Mehdi Benna: Our Star at NASA

Born in Tunis, Mehdi Benna had quite a long journey to get to NASA. From Tunisia, to France to America, Mehdi discusses his experience, struggle and above all his journey to achieve his dream of being a space engineer. He now uses his knowledge and expertise to help inspire youngsters from around the world, proving, you can accomplish your dream if you work hard and stay focused.

You work for the atmospheric experiment branch. What does that mean? And what do you do all day?

The division was just renamed as the planetary environment laboratory. We build space instruments that fly from spacecrafts, mostly NASA spacecrafts. The goal of these instruments is to gather data from the atmosphere of the surface of the planet. Once we get this data we try and understand the environment of these planets.

What do I do all day? I have a dual role. I’m a space scientist and a planetary scientist so my job is to use data that has been sent by spacecrafts orbiting the planet to study the atmosphere of the surface of planets. That’s one side of my job. My second job is a micro-electronic engineer or a space engineer. My job is to build hardware, to help build these instruments or parts of spacecrafts that go to space to provide science. So half of my day is engineering, and the other half is science: physics and space physics.

There has been a lot of talk about NASA reaching out to Muslims diplomatically, what do you think of that? Why do you think it’s so controversial?

I don’t feel it’s controversial. I’ve been doing that with the State Department for 4-5 years now; providing them with bilingual products that are originally NASA products. I just help to re-craft them and make them in a dual language like: Arabic/English and Arabic/French. They have been very well received and NASA encouraged that. NASA is a federal agency which is a public service agency, so they encourage us to do outreach, it doesn’t matter what it is. They actually like us to go to the Middle East because it’s a good way to do diplomacy. Science is a great way to do diplomacy, because you really talk to a sensitive matter which is education. When you go to a Muslim/Arab country with an educational tool or talk about science and help them develop their technology, usually you are well received. You can easily build bridges so NASA encourages that.

Have you ever gone overseas to talk to kids about NASA and your position?

Yes I do almost yearly. I go back to Tunisia, my native country, and I always have talks or get invited to give seminars. The State Department sponsored a trip to Tunisia from England, three years ago, and we got to go there for a week.

Are the students excited about it?

Oh yeah! We had great media coverage from both the US and Tunisia. We are trying to make it a tradition and actually there were 2 documentaries made on each trip from the State Department.

Do you believe in extraterrestrial activity/life?

Extraterrestrial life – I mean yes. When we say life, it doesn’t necessarily mean people with 2 legs walking around. You can have some form of life that develops on another planet, but that’s really not unlikely to exist.

Now activity, meaning aliens coming onto earth landing with their spacecrafts…I’m not a big believer of that. I think that any intelligent species would be likely to communicate. So any type of extraterrestrial life will probably be coming into contact with us. They would not be hiding behind the trees, or something.

Do you think that if we exist that there are other things out there that exist like us too?

Absolutely! I don’t rule that out. We discovered such amazing ways that life could develop. The way that it developed on earth is so incredible, you cannot rule out the same process, or actually a different process, can lead to a more sophisticated form of life. With the tools we have we can only look in the solar system, but I do not rule out it can happen in other stars.

What advice would you give to a young Muslim who is interested in joining NASA?

The problems that you encounter today are, I don’t want to say lack of confidence, but they don’t believe they will have access to that field or science. Or that they will be rejected because of their background or heritage and it’s really not true. You have to believe in it, that you have the same right to access, especially here in the US. It’s not something that’s made fo’ another community, it’s accessible to everyone, including Arabs or Muslims.

What inspired you to study space?

It’s really hard to tell, I grew up in a place where we had good night skies and we got to look at the stars at night. Unfortunately, I grew up in a country where astronomy wasn’t really a tradition or taught in schools so you don’t really have someone to answer your questions, when you’re a kid, about these subjects. So some people really don’t dig further because they don’t find anyone to answer their questions but some people find their own answers. I’m the second kind. I decided that since no one can answer my questions, I have to dig further and if I have to go to another country to do it, I will.

What do your parents think of your success?

In the beginning, they were not convinced that you could have a career as an Arab or Muslim in space science. They said, ‘It’s a great hobby. It can help you in school, but to the point in making it a career, is a little bit too risky.’ So they were pleased once I worked for a space agency for a few years and then NASA hired me. To see me work at that level and being involved in so many space missions, they are very excited actually. They follow the news and whatever spacecraft I’m working on. They are big fans.

What is the most interesting thing you’ve learned about space?

It’s amazing to see the variety of processes on all these objects or planets. It’s amazing how wide the physics that govern the phenomena are all the same but the results are so different, it’s like each planet is its own experiment by itself. The way things come together leads to a completely different result and it’s kind of fascinating.

What’s your favorite movie that has to do with space?

That’s really tricky! Being a scientist spoils a lot of movie, cause you’re critical because you know that those things can’t happen. If you want to spoil a sci-fi movie, be a scientist, that’s a spoiler!

One of the best movies, was Apollo 13, it’s actually a true story. It was adapted from a book by a real astronaut, Jim Lovell. It tells the story of human adventure. It shows that doing space science and sending astronauts to the moon in the 1960’s, even today, is still an adventure. Apollo 13 is the story of a mission that goes wrong but actually turns out to be one of the greatest successes of NASA, that even in the most dire conditions can bring them back safely to earth. It shows how the human ingenuity can solve really complex problems under extremely stressful conditions.