Adriana Macieira Mitchell, an undergraduate senior majoring in Optical Sciences and Engineering at the University of Arizona (UA), with minors in Planetary Sciences and Mathematics, has been interested in space and flight technologies since a young girl.
During high school, Adriana participated in the NASA Virginia Space Grant Consortium’s Virginia Aerospace Science and Technology Scholars academy and program, where she planned a trip to Mars with 30 other students under the supervision of NASA astronauts and engineers. She worked one summer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, programming for the Propulsion Department, and in her senior year she obtained her FAA private pilot certification through Arlington Public School’s Career Center Aviation Program.
While at UA, Adriana played a key role in the official observations of the 2017 solar eclipse. She helped organize the Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse Experiment which recorded the 2017 total solar eclipse’s path of totality across the U.S. Two years of collaborative work with students, astronomy departments, and research labs culminated in observations at Carbondale, Illinois and presentations at the American Astronomical Society, the American Physical Society Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics, the UA Graduate and Professional Student Council Student Showcase, the Crossroads Eclipse 2017 Research Workshop in Carbondale Il, and the High Altitude Observatory’s Eclipse Science Showcase, where her presentation was live-streamed online.
Adriana is currently working collaboratively at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, and with the Planetary Science Institute, to constrain meterorite compositions and create 3D asteroidal topographic models for the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa2 mission.
She is President of the University of Arizona’s Student Optics Chapter and is the recipient of both the Goldwater Foundation and Astronaut Foundation Scholarships. After graduation in May 2019, she plans to pursue a PhD in Aerospace Engineering and aspires to manage NASA research missions to worlds with astrobiological implications.