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I would say, as a child, I was always interested 
in all things kind of science-related. I liked  

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rocks, I liked dinosaurs, I liked planets. But my 
pivotal moments, I think I had two of them, and  

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the first was the space shuttle program and, Sally 
Ride, and the fact that, you know, she was the first  

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American woman in space, and I really wanted to 
do that. But the second was the Voyager flybys.  

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And while I don't really have memories of 
the Jupiter flyby, I distinctly remember  

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the Uranus flyby in 1986.

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And getting these images of 
these alien worlds, these funny moons,

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that, you know, all different colors, all sorts of things 
going on there that we didn't understand.

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And really that cemented, for me, I wanted 
to study space science.

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There was no other question that's what I was going to do.

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So as a planetary scientist, I study the planets in our solar system, primarily the outer planets, and I'm 

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interested in their atmospheres, and how they work, and what they can teach us as

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a laboratory for 
atmospheres all over the place, including the Earth.

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My background is a little interesting. I 
actually originally wanted to study Mars geology.  

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But when I started my graduate school career, 
I had an opportunity to work on Jupiter data,  

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particularly with Hubble, calibrating 
some of the early images before Hubble  

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had its corrective optics, right before the 
Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impacts into Jupiter.  

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And then we had this great encounter, where we had 
all these cometary pieces hitting it. But it was  

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a new camera on Hubble, after the corrective optics, 
so you know, "Wow, all these great new images!" And I  

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kind of got sold into, "This is really what I want 
to do, study the atmospheres of planets."

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"Hubble Space Telescope's been looking at Jupiter for the 
past 25 years, and this particular image taken just  

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a few days ago, we can see the dynamic cloud bands, 
all the swirling clouds and colors on Jupiter, of  

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course, and the Great Red Spot, but we also see wave 
features, and smaller storms in the atmosphere so  

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we're learning a lot about Jupiter's weather, 
basically, by doing these Hubble observations."

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"In addition to her work with the Hubble Space Telescope, Dr. Simon has also worked on..."

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"The Cassini Mission to Saturn // Composite Infrared Spectrometer"

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"Landsat 9 Earth Observation Satellite // Thermal Infrared Sensor"

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"OSIRIS-REx Mission to Asteroid Bennu // Near-Infrared Spectrometer"

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"Lucy Mission to the Trojan Asteroids // L'Ralph Visible Camera and Near-Infrared Spectrometer"

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I would say, I'm not really good at looking towards 
the future of envisioning exactly where I'll be in  

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10 years. but. you know. I want to see more missions 
to the outer solar system, I think we have a lot  

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left to do out there. And I am looking forward 
to the day when we are ready to launch a mission  

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to Neptune, or even another mission to Saturn, and 
I certainly hope to be part of those missions.

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