Monroe resident shoots for the stars

Monroe resident Karolina Rivera-Osorio knows many things. She knows how to assist NASA engineers as they seek to colonize space. She knows psychology, sewing, and is learning to fly a plane. Her one weak spot, and it’s a glaring one, is that she seemingly does not know the meaning of the world “settle.”

Rivera-Osorio, 26, has spent the better part of the past three years interning at NASA where she has, among other things, assisted in developing healthier space meals and researched ways in which robots can help astronauts combat feelings of stress and isolation in space.

For Rivera-Osorio, who moved to Monroe when she was 13 and holds an advanced diver and student pilot license, there is nothing she’d rather be doing.

“When I was little, my school had pictures of astronauts and I remember wondering who they were,” recalled the Yonkers native. “Then there was the time my mom woke me up around 2 a.m. and told me to look up at the sky and we watched a meteor shower. I remember being in awe of what I was seeing. It is one of my happiest memories. Since then, I wanted to be an astronaut, but I was a kid and who does that? I decided to put that dream away.”

Armed with a 2017 honors associates degree in mathematics and science from SUNY Rockland and a 2019 psychology degree from The City University of New York, the 2014 Monroe-Woodbury High School graduate took a job in Human Resources in 2021. She quickly realized she was in the wrong field.

“When I started that job, I was not happy,” she said. “I thought back to when I was happy and remembered that space always made me happy. Since I had a background in psychology, I did some research and found a paper online about astronauts and psychology and how we would send them to Mars and what we would do to make them feel at home. I decided to reach out to this researcher, who was an engineer, and he got back to me a few days later.”

As it happened, that researcher turned out to be French astronaut Jean-Jacques Favier. Before long, he was Rivera-Osorio’s mentor. Weeks later, she began her role as a NASA intern for the Mars Sample Return Mission.

Sadly, Favier passed away in March of this year at the age of 73.

“Just like in chemistry, some people are catalysts and others can be inhibitors,” Rivera-Osorio said. “JJ was one of the greatest catalysts of my life. He called me his ‘bestie’ and made me promise him that I would never give up my dream of becoming an astronaut.”

Due to COVID, she spent the beginning of her time interning for NASA working remotely from home. Eventually, however, she was able to work as a human factors engineer and Astrobee researcher at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Since then, she has taken on the role of “space psychologist,” in which she researches ways to make the transition from earth living to space living as seamless as possible for astronauts.

“The psychological aspect of spending time in space is now coming to the forefront and it is vital,” she said. “For example, Dr. Volker Hessel came up with a ‘space salad’ for astronauts that covers both their nutritional and psychological needs. The familiarity of the food — color, taste, texture, freshness of the ingredients, and eating together — are taken into consideration. Food and interaction with others play a role in our happiness.”

Though she is currently taking a momentary break from NASA while she searches for a PhD mentor, the powers that be in America’s space program are keeping her involved.

“My supervisor at NASA asked me to work on a research paper of mine with the new interns at Marshall Space Flight Center,” she said. “For now, it is ‘The Space Psychology of an Astrobee.’ In this paper we talk about what defines a robot, how we intend to make the International Space Station robot improve path finding systems, navigation, flight dynamics, and sensing with a user-friendly interface. We are also emphasizing how the Astrobee can help an astronaut combat stress and isolation by providing new features like entertainment, interaction with family from Earth, and emotion detection.”

For those of you who may not be familiar with Astrobees... an Astrobee is a free flying robot designed to work on the International Space Station (ISS). It can navigate around the ISS autonomously and will perform useful tasks for the astronauts.

With her dream of becoming an astronaut “more alive than ever,” Rivera-Osorio thinks humans will one day colonize space.

The second of four daughters to Claudia Osorio and Miguel Rivera, to say Karolina Rivera-Osorio is making her family proud would be an understatement.

“Karolina is like a shooting star that brightens the sky with her beauty and ever presence,” Claudia said of her daughter. “The never-failing comet that constantly travels in a trajectory that leaves a legacy for generations to follow. My true north at home, a lady, an artist, a dreamer, and achiever. A blessing just like her sisters, my pride and joy. A doer in all her projects and ambitions, a pleasure to work with.”

Mother knows best.