's interesting that you weeded things out at least you gave it a try and then, you know, knew that that wasn't for you. Did your dad have any sway and like I really want you to go to Purdue. I want you to take after me or it was at your own decision. Now they were actually really open to what university I wanted to choose. And so back in the day, we had books of all the different universities and reading through them. Columbia really appealed to me till I realized where it was. And then I looked at Texas schools as well. They're close, maybe a little too close to my parents. One of the universities rice that I was interested in is 45 minutes door to door with my folks. And I thought that could cause trouble. And then I went with my dad to talk that he was doing and got to spend some time at Purdue in January and just still hanging out in the student union. It just it felt right. Of course, my parents were supportive as they love Purdue, but very much that was my own decision to make. Now when I decided I want to be an engineer and work for the space program, it didn't hurt that Purdue has that excellent engineering program that it does. I thought I was going to be a mission controller, you know, people sit mission control and help fly the vehicles turned out differently. But when I decided that that meant get an engineering degree, get up to the cooperative education program at the time and then get into NASA. The co-op program Amy just mentioned allows students to alternate semesters between studying at Purdue and working in industries of their choice, which gives students both an academic foundation and real world work experience. And NASA co-ops are unique. Students can work within different divisions so they can find the right fit. So I got an undergraduate degree and a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue. I did the cooperative education program throughout the entire time. So I did seven kind of plus tours as a student. And Amy points out that although the book work of engineering may deter some people from going into a STEM related career, it's important to expose young people to experiences where they can learn hands-on and in person, such as space and robotics camps, instead of just being behind a computer. I do think that folks who are introduced to it earlier, the robotics programs, I'm not a raw gal, but I see how those programs get people involved. The book work of engineering is sometimes what turns some people off of going into STEM, but the doing of engineering, the building things, the thinking about how to make something, that's fun. And I think a lot more opportunities like that are helpful. You know, I've been exposed to space camp and Challenger centers and those kinds of things. So the doing of it is fun. I think also that trying to get more education about just what you can do with the degrees matters, because I honestly thought maybe I'd be sitting in front of a computer aided drafting program or something. I didn't know what different kinds of things engineers could do. And honestly, the technical side of it, while I understand it and I need it, I enjoy the running of a team more and the strategy of where we need to go, what technologies we need to develop more than sometimes doing the actual number crunching and that kind of work. So I think folks being aware that those opportunities are there with STEM, because I think some people who have those kinds of biases would prefer business degrees, not knowing any better and knowing that engineering degrees can let you do those cool, making stuff things without necessarily being the number cruncher all day is important to communicate. Sure. Amy looked up to her dad and his extensive career as a NASA astronaut, but I was curious if anything else led her to choose this career path. Was there anyone when you were growing up in the astronauts or anyone in NASA besides your dad that you really looked up to or saw them on TV and was like, someday I want to be them or be at NASA with them. That's an interesting question. I asked Bernie Horgan a question similar and she had this exact moment when she was watching a mission and she just knew that's what she wanted to do. So I was curious if you had a similar experience like that. I think maybe dad's enthusiasm for one. So dad had a big piece in it. But we did things like launch smaller rockets. We went out and looked at the constellations so we could name them and know which ones were which. And our community here is just elbow to elbow people who work for NASA. And so in Sunday school class at school, I got to meet people whose parents did different aspects of the NASA jobs. And so you didn't get a whole lot of mileage out of being an astronaut's kid because the kid next door, their dad is a flight director and there's fewer flight directors than there are astronauts. So why do you think you're cool? And I'm not cool. My dad's cool. Yeah. I'm just a kid trying to figure out what I want to do. So just seeing that variety of people who do that work and being at parties, I don't know that I have any single event, but just the whole experience of knowing what the NASA community and space community were like, I think pulled me in as much as anything. So Amy graduated from Purdue and joined NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston full time. Her first big project, developing spacesuit gloves. Amy worked with her mentor, legendary spacesuit designer Joe Cosmo, who retired from NASA with 50 years of experience working on spacesuits. She tells us what went into creating these next level gloves. I worked with a gentleman in the advanced spacesuit team that was just Joe Cosmo, my mentor, and then me and the team at the time. He'd been working for a decade on developing new gloves. My job was really to take a pair of gloves that we'd gotten to a very high level of performance and then get certified to fly on the shuttle at the time. So that's what I did. I took those prototype gloves and flew them in space, which is a big deal too. There's a lot of work that goes into. And how long did that project take? I mean, I'm sure that wasn't just a quick turn thing, right? Yeah, no. It took over a year and a half to get the gloves certified to fly in space. And then I was the lead for the station, well, the shuttle gloves for about three years after that. The first astronaut Amy and Joe's gloves would be tested on? Well, it was none other than her dad, Jerry Ross. Amy says her dad used to joke with her at family dinners. Where are my gloves? When will they be ready? Once the gloves passed certification, Jerry was able to test them out in a 1999 shuttle