- What I love the most about my job is that I'm constantly learning and I'm constantly being challenged.

I'm engaged in cutting edge technology.

My name is Rachel Rivera and I am a technical manager for NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center.

I am actually a team lead of a large group of engineers all kinds of different engineers, and we conduct studies of conceptual designs for instruments that go on satellites.

And these instruments are like cameras or x-rays, sensors.

Think of going to the dentist and getting a picture of your teeth.

So those kinds of instrumentation.

We designed those and eventually they get built and put on NASA's satellites.

I was born in Queens, New York and shortly after being born, my mother moved back to the Dominican Republic, which is my heritage.

My mother and my father are of Dominican heritage and so I was there till I was about five.

So my first language was Spanish.

I'm bilingual, so I have a lot of that strong cultural roots in the Dominican culture.

When I was a little girl, I excelled in school, I did really well in math.

I loved to read and learn and someone came and gave a talk at my middle school about NASA and that was really inspirational.

I thought it would be an astronaut.

So that was always my dream until I got to college and I got to learn about chemistry and I loved chemistry.

And so my bachelor's degree in college was a chemical engineering degree.

And shortly after undergrad, I went to a recruitment event that NASA had and I got hired for NASA straight out of college.

Here in the home, it's my wonderful husband, Jose, and my two lovely children, Michelle and Daniel.

We also have two cats, Zachy and Trixie.

And here in Florida, the weather's great.

There's beaches nearby, and so it's a great place to be.

A typical workday for me is a telework environment.

I am home on the computer.

So some of the materials that were discussed were beryllium versus silicon carbide.

Anyone in the team have any inputs of the pros and cons for either of those?

What about Brian?

Brian, you have a history with lidar instruments.

- Yeah, so for the heritage of each.

- We're serving our nation and that's very rewarding.

And a lot of the things that we do is for the betterment of mankind, right?

And so that's doubly rewarding for the future of my children and our planet.

Doesn't get any better than that in my opinion.

(upbeat music)