Abigail Fraeman '05: One Small Risk, One Giant Leap

by Meghna Singh for Silver Quest

Standing before a packed room of proud parents, research mentors, teachers, Blair Magnet Foundation President Zeki Mokhtarzada, and officials from the Washington Academy of Sciences, Fraeman began her talk by walking through a typical morning at JPL. There, she works with a team of scientists and engineers to operate the Curiosity rover on Mars. Just days earlier, her team had debated which rock to investigate next using Curiosity’s instruments. “We actually had some pretty spicy discussions about which rock we wanted to look at,” she said with a laugh. “In the end, we decided to clear off a darker-toned layer and analyze its composition and shoot a tiny pebble with a laser.”

Behind her, images from the Martian surface filled the projector screen: ancient sand dunes, salt deposits, and sedimentary layers that may once have held water. “Every day I go into work and look at pictures no human has ever seen before,” Fraeman said.

“That is just the coolest thing ever.”

Her fascination with space began early. She recalled a small telescope her dad brought home when she was a kid. “I could see Saturn—and all the rings—from my backyard,” she said. That telescope became the centerpiece of her eighth-grade science fair project and, later, her junior-year SRP, where she modeled the distribution of comets around a distant star while working at the Carnegie Institution.

But it wasn’t until high school that she began to see scientific research as a potential career. While researching a topic for Blair’s forensics team, she stumbled across a contest hosted by The Planetary Society. The prize? A trip to JPL to witness the 2004 Mars rover landing. “I thought my shot was one in a million,” she said. “But lesson number one: you’ll never get the opportunity if you don’t apply.”

She took her shot—and landed it. The projector flashed with a photo of Fraeman in the mission control room the night the Opportunity rover landed. On-screen was the first image transmitted from the rover, a scene unlike anything previously seen on Mars. “It just floored me,” she said. “There were scientists around me who looked at that image and immediately understood what the rocks meant. And I thought, ‘I want to be one of them.’”

And she did become one of them. Opportunity’s planned three-month mission lasted 14 years. During the time the rover was completing its 42-kilometer journey on Mars, Fraeman pursued her education and gathered experiences that eventually brought her back to JPL—this time as a scientist helping guide the rover’s path.

Though much of her talk focused on space exploration, Fraeman ended with something more personal. Just a week earlier, her Pasadena neighborhood had been affected by the Eaton wildfire. While JPL was spared, her apartment was filled with smoke. In the midst of the chaos, her Blair friends reached out to support her. “When the fire smoke filled my apartment and I had to leave, I went to Grace Huang’s house. I got calls from Sherri Geng in Chicago and texts from many others—people I hadn’t seen in years,” she recalled.

She turned to the students in the room. “Look around at your community and appreciate how wonderful it is. Try to keep in touch,” she urged. “Because you really will change the world, and you’ll also be there for each other. And to me, that’s the most wonderful thing I’ve gotten out of here.”

Her final piece of advice was simple: “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” she said. “Even when you fail, it’s okay. Keep going. Follow your passion.”