ZACH TYLER BARNES

I’m an aerospace engineer, and my mission is twofold: to help humanity explore the stars and to protect life here on Earth. At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I lead a lab that designs and tests the powerful systems that allow spacecraft to separate, deploy, and land on distant planets. These systems may not always make the headlines, but without them, missions would never leave the ground or reach their destination.​ I’ve worked on Mars Sample Return, which aims to bring back pieces of the Red Planet for the first time in history. I’ve contributed to the NASA Psyche mission, which is on its way to explore a metal-rich asteroid, possibly the exposed core of an early planet, offering clues about how our own formed. I’ve also worked on NISAR, a satellite that watches over Earth to track changes in our environment from space. But it didn’t start there.

 

Early in my career, I helped launch five Commercial Resupply Missions to the International Space Station. I was still in my 20s, the youngest engineer in Northrop Grumman’s launch division to earn advanced ordnance certification—basically, clearance to lead the integration and testing of the explosive systems that allow rockets to send spacecraft into orbit. I didn’t always have the answers, but I always showed up ready to learn, solve, and build.

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My story starts even further back, though. My father came to the U.S. from Jamaica, and I was the first in his family to graduate from college. Growing up, I didn’t see many people who looked like me building spacecraft, so I’ve always carried a deep sense of purpose - to pursue higher education and earn the opportunities that my father had not received. Now, I’m a graduate fellow at MIT, combining engineering with systems thinking to take on even bigger challenges. One of them is the Lunar Biorepository, a bold idea to build a genetic “backup drive” of Earth’s animal life on the Moon. Imagine a vault, buried beneath the lunar surface, filled with DNA from elephants, bees, whales, frogs...all the life we love and rely on. It’s designed to protect biodiversity in case of a climate catastrophe or global disaster. 

 

To me, engineering isn’t just a job; It’s the ability to turn ideas into impact. To ask, "What if?" and then figure out, "How?" Whether it's helping spacecraft survive a 12,000-mph descent through an alien atmosphere or creating a vault to safeguard life for future generations, the work is always about more than hardware. It’s about people. It’s about purpose.

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Big picture, I want to help make interplanetary exploration routine and reliable so we can answer the biggest questions about the universe, as well as our place and purpose within it. But I also want to make sure we never lose sight of what matters most: Earth. Our home. Our original spaceship. So yes, I build hardware for space, lead teams, and work with some of the world’s brightest scientists and engineers. But the truth is, my real job—the one I care about most—is making sure we move forward with both wonder and wisdom. Because in all this vast, endless space, Earth is still our most precious vessel, and preserving it is just as vital as exploring beyond it.

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