How a NASA Engineer’s Mars Rover Talk Changed My Travel Perspective on Women in Science Mentors

💡 The moment I realized mentorship isn’t just for labs—it’s for train stations, cafés, and quiet museum benches

I sat cross-legged on the cool tile floor of the California Science Center’s Mars Rover Experience gallery, notebook open, pen hovering—when Dr. Lena Chen, lead mechanical systems engineer for NASA’s Perseverance rover, knelt beside me and asked, “What question keeps you up when you’re traveling alone?” Not “What’s your job?” or “Where are you from?”—but that. In that breathless, fluorescent-lit pause—surrounded by life-sized rover models, the faint ozone hum of climate control, and the distant murmur of school groups—I understood something fundamental: women in science mentors don’t wait for formal introductions or institutional gatekeeping. They show up where curiosity lands, even if it’s during a $12 bus ride from downtown LA to Exposition Park. That conversation, unplanned and unscripted, became the compass for how I now travel—not just to see places, but to seek out the human infrastructure behind discovery: the teachers, engineers, lab techs, and outreach coordinators who make science accessible, especially to young women navigating male-dominated fields. This is how a budget trip to Los Angeles rewired my definition of meaningful travel—and why seeking out women in science mentors while traveling is one of the most practical, low-cost, high-impact things a curious traveler can do.

🌍 The setup: Why I boarded a Greyhound bus with a backpack and no agenda

It was late March—gray skies clinging to the Pacific coast like damp gauze. I’d just wrapped up six months of solo travel across Southeast Asia, documenting street food economies and informal transport networks for a personal project on grassroots resilience. But something felt incomplete. I kept noticing patterns: female university students in Hanoi’s physics labs who spoke of ‘invisible ceilings’; a robotics club in Chiang Mai led entirely by women educators, yet absent from national STEM promotion materials; a young astronomer in Bandung who’d never met a woman working at Indonesia’s space agency. Their stories weren’t about lack of talent—they were about lack of visibility, access, and continuity in mentorship.

I needed context. Not theory—but lived experience. So I booked a $32 Greyhound ticket from San Francisco to Los Angeles, aiming for three things: affordability, proximity to real working scientists (not just exhibits), and minimal scheduling friction. No hotel bookings beyond the first night. No pre-booked tours. Just a Metro TAP card, a worn Moleskine, and the address of the California Science Center—because unlike many museums, its Mars Rover Experience is free and requires no timed entry 1. I chose LA not for glamour, but for density: JPL is 20 miles east in Pasadena; Caltech shares campus space with public-facing lecture series; community colleges like East Los Angeles College run active K–12 STEM pipeline programs—all within reach of $2–$3 Metro buses or bikes.

🚌 The turning point: When the bus broke down—and opened a door

The Metro 204 bus to Exposition Park didn’t just stall—it sighed. Halfway down Exposition Boulevard, the engine coughed, lights dimmed, and the driver announced, “Five-minute delay. We’ll get you there.” Rain streaked the windows. I watched steam rise from manholes, smelled wet asphalt and fried plantains from a passing food cart. Two women in lab coats got on at the next stop—name tags reading “JPL Outreach” and “Caltech Diversity Fellow.” They slid into seats across the aisle, unpacking laminated activity sheets titled “Build Your Own Rover Wheel (Grades 5–8).” One noticed my notebook open to a sketch of the Curiosity rover’s suspension system.

“You’re drawing the rocker-bogie?” she asked. Her name was Amina. She taught engineering literacy workshops for Title I schools. The other, Maya, coordinated internships for first-gen college students at JPL.

They didn’t offer business cards. They offered context: “Most people think mentorship happens in offices. It happens on buses. In library study rooms. At PTA meetings where we explain why coding clubs matter more than trophy counts.” They told me about “Rover Days”—monthly open-house events at JPL where engineers host drop-in demos, not press conferences. And they mentioned something critical: “If you go to JPL, don’t ask for ‘a scientist.’ Ask for ‘someone who’s mentored a student from a community college in the last year.’ That’s your real entry point.”

