What was it like working with The Planetary Society at that time? How did you hear the news?
MP: There was this lovely individual named Emily Lakdawalla who was in email cahoots with my parents. Initially, she had told them that I had been part of the top five or six — some small number. One of the semi-finalists. But of course, my parents didn’t tell me then because they didn’t want to get my hopes up, which I thank them for. But I was eventually told by Emily that I had in fact won the competition and I was just dumbfounded.
What a great surprise! How did you manage to keep the secret that long?
LP: Well, since it was just by email and he didn’t know, I never let him find out until he was approved as the winner. I really didn’t want to get him disappointed at that age. [Larry looks at Mike] Sorry.
Looking back, does it feel like winning that contest had ripple effects on other parts of your life? For example, did it inspire you to become more interested in space or science?
MP: Well, it did kind of thrust me into the whole space thing. Initially, I was a little bit reluctant to actually get into space beyond that because it was more of my dad’s thing at the time. But upon realizing how cool space was and after my dad had taken me to a few space events, I decided that it would be really cool to stick with it. So I decided to get more involved with it, doing all sorts of things such as going to the OSIRIS-REx launch back in 2016, and then becoming an OSIRIS-REx ambassador and giving lectures on it.
I think that a lot of people working in space had these moments too, where maybe we didn’t come from a formal space science education, but there are just these lightning bolt moments in our lives that bring us into the industry. So right now you’re at school at North Carolina State, is that right? And you’re studying engineering. Do you eventually want to go into the space sector?
MP: Eventually I’d like to be an astronaut. I’m still clinging to that little eight-year-old dream.
What kinds of missions would you like to go on?
Just be on the crew to any mission really, as I think it was John Glenn who said, “Any spaceflight is a good spaceflight.”
Very well said, and I couldn’t agree more. It seems like you’ve given some talks, as you mentioned about OSIRIS-REx over the years. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
MP: That was a little interesting experience because I had to create a slideshow, and actually do more research on it, which turned out to be totally worthwhile. And I don’t know, it has opened a lot of doors for me to meet and talk to some really cool people. So I’m pretty glad about it and honestly, it got me to be able to talk to a big crowd.