Therese Kucera

Hi, my name’s Teresa Kucera, but I’m called Terry. I work for NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland. I’m an astrophysicist and the deputy project scientist for the STEREO & SOHO spacecraft. This means that I help the main project scientist to coordinate the science for each project and work with engineers to ensure that the spacecraft is capable of the science required. The newest project, STEREO, involves 2 spacecraft and aims to produce 3D images of the sun and its coronal mass ejections. I’m really looking forward to this spacecraft becoming operational because I’ve been involved with it before launch.

I became interested in space when I was 8. I liked learning about the planets a lot and I remember Voyager passing Jupiter when I was in high school. I was in an amateur astronomy group at high school too. I liked the science & maths at school but my favourite subject was english. At college I did a physics degree because I felt I was better at that then literature. I originally got a job in solar physics because I thought this was more relevant to people on Earth than studying galaxies such as Andromeda. In my spare time I like to dance, do gardening, pay the mandolin and go cycling. I am married, my husband is an engineer with NASA too.

See my homepage: http://sohops.gsfc.nasa.gov/~kucera/KUCERA.html