Alyssa Carson, an ambitious 13-year-old girl from Louisiana, could be just what NASA is looking for. She is the first person to have attended all three of the space agency’s world space camps, she has been training to be an astronaut for nine years already, and she is determined to be the first person to land on Mars.
In this BBC short film on Carson, she explains that she wants to go to Mars because “it’s a place no one has been”.
“I have thought about possibly being other things but being an astronaut was always first on my list.
Carson speaks Spanish, French and Chinese, and tweets about her trips to NASA events and space camps, and the talks that she gives to inspire other children to achieve their goals.