JACKSON, Wyo. — Ryan Prouty’s journey to NASA began in a salon chair right here in Jackson.
The Casper, Wyo. native had just graduated from the University of Wyoming with a degree in math. Sitting in the salon chair, she opened a magazine to a story about a Russian rocket that had crashed into the Russian space station. It was a dramatic, “made-for-movie” story. Then, at the bottom of the article, almost as an aside, it mentioned that NASA was building an International Space Station with the Russians. “Inquire in Houston,” it said.
So she did. Two months later, Prouty “left Wyoming for good” and headed to Houston to start her career with NASA. She’s now the Manager of Mission Integration and Operations for NASA and oversees everything that travels to and from the International Space Station.
Prouty will share her story and reveal what goes on “behind the curtain” at NASA Friday, January 31 as part of Wyoming Stargazing’s “The World Above the Tetons” speaker series.
Prouty has worked with the International Space Station (ISS) since it first entered space in 1998. She’s learned something new every day since. The station is constantly evolving, she said, as is the science about it and within it.
“It’s been really impactful for me to be part of the same program for so long and see not only technically how teams have evolved, but how systems operate,” she said.
“International” is the operative word in the space shuttle’s name. The ISS is a partnership between the United States, Russian, Japan, Canada, and 12 European countries. It requires a lot of coordination and cultural competency, Prouty said.
“We need to understand every country’s priorities, goals, quirks,” she said. “It’s a multicultural environment.”
So what happens on the International Space Station, exactly? Lots of science. At any given time, three-six people from the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan or Canada are living on the ISS conducting science experiments. The work covers a “whole spectrum” of different fields, Pouty said, from physical sciences to pharmaceuticals to combustible sciences. Right now, scientists are experimenting with a 3D organ printer— they’re literally printing bodily organs in space.
“It blows my mind the stuff we’re doing,” Prouty said.
Space is the perfect science lab because of gravity — or, rather, the absence of it. “With no gravity, the results you can get are more pure,” Prouty explained. Fluids behave differently in space. Physics is more precise. Space offers the truest understanding of science.
Prouty is responsible for everything that travels to and from the ISS — cargo, food, spare parts, etc. She manages the seven launch vehicles that carry essential goods to ISS scientists at least once a month. She also manages exactly what astronauts do with that cargo once it arrives.
“I’m essentially the mom of the space station,” she said.
Sometimes, her job looks just like what she thought it would from reading the magazine article back in the late ’90s. It’s exciting, high-paced, and consequential. And sometimes it’s mundane, even comical. But it never gets old, Prouty said.
Perhaps the biggest irony of Prouty’s job is that she traded Wyoming’s vast, star-speckled sky for Houston’s cityscapes.
“I spent my life looking at the stars,” she said. “Now I get to work in the stars, and I don’t see them anymore.”
Still, she wouldn’t trade her job for anything — not even the chance to go to space, which she admits she’s never done.
“I love it so much here,” Prouty said.
Learn more about what goes on “behind the curtain” at NASA Friday, January 31 in Dancers’ Workshop Studio 1 (second floor of Center for the Arts). The talk begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available online. Kids and students get in for free, and no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
