Sarah Gillis is an American engineer employed by SpaceX as the senior space operations engineer. She is scheduled to fly on Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, operated by SpaceX on behalf of Jared Isaacman. During the mission, she is expected to attempt the first commercial spacewalk with Isaacman.
Sarah Gillis | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Sarah Levine January 1, 1994[1][2] Palo Alto, California, U.S. |
| Education | University of Colorado Boulder (BS) |
| Occupation | Senior Space Operations Engineer at SpaceX |
| Space career | |
| SpaceX Commercial Astronaut | |
Time in space | 5 days (planned) |
| Missions | Polaris Dawn |
Mission insignia |  |
Early life and education
editGillis graduated from Shining Mountain Waldorf School in Boulder, Colorado, in June 2012. She obtained a degree in aerospace engineering from University of Colorado Boulder on the advice of her mentor, former NASA astronaut Joseph R. Tanner.[3]
Career
editIn 2015, while at the University of Colorado Boulder, Gillis began an internship at SpaceX, working on human-in-the-loop testing of the Dragon spacecraft before moving full-time to the astronaut training program.[citation needed]
She is a lead space operations engineer at SpaceX, responsible for overseeing the astronaut training program for the company's Crew Dragon vehicles. She prepared NASA astronauts for the first Demo-2 and Crew-1 missions and more recently directly trained Inspiration4 astronauts, the first all-civilian crew to go into orbit. Gillis is an experienced Mission Control Operator, who has supported real-time operations for Dragon's cargo resupply missions to and from the International Space Station as a Navigation Officer and as Crew Operations and Resources Engineer (CORE) for crew Dragon missions, the SpaceX equivalent of the NASA CAPCOM role.[4]
Gillis is scheduled to fly on Polaris Dawn, a private spaceflight funded by Jared Isaacman.[5][6] She will perform an extravehicular activity with Jared Isaacman.
Media coverage
editGillis appears in episodes 3, 4 and 5 in the 2021 Netflix series Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space.
References
edit- ^ Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space, episode 3. Netflix. September 13, 2021. Quotation begins at 03:25. Retrieved May 10, 2022.
My name is Sarah Gillis, and I'm 27...
- ^ "Private Astronauts Biography: Sarah Gillis". spacefacts.de. Retrieved August 12, 2024.
- ^ "Shooting for the Stars: SMWS Alum and SpaceX Engineer Sarah Gillis". Shining Mountain Waldorf School. September 28, 2021. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
- ^ Jiménez, Jesus (September 15, 2021). "Sarah Gillis will be a key voice in the astronauts' ears as they head to orbit". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
- ^ ""SpaceX Tourists Will Make Attempt at Spacewalk During Flight"", The New York Times, ISSN 0362-4331, retrieved February 16, 2022
- ^ "Jared Isaacman, who led the first all-private astronaut mission to orbit, has commissioned 3 more flights from SpaceX". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved February 16, 2022.