赫斯曼研究生开始太空生涯

当NASA宇航员泽娜·卡德曼10岁时, ’14 (MS) delivers the keynote address at this weekend’s Carolina Spring Commencement, one space-loving master’s degree recipient will be particularly excited.

“我准备好被吹走了,克里斯·林克说, whose Master of 艺术 degree in media and communication, 专攻战略传播, comes from the UNC 赫斯曼新闻与媒体学院.

林克从小就对太空着迷. He dreamed of being involved in humanity’s exploration of the final frontier.

“The great thing about space is that it brings every nation together,” Link said. “Humanity collaborates to adventure further than we have any right to. We put aside all our differences for the sake of innate human curiosity. I knew that if I could find an opportunity to contribute to that, I wanted to jump right on it.”

But the odds of becoming an astronaut are, well, astronomical. He needed to figure out how his interest in writing and his undergraduate degree in communications could bring him closer to space.

Then he spent a summer internship at Aerojet Rocketdyne, an aerospace manufacturer that supplies engines and rocketry components for NASA missions. While there, Link met some of the crew of NASA’s upcoming Artemis II mission.

He applied lessons from his courses to his work on a communications plan for the OSIRIS-REx任务, which collected a sample from the asteroid Bennu and returned to Earth in September 2023. 根据NASA, the mission will help scientists investigate how planets formed and how life began, as well as improve our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth.

“It just made me feel great to come into work every day and think, ‘哇, 我在做重要的事情,’”他说。.

That experience reaffirmed Link’s dream of working in the space industry and provided him with a path to achieving it. 这次实习启发了他的硕士论文.

现在他已经完成了硕士学位, Link is very excited that the speaker who will boost the Class of 2024 into their next stage is a double Tar Heel who’s an astronaut.

“To say I’m thrilled would be an understatement,” Link said. “There are so few people who have been astronauts and have her perspective and wealth of experience. 她告诉我们的一切都值得一听.”

毕业后, Link will begin his space industry career in a communications role with the aerospace company RTX. He will work at three sites over two years as part of the company’s global communications leadership development program. 从长远来看, he hopes to continue contributing to the field that captured his heart and continue playing his role in extending humanity’s reach further into space.

“我希望看到我们能走得尽可能远，”他说. “We’ve sent probes to planets and places all over the galaxy, but space is such a wide area that’s so little explored. 我们每天都学习新东西. I want us to keep pushing the boundary and pursuing knowledge driven purely by our sheer intrepid human spirit.”