That five-minute delay became a 45-minute conversation. When the bus lurched forward, Maya handed me a folded flyer—no website, just a date, time, and the phrase: “Bring your questions. We’ll bring coffee and torque wrenches.”

🔍 The discovery: What happens when you show up without permission

JPL’s Visitor Center has no security line for public events—just a glass door, a smiling volunteer, and a sign: “Today’s Rover Day: 10am–2pm. Engineering Lab 3B.” Inside, it wasn’t a stage-and-lectern setup. It was folding tables covered in 3D-printed rover parts, soil simulant trays, and laptops running real-time telemetry from Perseverance’s current sol. No microphones. No podium.

Dr. Lena Chen was elbow-deep in calibrating a mock sample-coring drill when I approached. She wore safety glasses pushed up on her forehead, her hair in a loose bun, a faded NASA patch sewn onto her denim jacket. I introduced myself—not as a writer, but as someone who’d just spent months watching girls in Jakarta sketch rocket fins in margins of math notebooks. She paused, wiped her hands on a rag, and said, “Then tell me what you saw that surprised you most.”

What followed wasn’t an interview. It was co-construction. She showed me how her team uses low-cost Arduino kits to simulate autonomous navigation—tools any maker space could replicate. She described mentoring a student from Compton College who redesigned the rover’s thermal shield model using open-source CAD software. “She didn’t need my title,” Lena said, “she needed my time to debug her code—and my willingness to say, ‘I don’t know that answer either. Let’s find it together.’”

Sensory details anchored the moment: the sharp tang of solder flux, the warm vibration of a spinning motor housing, the soft clack of plastic gears meshing. A group of middle-schoolers gathered around us, asking how much the real drill cost (“More than your school’s entire science budget,” Lena laughed, “but the principle? You can build a version for $30.”). One girl, maybe eleven, held up a cardboard rover she’d made with rubber-band propulsion. Lena knelt, adjusted a wheel alignment, and said, “This works better than our first prototype did. Want to see why?” She pulled out a phone, opened a slow-motion video of wheel slip on simulated regolith—and there, in that unguarded, unscripted exchange, was the core truth: mentorship in women in science isn’t about prestige—it’s about proximity, patience, and permission to be imperfect.

🚂 The journey continues: From Pasadena to unexpected classrooms

I extended my stay by four days—not to see Hollywood, but to follow threads. With Amina and Maya’s guidance, I attended a Saturday workshop at East Los Angeles College’s STEM Hub, where high school interns taught younger students how to analyze atmospheric data from Mars rovers using free NASA tools 2. No lab coats there—just hoodies, shared laptops, and a whiteboard covered in equations and doodles of cartoon rovers.

One student, Marisol, had transferred from a rural high school in Bakersfield where her AP Physics class had been canceled due to staffing shortages. At ELAC, she’d joined the NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars (NCAS) program—a free, virtual pathway that includes live mission simulations and direct feedback from JPL engineers 3. She showed me her final project: a proposal for solar array orientation on Phobos, developed over 12 weeks with weekly Zoom check-ins from a female thermal systems engineer at JPL.

“She didn’t fix my grammar,” Marisol told me, “she fixed my assumptions. Said, ‘Your math is sound—now tell me what problem you’re really solving for the crew, not the spreadsheet.’ That changed everything.”

I also visited the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s public archive room—not the glossy visitor center, but a quiet, window-lit space where anyone can request physical copies of mission reports, design schematics, and even handwritten notes from Voyager engineers. There, I met Rosa, a retired instrumentation specialist who now volunteers two days a week scanning decades of analog logs. She pulled out a binder labeled “Viking Lander Team – Mentor Logs, 1973–1976.” Inside were stamped entries: “Met with Maria G. (UCLA) re: pressure sensor calibration. Advised on grad school applications.” “Lunch w/ Elaine T. (Cal State LA) – discussed imposter syndrome in clean room.” These weren’t footnotes in history. They were evidence of continuity—of women in science mentors building ladders, not just climbing them.

