From Space Science to Science Fiction

From her earliest years, Adeena Mignogna (B.S. ’97, physics; B.S. ’97, astronomy) always saw space in her future. It started with “Star Wars.”

“I have memories of watching the first ‘Star Wars’ movie with R2-D2 and C-3PO when I was about 6 years old and I really connected with the robots, wanting to know how we make this a reality,” she recalled. “For a while, I thought I was going to grow up and have my own company that would make humanoid robots, but the twist was, we were going to live and work on the moon. I could even picture my corner office and the view of the moon out the window.”Adeena Mignogna Adeena Mignogna

For Mignogna, that boundless imagination and her childhood fascination with space and science launched two successful and very different careers—one in aerospace as a mission architect at Northrop Grumman, developing software and systems for satellites, and the other as a science fiction writer, spinning stories of robots, androids and galactic adventures in her many popular books. For Mignogna, space science and science fiction turned out to be a perfect combination. 

“I think of it as kind of like a circular thing—science fiction feeds our imagination, which possibly inspires us to do things in science. And science feeds the science fiction,” Mignogna explained. “Working in the space industry is something that I always wanted to do, and I always wanted to write as well, so I’m glad that I'm really doing it.”

Drawn to science

The daughter of an engineer, Mignogna was always drawn to science and technology.

“I am my father's daughter,” she said. “My dad brought home computers, and I learned to program in BASIC, so it was kind of always obvious that I was always going to do something STEM-ish.” 

Inspired by the real-life missions of NASA’s space shuttle and the Magellan deep space probe and popular space dramas like “Star Wars” and “Star Trek,” Mignogna’s interest in aerospace blossomed into a full-on career plan. As she prepared to start college at the University of Maryland in the early ’90s, she began steering toward two majors.

“At first, I thought maybe I'm going to major in astronomy because I loved space and space exploration,” Mignogna recalled. “But my high school physics teacher had degrees in physics, and he had done a lot of different things. He had worked at Grumman during the Apollo era, he had done astronomy work, and so I was like, ‘Okay, if I major in physics, I could do space stuff, I could do anything.’ So in the end, I majored in both.”

Surprisingly—at least to her—at UMD, Mignogna discovered she loved physics.

“What do I love about physics? It's very fundamental to how everything works,” she explained. “I used to tease my friends in college who majored in other sciences that at the end of the day, they were all just studying other branches of physics—like math is just the tool we use to describe physics and chemistry is an offshoot of atomic physics and thermodynamics. And even though I was making fun, I do probably think there's some truth to that, and that might be why I like physics so much.”

Hands-on with satellites

By her sophomore year, Mignogna got her first hands-on experience with aerospace technology.  

“I wound up getting a job in the Space Physics Group, and they built instrumentation for satellites,” Mignogna explained. “I happened to learn about this at the right time when they were looking for students for a new mission, and I worked on that mission from day one till we turned the instrument over to [NASA’s] Goddard Space Flight Center, which was very cool.”

Working in that very hands-on lab assembling and sometimes reassembling science instruments that would eventually fly in space, Mignogna realized she was on the right path. 

“I was touching spaceflight hardware. I was touching stuff that was going into space,” she recalled. “It was really exciting.”

For Mignogna, working side by side with space scientists at UMD and getting hands-on training in skills like CAD drafting gave her the tools she needed to land her first job at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Mignogna eventually landed at Orbital Sciences Corporation, which later became part of Northrop Grumman. For the next 16 years—earning her master’s degree in computer science from the Georgia Institute of Technology along the way—she expanded her space software and systems expertise and became a leader in Northrop’s satellite engineering program.

“On the software side, I worked on our command and control software. We have a software suite that controls the satellites, and what I loved was that it gave me exposure and insight into so many different kinds of satellites,” Mignogna said. “With systems engineering, I’m able to go through what we call the full life cycle of the mission. When NASA says, ‘Hey, we need a satellite that's going to do X, Y, Z,’ as a systems engineer, we’re the ones who break that down, and I’m kind of the end-to-end broader picture person in that process. The group that I'm closely associated with today is responsible for Cygnus, which is one of the resupply capsules to the International Space Station.”

From science to science fiction

Over the years, as Mignogna’s career reached new heights so did her work as a science fiction writer, a creative effort that started when she was in high school.

“My dad was a fan of Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, so I knew they were engineers and scientists who also wrote science fiction, and that was something I always wanted to do,” Mignogna said. “At first, I didn't think I could write novels, I thought I could only do short stories. But around 2009, I figured out I could, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

With titles like “Crazy Foolish Robots” and “Robots, Robots Everywhere,” Mignogna’s Robot Galaxy Series combines science fiction with humor, philosophy and, of course, robots. Her latest book “Lunar Logic” is set on the moon, 100 years from now.

“There are humanoid robots, built and manufactured on the moon, and they live on the moon. And they don't know anything about humans or why they're there,” Mignogna explained. “And then little things happen and they start to question what's going on and why they're there and eventually they kind of figure it all out.”

In Mignogna’s sci-fi worlds, the only limit is her own imagination, which is exactly what makes her work as a writer so enjoyable. 

“In my science fiction work, it’s my way or the highway,” she said. “I can write whatever I want, and I can make it however I want, and there's some satisfaction in that.”

