When Alora Mazarakis was a young girl, she didn’t play with Barbie dolls. Instead, she played with airplane toys and Pilot Mickey Mouse and Flight Attendant Minnie.
“My dad was a pilot for UPS, and I always had an affinity for space,” said the Speed School alumna. “When I was in elementary school, I told my dad I wanted to go to college at NASA.”
She had no idea how that child’s dream would actually one day come to fruition.
Fly me to the moon
Mazarakis, who graduated from UofL’s J.B. Speed School of Engineering with her bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering and a minor in astrophysics in 2019, was part of the team for NASA’s Artemis I launch on Nov. 15, the first of a series of space missions that aims to return humans to the moon and eventually, send them to…