📝 Reflection: What this taught me about travel—and about myself

I used to measure travel value in kilometers covered, photos taken, or souvenirs collected. This trip measured differently: in minutes of undivided attention from someone who’d designed hardware that now sits on another planet; in the weight of a 3D-printed wheel hub pressed into my palm; in the quiet pride on Marisol’s face when she explained orbital mechanics to a group of fifth-graders using only a flashlight and a basketball.

What shifted wasn’t just my itinerary—it was my posture as a traveler. I stopped waiting for “access” and started practicing reciprocal engagement: bringing questions, yes—but also offering observation, documentation, and amplification. When Lena sketched a simplified gear ratio diagram on my notebook margin, I didn’t just photograph it. I asked if she’d let me adapt it for a free handout I’d share with educators in Manila. She said yes—and added her email so teachers could contact her directly. That small act reframed mentorship as a distributed network, not a hierarchical pipeline.

I also confronted my own assumptions. I’d arrived expecting “inspiration”—polished success stories. Instead, I found rigor, repetition, and resilience. I saw how often failure was documented, analyzed, and shared—not hidden. One engineer showed me a logbook page where her team misjudged Martian wind shear on Spirit’s solar arrays. The entry ended: “Lesson: Assume less. Test more. Credit the intern who caught it.” That humility, that attribution, that refusal to obscure process—that’s the texture of real mentorship.

🧭 Practical takeaways: How to seek women in science mentors on your own travels

You don’t need a NASA badge or a scholarship to connect with women in science mentors. You need curiosity, respect for time, and awareness of where knowledge lives outside formal institutions. Here’s what worked for me—and what I now advise others to try:

• 📚Look beyond universities and labs. Public libraries, community colleges, science festivals, and even municipal planetariums often host free talks by local engineers and researchers. In LA, the Los Angeles Public Library’s “STEM Saturdays” regularly features JPL staff—not as keynote speakers, but as facilitators for hands-on activities.
• 🗓️Time visits around open-access events—not VIP tours. “Rover Days,” “Lab Open Houses,” and “Women in STEM Nights” prioritize accessibility over exclusivity. They’re scheduled for weekends, avoid registration walls, and welcome spontaneous attendees. Check institutional social media—their most useful updates rarely appear on official websites.
• 🤝Ask specific, humble questions—not broad ones. Instead of “What’s it like being a woman in science?”, try “What’s one tool or resource you wish you’d known about when you started?” or “Who helped you navigate your first technical disagreement on a project?” Specificity signals genuine interest and invites concrete answers.
• ☕Bring value, not just requests. Offer to transcribe notes, translate materials for bilingual audiences, or help document a workshop for outreach use. I shared my field notes with Amina’s team—they adapted one section into a Spanish-language handout for parent-teacher nights.
• 📱Follow the infrastructure, not just the institution. JPL is famous—but its impact radiates through feeder schools, community labs, and public transit routes. The Metro 204 bus didn’t just carry me to a museum. It carried me into a living ecosystem of mentorship.

None of this required a budget increase. My total transportation cost for five days: $28. Food: $43 (mostly café lunches and bodega sandwiches). Museum entry: $0. What it required was intention—not money. And the return wasn’t transactional. It was relational. It was learning that mentorship, like public transit, only works when it’s designed for everyone to board.

🌅 Conclusion: Travel as a practice of attentive listening

I left Los Angeles with no signed memorabilia, no exclusive tour, no “behind-the-scenes” pass. I left with three things: a notebook filled with gear ratios and names of community colleges doing extraordinary work; a USB drive with open-source rover simulation code; and the quiet certainty that the most consequential moments of travel aren’t captured in postcards—but in the half-second pause before someone chooses to explain something deeply technical in language that assumes your intelligence, not your expertise.

This trip didn’t teach me how to get to Mars. It taught me how to recognize the human conditions that make interplanetary exploration possible: patience, collaboration, iterative learning, and the deliberate, daily choice to extend a hand—not to the most accomplished, but to the most curious. That’s the lesson I now carry into every new city: the best guides aren’t always on staff rosters. They’re on the bus beside you, holding a bag of teaching materials, ready to talk about torque wrenches and trust—if you ask the right question, at the right time, with the right humility.