This comic, illustrated by Anuj Shrestha, is inspired by an interview with NASA engineer Nagin Cox from TED Radio Hour's episode It Takes Time.

About Nagin Cox

Nagin Cox is a spacecraft operations engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For her current mission, Cox serves as the deputy team chief of the engineering operations team for the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. She has also held leadership and system engineering roles on robotic missions including the Galileo Mission to Jupiter, the Mars Spirit and Opportunity rovers, the Kepler Exoplanet Hunter, the InSight Mission to Mars, and the Mars Curiosity rover.

Prior to joining NASA in 1993, she served six years in the U.S. Air Force, including duty as a space operations officer at NORAD/U.S. Space Command.

Cox received her master's in space operations systems engineering from Air Force Institute of Technology and two bachelor's in engineering and psychology from Cornell University.

This segment of TED Radio Hour was produced by Matthew Cloutier and edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour. You can follow us on Twitter @TEDRadioHour and email us at [email protected].