mission where he performed three spacewalks. He even took a minute to share his praise and gratitude for the new gloves on TV during his spacewalk as Amy watched it all unfold. You know, now I've read articles that you're working on these space suits and obviously technology has advanced and changed since you first created those gloves. What kinds of things are different this time around when you're building that whole suit and what remains kind of similar to when you were building those gloves? It's easier to say what's not changed and that's the human and how complicated the human body is and how amazing the human body is. So trying to replicate in a shell what the human body can do on a person is difficult. You know, we've all seen a lot of Iron Man and as fun as Hollywood makes that look, it's much more challenging when you put a basically scuba tank around a human and try to let them do their job easily and well. The things that have changed, a lot of the tools that we've used have changed. So I would say a lot of the modeling that we can do, a lot of the 3D printing we can do. So fast prototyping is how we primarily use that. Those things make my job more efficient so I can get to the same answer quicker with the new tools that we have when they needed a new suit to be built with tools and technologies and designs that we would want to use and know would be appropriate for the mission they want to do. In some ways that's a 25 plus year answer. And what about the team members who are working on these new spacesuit designs? Normally my team for our advanced work is pretty small. So maybe two, three engineers at NASA and then maybe some contractors and then like three or four technicians. When you're trying to build a flight suit, you need a lot more people. There's a lot more detailed work to do, a lot more to 100% complete work to do. And so we had over 80 people last time I counted it up. As you can imagine, working within NASA requires a lot of problem solving. Amy discusses some of the challenges she's faced in her career. Boilermakers always keep going and they're always pursuing their best selves. What was a challenge that you faced within your career that you overcame? There's been several carbon dioxide levels in the suit testing. We never get that done. And so there's always different ways to do it, different approaches. The life sciences guys change their mind on what they think is the right way to do it. And so just always trying to think about better. And so it gets really frustrating because you do the last time they thought it was good. And then they come back with an analysis that says it's not good because they've got a new way to analyze it. And that's been a career long effort. I've gone through probably about six different ways of doing carbon dioxide testing. So persistence counts. You just got to keep at it. Be open to new ideas, understand why the change is there. We do get better because of those changes, but it does take some persistence to just keep at it. And realize, okay, we just did this big test and now we're going to do it all over again. Also, the constellation program with advanced suit work, it's an up and down kind of a situation. A program where it started like the constellation program and then a program will end like the constellation program. And so we had a big team going where we're getting a lot of progress made. And all of a sudden change of administration's program was ended and all that work just kind of gets shelved. And there's just a few people like me that's still there that remembers what we did. They can carry that information, that knowledge that we gained forward. But we were excited to build a suit and fly it and then we didn't get to. Will that suit ever be used in the future or it's just something that you have to accept and then move to a different way of thinking and creating it? Yeah. So that particular suit won't be used. Different requirements, different style of mission. Suit design is predicated on where you're going and what you're doing. And when they change where you're going and what you're doing, changes what the suit needs to be. And so the suit that we're working on now, the Exploration Extravigular Mobility Unit, or XCMU, has different requirements that mean it's a different looking suit. Recently, women and particularly women from Purdue have been trailblazers when it comes to space exploration. Purdue Professor Briney Horgan, for example, is one of the tactical science leads for NASA's Perseverance Mars rover. Be sure to check out Briney's This Is Purdue episode to learn more. And of course, there's Beth Moses and Sharisha Bandla, both part of Purdue's cradle of astronauts. In July 2021, at just 34 years old, Sharisha was one of four mission specialists on Virgin Galactic's Unity 22 suborbital flight. And Amy mentioned she is friends with Beth, who made history in 2019 with Virgin Galactic, becoming the first female commercial astronaut. Beth then made history again in 2021, joining Sharisha on the first ever fully crewed commercial space flight. I asked Amy about her thoughts on the increase of women's involvement in space exploration. What advice do you have for other female engineers who want to get into the space industry? Oh, and that you have that degree that you have those capabilities, you are an engineer like everybody else. So go and do what you're going to do. Honestly, fortunately, I've had very little issue being a female engineer. I think I've had more issue being an introvert. As for the future of space exploration, the team at NASA has lofty goals. Amy shares what she's looking forward to in the next few years and her thoughts on private industry becoming more and more involved in space flight. When it comes to the space industry and the future, where do you think, you know, space is going to be in the future? And is there anything you're looking forward to in particular? I will say that the place right now where the private industry is getting much more capable and involved in space flight is interesting from the NASA side. You know, if I were just a person person, I think that that's very exciting. Do I want to be able to find space? I do. Do I have $250,000 to fly in space? You bet I don't. So I got to feed this little guy. So that's where my money goes. So that's not saving up to get a virgin galactic flight. But someday in the future, being able to share that experience with people, more people, I think is a good thing for the United States, for the world. Because I don't know a single crew member who has flown, who hasn't come back and really been in awe of our planet, the care we need