Muar-born woman now makes space probes for Nasa

 

Florence Tan paid tribute to her frugal parents for being where she is now, saying they understood that education was the way to a better life for everyone.

PETALING JAYA: Malaysian-born Florence Tan wanted to be a teacher but watching reruns of Star Trek changed her destiny and has taken her to great heights in the US.

She is now the chair of the Small Spacecraft Coordination Group (SSCG) at Nasa headquarters.

Tan is also the deputy chief technologist for the agency’s science mission directorate.

In her role, she leads the SSCG to coordinate and develop Nasa’s strategy and vision for small spacecraft in science, exploration missions, and technology activities, among others.

Much of her work is now related to spacecraft headed for Mars.

Hailing from a fishing village in Muar, Johor, Tan left Malaysia when she was 18 after finishing her secondary education at the Kuantan Mara Junior Science College.

She went on to study at the Western Michigan University in the US, then transferred to the University of Maryland a year later, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering.

“I then got a master’s in electrical engineering and an MBA from Johns Hopkins,” she said in an in-house Nasa interview.

“I wanted to be a teacher. I did not have very many role models. My parents were teachers and they encouraged me to be more successful than they were, so I wanted to be a professor.

“Later, after I watched a few reruns of Star Trek, I decided I wanted to be an aerospace or electrical engineer.”

Tan, who is a US citizen now and lives with her husband and two college-going children, said her story of how she grew up was very typical of her Malaysian contemporaries.

She said her parents saved money every way they could, with her father having to use a worn pair of shoes. He kept walking in them even though they had holes.

“I watched him put in pieces of cardboard to cover the holes in the soles. Years later, when I earned my first paycheck, I bought him a pair of Christian Dior shoes from the US and sent them to Malaysia,” she recalled.

Paying tribute to her parents for being where she is, Tan said they understood that education was the way to a better life for everyone, adding that ever since she was little, her parents had said they had enough money only to educate two of their four children.

“Their plan was that the first two children, my sister and I, would go to school, graduate and then get jobs to help pay for my two younger brothers to also go to college.

“When I graduated, my friends got cars. I pooled my funds with those of my family so that my two brothers could go to college. All of us have done well, thanks to our parents.”

When asked how she could handle the pressure of being in charge of many important parts of major projects while in her 20s, Tan said she was petrified at first, fearing that someone would find out that she “did not know enough”.

“The way I handled it was that I kept testing everything. I kept simulating different conditions, asking myself how each particular part of the hardware and software could possibly fail.

“I kept working, learned to work in a team and became more confident over time.

“Every young engineer eventually learns that success and experience build confidence.”

Tan, who still speaks Malay well, said respecting colleagues, communicating well and being honest are qualities that had helped her a great deal in achieving success.

Among her achievements were working for the Mars Science Laboratory Sample Analysis, Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer, Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission, and the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer.

According to a post in the Universiti Malaysia Perlis’ Facebook page, Tan will be in Kuala Lumpur in July for a conference and later will be giving a talk at the university. - FMT