Monday, December 2, 2024
Jasmin Moghbeli, who grew up in Baldwin, first immersed herself in the history of flight during visits to the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Uniondale. On Nov. 7 she returned to the museum — this time as a NASA astronaut.
As the 41-year-old Moghbeli walked through the entrance, she saw a U.S. Navy plane suspended above, a reminder of aviation’s past. Inside, a new exhibit greeted visitors with an inspiring question on the wall: Will the first woman on the Moon be from Long Island?
Yes — it would be Moghbeli.
The museum’s new exhibit, titled “The Future is Now,” showcases a time machine of aviation history and a blueprint for the future.
One display highlights the attire and equipment of astronauts from Long Island, including a blue spacesuit worn by Jeff Hoffman, of Brooklyn, a member of the crew to repair the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993. There is also a display dedicated to the biography and memorabilia of William Shepherd, a Babylon native who flew in the first mission to live on the International Space Station in the early 2000s.
New to the exhibit is a biography of Moghbeli, who was selected by NASA to join the Astronaut Candidate Class of 2017. As she walked through the museum, she talked about what it meant to be featured as one of the 12 astronauts from Long Island.
“I think for me it feels weird when you see yourself,” she told the Herald. “You know all your flaws and all those things, so it’s weird to think of myself as a role model for someone else.”
As a child, she was inspired by Mike Massimino, an Oceanside native who was selected as a NASA astronaut in May 1996. Massimino flew on two space shuttle missions in 2002 and 2009 before retiring in 2014.
In sixth grade at Lenox Elementary School — at the time, the junior high school housed the seventh and eighth grades — Moghbeli was assigned a book report, and she wrote about the Russian Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to travel in space. Moghbeli doesn’t remember exactly why she chose Tereshkova, but the assignment sparked her interest in aviation.
“That’s when I remember really thinking, like, ‘Oh, I want to do this. This is something to do,’” she recalled. “As a kid I thought it was exciting and adventurous. Growing up, I learned more about it, making me want to be involved in human space exploration even more.”
Moghbeli was born in Bad Nauheim, Germany, and her family came to the United States when she was a baby. After graduating from Baldwin High School in 2001, she rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps and became an AH-1W Super Cobra pilot and Marine Corps test pilot. She logged over 150 combat missions in Afghanistan and 2,000 hours of flight time. She holds a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in California, and now lives in Houston.
Last year, Moghbeli was selected to travel to the International Space Station on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 mission. After blasting off on Aug. 26, she returned on March 12, after 199 days in space.
At the museum’s planetarium theater, she spoke to more than 300 elementary school students from Franklin Square, Freeport and Uniondale about how she became an astronaut and her experience at the space station. The following day, she returned to Lenox Elementary School to spend the day with students.
Asked about the support she has received from the school district and the community — including her image on the “Welcome to Baldwin” mural on the wall of Deli Boy on Atlantic Avenue — Moghbeli said it was nothing less than overwhelming, though sharing the journey wasn’t always easy.
“One of the hardest lessons for me to learn was that you are going to fail,” she said. “If you’re pushing yourself and it feels horrible in the moment, but if you care about what you’re doing, you just have to keep trying.
“It won’t be the end of the story,” she added.
