To the End of Earth Tia Ferguson recently journeyed to the
bottom of the world. Her job as an engineer at NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., gave her the
opportunity to spend four weeks in Antarctica helping with the
recovery of a science experiment. The experiment was attached to
a large, plastic balloon that floated high above Earth's
southernmost continent. The balloon and experiment circled above
Antarctica for about two weeks until the experiment was released
to fall back to Earth on a parachute. Ferguson was part of the
team that traveled to the landing site to pick up the
experiment. A NASA scientist asked Ferguson to help with the
recovery in Antarctica because she had prior experience
recovering a balloon science experiment, NASA's Deep Space Test
Bed, in New Mexico in 2005. She had designed the Deep Space Test
Bed. For the last seven years she has been doing mechanical
design for balloon, telescope, satellite, rocket and ground
experiments. As a mechanical design engineer, Ferg