to take of it, and how much it's a little tiny blue and green gem in the black, black, black emptiness of space. And so we breathe air every day. We drink water every day. We don't think a thing about it, but you try to make it happen somewhere where it doesn't want to be. It's hard. And so those things are precious and those things are things we need to take care of. And so that I think the more people that get that experience and have that appreciation, the better off the planet will be. And do you have any future project you're working on that you are able to share or something that you're looking forward to within the next few years? And I look forward to continuing my advanced spacesuit work. So I expect to keep working on new technologies that will help suits as we go forward into Mars. Probably I'll be focused more on Mars than Moon at this point. As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, Purdue University is called the cradle of astronauts for good reason. I asked Amy about the Purdue community within NASA. Are there any engineers at NASA that went to Purdue with you or is there any type of Purdue community within NASA? There's a lot of us, yes. A while ago, we got a picture in Mission Control with all the Purdue engineers and some of the crew members. And gosh, I think it was the head of the station at the time, you know, some pretty big wigs in the Johnson Space Center and NASA community. There are a bunch of us still. And so that's nice too. I've met a lot of good engineers from a lot of different schools, even some of those ones that we don't like to mission mention Michigan. But Big 10 is still good. But the coworkers that I have, the colleagues that I have that are Purdue graduates, you just know how they're going to be. You know that they're used to working hard. You know that they are going to solve problems. You know that they're prepared. And you know that they're good people. That's pretty universal. It's not a good old boys club, but it definitely makes you get to feel like family. And speaking of family, Dr. Bering was the president of Purdue when I was there. And one of the things he always said and tried to engender was that Purdue is a family. And that's very much part of how I felt while I was there. My nieces have gone to different universities. And I can tell you that the communication, the personal care that I had at Purdue. I don't think that they've had at their universities. You know, when I was in the mechanical school of mechanical engineering, I knew the secretary. I knew the cooperative education coordinator. I knew they were taking care of me. I knew they were helping me. I knew that they're going to make sure I had the classes I need to graduate. I felt very supported, very much like family. And I think that's what you used to. You take it for granted because that's not true for everywhere. And some of Amy's favorite moments at Purdue include a great balance of academics and athletics. I would say there's a few just all those long hours in the sub basement of Potter library, which isn't there anymore. The engineering library used to be studying with my study group. Just really is one of those memories that comes to mind. But I think about Purdue as the roar of the crowd at Macchi Arena as we headed toward in the final second. So we needed a point to win, you know, that was fun. On this podcast, we hear from all different guests on how Purdue prepared them to serve in our country's military or win an Olympic gold medal or create a record breaking paint to combat climate change. For Amy, it's all about that boiler maker. I can and I will attitude. How do you think Purdue prepared you for a career at NASA? Yeah, well, it's the bottom line. I think, you know, we were just talking about this with my coworker today. It isn't all that bookwork that you do it. It's not all that homework that you do as important as it is, because that's exercising your mind and teaching you tools, which you need. But it's the fact that you can fight through that, right? It's not easy. But if you get that degree, you've put in that work so you can solve those problems. You can figure it out. So you have that I'm capable and I'm going to do this attitude and that's how you get things done. It's not that's hard or I'm not sure how to do that or I don't want to work that hard to do that. It's I can and I will do this. I think one of the things that I was surprised about when I went to Purdue is how little understanding of what Purdue is and gives you and gives the world people in Indiana didn't have. They didn't understand what an asset Purdue is. Coming from here and seeing the people at work and meeting other engineers that worked at Purdue and, you know, my dad and his fellow astronauts that graduated from Purdue. The reputation that Purdue has to get you confident and able to do the work that is best in the world is unparalleled. And that people at Purdue were like, well, is here I use I came here, you know, it's closer to home. But yeah, it's just I was like, but you're a Purdue. I was so excited to be there. It really is just such a huge opportunity to take advantage of this major benefit that the state of Indiana offers you. That's so interesting. I graduated from Purdue 11 years ago. And when I came back to work here, I mean, I loved Purdue. I that was my number one choice and everything. But I'm from Indiana. And then when I came back, I'm like, this school is like a top tier school. I mean, the things that we're doing, the stories that we're telling with the alumni. And I mean, I completely agree. We're more Midwesterners. We're humble. We're low key. It's been there. And it will be there. It's just kind of part of the landscape. And we don't think to celebrate those things like we, I think sometimes should because I'm telling you, I've been people from a lot of different universities, some that consider themselves better than Purdue. And I don't think that they're producing any better engineers than Purdue. And definitely sometimes better coworkers. Yeah, we all know how to work as a team and be a family. Yes. Indiana prizes being able to think and use your brain and do real stuff. When it gets down to it, we're doing real stuff and you better be able to think. If you're enjoying our This is Purdue podcast episodes, please be sure to leave us a review on Apple podcast and share our show with a friend. And if you'd like to read more on all of Purdue's ties to the space industry, head over to purdue.edu slash space. Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu slash podcast. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, boiler up.