As blue sky slipped away, Audrey Powers found herself surrounded by the blackness of space. Looking out a portal in her spacecraft, the 1994 graduate of Mount de Sales in Catonsville could see the cobalt Earth shining some 350,000 feet away.
“It is an overwhelming feeling of being minuscule next to this huge planet,” Powers remembered, “and the eternity of the blackness of space has been a really, really difficult thing for me to try to describe.”
Powers, vice president of mission and flight operations for Blue Origin, journeyed into space Oct. 13 aboard New Shepard as part of a team that included William Shatner, the original “Star Trek’s” Captain James T. Kirk. In her current role, she is responsible for all New Shepard flight operations, vehicle maintenance, and launch, landing and ground support infrastructure.
Speaking with the Catholic Review via an email interview, the Seattle resident said it was difficult to utter a word during her space flight.
“It was hard to take my gaze away from the window,” she marveled. “The view was just so unlike anything I had ever experienced.”
Powers said she “absolutely didn’t want it to end.”
“I absolutely want everyone I know to be able to see what I did and experience what I did,” she said. “It will change people’s perspective, I am certain of it.”
Powers credits her Catholic education at St. Louis School in Clarksville and Mount de Sales for helping her along her career path.
The valedictorian of her graduating class at Mount de Sales still talks about being named the “Mount de Sales Girl,” an annual honor given in senior year. In fact, she mentioned it when she interviewed at Blue Origin nine years ago, calling it “one of the most meaningful things I’ve received.”
Powers visited Mount de Sales Feb. 15 to talk with students in an AP biology class before speaking to the entire school. An alumnae event was also scheduled. She remembered Mount de Sales as a small school when she was a student. Her class had 37 members.
Even so, her science classes and labs, and the teachers who taught them made a great difference to her.
“I remember those classes. I remember those labs,” she told the students, noting that dissecting worms or blowing up something in a beaker were life-changing experiences.
“It was definitely what made me curious about all these things,” she said.
Powers moved from an all-girl high school to a male-dominated engineering program at Purdue University, then landed a job at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, another place defined by men.
While she worked to fit in, she has worked to increase diversity in the space industry.
“It has progressed by leaps and bounds in the past 20 years, I will say that,” she said.
At Blue Origin, for example, 56 percent of internships go to women. “We think about that very hard at Blue,” she said.
All her life, Powers wanted to work on spaceflight programs. Her Mount de Sales education helped her reach her goal, she said.
“I think my career is real proof that you can take many, many different types of paths to reach a goal,” she told the Catholic Review.
Patricia Bettridge, one of Powers’ mentors at Mount de Sales, said “dedicated” is the word that comes to mind in describing her former student. She called Powers a “standout in that she was focused and did well in whatever she did.”
“She told me that one day she would be an astronaut,” Bettridge said, remembering thinking it was a nice dream. “She managed to work toward her goal.”
Powers, who plans to speak at St. Louis School Feb. 16, also worked for Lockheed Martin in San Francisco and earned her law degree at Santa Clara University School of Law. Jesuit education is a family tradition, she said.
She joined Blue Origin as a lawyer before taking on her current position – and that led her to launching into space during an unforgettable 10 minute-16 second flight.
“The entire flight is such an overwhelmingly sensory experience,” she told the Catholic Review. “When the rocket is sitting on the launch pad, and the engine ignites, it takes a few seconds for the rocket to lift off the launch pad. The entire cabin glows orange from the reflection of the flame coming out of the engine beneath you.”
She said the rocket rotates as it ascends, giving the crew a 350-degree view of earth.
“The colors as you reach space are overwhelming – such bright white of the clouds beneath you and the bright blue line of the atmosphere is such a contrast to the blackness of space. I will never forget those colors.”
Powers was one of 14 private citizens Blue Origin sent into space in 2021. Another 10 flew with other companies, making it the highest number ever.
On Dec. 11 alone, she said, 19 humans were in space – including a Blue Origin flight and at the International Space Station. It was the most ever, according to Powers.
“Even more than being lucky enough to fly to space on New Shepard, my work on the New Shepard program for the last eight years helped it change the nature of this industry in so many positive ways,” Powers said.
Already in development are the New Glenn rocket, a lunar lander project partnering with NASA, and a space station.
“Blue Origin’s long-term vision is to have millions of men and women working in space to benefit Earth,” Powers said. “I think it’s a really exciting time to be at Blue Origin and in the industry. And there’s no shortage of things for me to do.”
Reaching space, she said, offered a new glimpse of God’s creation.
“I have never really had trouble reconciling God with science and invention,” she said. “I have always believed that God enables all of these amazing and awe-inspiring things to happen in the universe.”
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