For Mignogna, writing science fiction also provides an opportunity to advance another mission—to get more people interested and excited about science. In regular appearances at sci-fi conferences and other gatherings, Mignogna shares her passion for STEM, hoping to inspire the next generation of scientists—and everyone else.

“All this technology we have today comes from generations upon generations of fundamental science, technology, engineering, mathematics,” she explained, “so if we're going to do more things, we need people to go into these fields. “

As someone who’s always seen the importance of science in her own life, it’s a message she’s committed to sharing.

“You don't have to understand everything about science, but you can appreciate it,” Mignogna noted. “My hope is maybe if I can just connect with a few people indirectly or directly, I can make a difference.” 

 

Written by Leslie Miller

Faculty, Staff, Student and Alumni Awards & Notes

We proudly recognize members of our community who recently garnered major honors, began new positions and more.

Faculty and Staff 
Students
Alumni
  • Adam Ehrenberg (Ph.D, '24) joined the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) as a Research Staff Member.
  • Chad Mitchell (Ph.D., '07) is a physicist at the Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
  • Luke Sollitt (B.S., '97) is a planetary physicist for NASA.
  • C. V. Vishveshwara (Ph.D., '68) was recalled as Scientist of the Day on March 6, 2025.
Department News 

Zohreh Davoudi Awarded Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers

Zohreh Davoudi, an associate professor of physics at the University of Maryland and Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics, received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. The award, which was established in 1996 to recognize young professionals who have demonstrated exceptional potential for leadership in their fields, is the highest honor the U.S. government bestows on early-career scientists and engineers.Zohreh Davoudi Zohreh Davoudi

Davoudi, who is also a Fellow of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science and the Associate Director for Education at the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Robust Quantum Simulation, is one of 398 scientists and engineers nationwide to be acknowledged by President Biden.

“I am truly honored by this recognition,” Davoudi says. “This award signifies that the President and the U.S. government appreciate the important role scientists and engineers play in advancing society. I am excited to continue exploring the frontiers of nuclear physics and quantum information science using advanced classical- and quantum-computational methods and to continue building a community of amazing junior and senior collaborators who share the same or similar goals.”

Davoudi’s research focuses on strongly interacting quantum systems and investigates how elementary particles, like quarks and gluons, come together and form the matter that makes up our world. Her work to understand the foundations of matter includes developing theoretical frameworks and applying cutting-edge tools, like quantum simulations, to studying problems in nuclear and high-energy physics. Ultimately, she hopes to describe the evolution of mater into steady states that occurred in the early universe and that happens at a smaller scale in the aftermath of high-energy particle collisions, like those in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider.

Davoudi has also been acknowledged by other awards, including a Simons Emmy Noether Faculty Research Fellowship, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, a Department of Energy's Early Career Award and a Kenneth Wilson Award in Lattice Gauge Theory.

“Zohreh is an exceptionally agile physicist and an expert in nuclear theory,” says Steve Rolston, a professor and chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Maryland. “She has embraced the new world of quantum computing and is now a leader in figuring out how to use quantum computation to solve challenging nuclear and high-energy physics problems.”

Original story by Bailey Bedford

Next Gen Retroreflectors Launch to the Moon

On January 15, 2025, a precision prism reflector devised by UMD physicists once again headed to the moon, continuing a tradition begun in 1969, when the Apollo 11 crew positioned still-functioning Lunar Laser Ranging Retroreflectors (LLRR). The new lunar lander reached the Moon on March 2, 2025, and the next day successfully communicated with French Lunar Laser Ranging Observatory at Grasse, France. A single 10 cm diameter corner cube retroreflector. Credit: Doug CurrieA single 10 cm diameter corner cube retroreflector. Credit: Doug Currie

One of the physicists responsible for the original retroreflectors, Doug Currie, is the PI for the current version, Next Generation Lunar Retroreflectors (NGLR).  Using intense, brief lasers pulses, scientists on Earth will reflect light off the instrument, allowing measurements of the earth-moon distance to within 1 mm of accuracy. Such precision will allow better understanding of the moon’s liquid corA SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission One lander on January 15, 2024. Credit: NASA/Frank MichauxA SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission One lander on January 15, 2024. Credit: NASA/Frank Michauxe and of general relativity.

Currie’s proposal was accepted as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) project, utilizing partnerships with private industry to facilitate space launches.  Blue Ghost Mission 1 by Firefly Aerospace launched at 1:11 a.m. on January 15 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’ Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with NGLR-1 and nine other experiments. 

Currie’s storied career and the preparation for the NGLR were detailed in the September 2024 issue of Terp magazine.

He was a UMD Assistant Professor, working with LLRR PI Professor Carroll Alley, at the time of the historic first venture of humans to the moon. In 2019, he was interviewed on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, and was also selected for further work on retroreflectors. While the Apollo 11 retroreflectors were an array of small precision mirrors, the NGLR-1 is is a single 10 cm diameter corner cube retroreflector.

In addition to Currie, the UMD team on NGLR-1 included co-PI Drew Baden, deputy PI Dennis Wellnitz, Project Manager Ruth Chiang Carter and researchers Martin Peckerar, Chensheng Wu and Laila Wise.

Liftoff occurs at 43:01.