Learn more about Alexia Harper, Mechanical Engineer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Facility's Mechanical Engineering Branch, the go-to place for the comprehensive development of instrument and spacecraft structures and deployment mechanisms. She works among hundreds of designers, engineers, and technicians to build the largest spacecraft ever assembled at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory.

At the core of scientific visualization is the representation of data graphically - through images, animations, and videos - to improve understanding and develop insight. Data visualizers develop data-driven images, maps, and visualizations from information collected by Earth-observing satellites, airborne missions, and ground measurements. Visualizations allow us to explore data, phenomena and behavior; they are particularly effective for showing large scales of time and space, and "invisible" processes (e.g. flows of energy and matter) as integral parts of the models.

The Guidance, Navigation, and Control Lead basically is in charge of all of the components to make sure the spacecraft is pointed where the scientists want it to be pointed.