Molly White.

Molly White is an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
She is part of the team that is working to design an effective heat shield for the Orion spacecraft. The heat shield ,which is the exterior layer of Orion, isn’t used until the last part of the mission – the return to Earth. But this just happens to be one of the most dangerous parts of the mission because of the outrageous temperatures the spacecraft encounters while plummeting through the atmosphere at breakneck speeds. How hot can it get, you ask? It can get really, really hot like two-times the temperatures of molten lava! The heat shield’s job is to make sure that astronauts inside Orion stay cool and comfortable during this phase of the mission, despite the conditions outside the spacecraft. This is important work that is helping to advance NASA’s Journey to Mars.