Teen Vogue reported an exclusive one-on-one interview with the future space traveler and learned some remarkable things about her love of stars and planets. Innocently enough, her passion for space travel began with a fondness for the children’s television show The Backyardigans, in which five friends undergo imaginary adventures in their backyard, one of which is a trip to Mars.
“I thought, ‘This red planet is so cool'” she said. “I started watching videos of rovers landing on Mars. I had a gigantic map of Mars in my room I would look at. We started getting telescopes so we could look at space.”
At only 7-years-old, Carson attended her first space camp in Huntsville, Alabama, of which she only speaks fondly of, stating, “that was the weekend of my life. I got to learn everything I had been wanting to know and more… I got to see a life-size rocket.”
When she was 9, the young science lover met NASA astronaut Sandra Magnus. In this meeting, she told Carson that she was, in fact, her age when she decided to go to space.
It was in that moment that the future explorer knew then that her love of space was no passing hobby. “I did the same thing as other kids, like switching my mind about careers, wanting to be a teacher or the president one day,” she stated. “But the way I always thought about it was I would become an astronaut, go to Mars, come back, and then be a teacher or the president.”
The future space explorer loved her time at the camp so much that she returned 18 more times, subsequently becoming the first person to attend all three NASA camps in Alabama, Canada, and Turkey.
Although you must be 18-years-old to enroll in NASA’s official astronaut program, the organization has reportedly already noticed her ever-growing knowledge and abilities and are trying to make it as easy as possible for her to achieve her goal by the time of the mission.
In 2033, she will be the mission’s perfect candidate, at 32-years-old and with technology fully equipped to handle the voyage, Carson would be far better trained and have a much longer time involved in the first Mars landing than virtually anybody else.
Despite being a decade or so removed from this massive expedition, many other entities have stepped forward looking to send the future astronaut into space sooner.
Other well-known organizations from SpaceX to MarsOne are considering sending her into space, albeit not to Mars, much earlier. “If we can find a mission for her in the next two years, she will be the first kid in the world to go to space,” said her father Bert Carson, “If we can get it together before she’s 20, she’ll be the first teenager.”
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