If you’ve ever used a telescope to look at the moon, you’ve seen something up close that was actually 238,900 miles away. But what if you were an astronomer at NASA, trying to study galaxies over one million miles away from our planet? You’d definitely want a much larger telescope – and that’s where optical engineers like Dr. Margaret Dominguez come in. Margaret grew up on a farm in rural Mexico, where her father encouraged her natural curiosity and interest in mathematics from an early age. She went on to study physics in college, and even started an extra-curricular physicists club, where she eventually met the NASA astronomer who would offer Margaret her first position at NASA. Today, Margaret is still asking questions about the universe that only physics can answer, and really is building a telescope that will look at galaxies over a million miles away.
