Not many 14-year-olds can tell you what they want to do for the rest of their lives, nor do they home in on something as specific as planetary geology. Ellen Stofan, the first female director of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, is the exception. She’d just seen Carl Sagan speak during a NASA event for the launch of the first two Viking landers to Mars. Her father was in charge of the rocket.
“I just thought: That’s what I’m going to do,” says the Fauquier County mother of three, who was appointed to the role in 2018. To be fair, not many kids get to see folks like Sagan up close or witness a launch in person—one of many since her first at age 4. Her father, a rocket engineer, worked on their early development in the space program, and she and her family would travel from their home in Ohio to Florida to witness firsthand the magic of space and what men could do.
“I loved NASA, but I didn’t think I’d ever work there because everyone looked like my dad,” she says. Stofan became interested in science early on, but she struggled with what path to follow. “There were so few stories about women scientists. It was Marie Curie, and that was it.” She was intrigued by the articles she’d occasionally come across in National Geographic about female innovators like Mary Leakey and her research in human origins. And she liked rocks. When she was 10, her mother, a teacher who was earning her master’s degree in education, took a geology course. Stofan went with her on a field trip. “I pestered the professor because I was fascinated by these rocks,” she says. “Being able to say what had happened in that place 200 million years ago by looking at the layers was incredible.”
Her passion for planetary geology—studying the formation and development of celestial bodies and using that knowledge to deepen our understanding of Earth—helped catapult her to where she is today. Her family relocated to Virginia when she was a junior in high school. (Her father eventually headed up the International Space Station from DC.) She attended William & Mary for her undergraduate degree in geology; while there, she interned at the National Air and Space Museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies.
“People always ask if I thought I’d come back as director,” she says. “The answer is no! It didn’t seem like a possibility to me at that age. I wouldn’t have had the confidence to think I could do that.” But looking back, she says, everyone encouraged her. She went on to earn her master’s and doctorate degrees from Brown University, where she was in the “right place at the right time.” She had the chance to study new Soviet mapping data of the northern corridor of Venus. Her thesis developed out of this—studying giant dome features (called coronas) and how they could’ve formed. She later joined the Jet Propulsion Lab as a postdoctoral fellow and became the deputy project scientist for the Magellan mission to Venus, where she followed up on her thesis, studying that same area with radar mapping at a higher resolution.
“It was an amazing feeling sitting in the safety of a building and realizing that you’re the first person who’s seen this,” she recalls. “I was an explorer without leaving the office.”
She’s certainly a pioneer in her own right. Stofan has 25-plus years of space-related expertise—including working on the Cassini mission to Saturn (during which she fell in love with moon Titan, the only celestial body that has a hydrologic system) and serving as chief scientist at NASA, where she was instrumental in the Mars program. And today, she’s following in the footsteps of Gen. John R. “Jack” Dailey, who spent 18 years at the helm.
“You don’t want it to be a big deal to be the first woman,” says Stofan. “You’re just trying to get the job done.” She’s in good company. Around the same time she was named director in April 2018, a few other women stepped into key roles at the Smithsonian—like Anthea Hartig at the National Museum of American History and Kaywin Feldman at the National Gallery of Art. “We’re building up a significant cohort of women,” Stofan says.
Before COVID-19, Stofan’s objective with Udvar-Hazy was to find a way to bring more people to the center, from NoVA and beyond. It’s already the most-visited museum in Virginia, with 1.5 million people a year (the National Mall building draws 6 to 8 million). “It has the absolute gems of our collection,” she says. “To be able to stand in front of the Discovery space shuttle and look at all the aircraft, the SR-71, the Enola Gay. They tell the stories of this country, heroes and struggle. It’s a magical place.”
But the approach is different in light of the past year. “About two weeks into the pandemic, I remember saying to deputy director Chris Browne on Zoom, ‘What were we worrying about a month ago?’ The pandemic blew everything out of the water.”
Their first concern: how to fulfill the museum’s mission of inspiring and empowering the next generation of innovators and explorers. “We want every kid out there to know that they can be the first girl to walk on Mars or the person who’s going to invent a more fuel-efficient aircraft. How do we keep laser-focused on that when we do it remotely?”
She credits her team for staying on track. Within two weeks, they revamped the website to put educational content up front and found new ways to introduce material, both historical and forward-looking, to teachers, parents and kids. They held a Facebook Live session with Jim Lovell of Apollo 13. They did a three-part series on flying cars.
“Pivoting to digital was something we needed to do anyway because we’re a national museum with a global reach,” says Stofan.
Udvar-Hazy was closed March through July. Yet time didn’t stand still at the venue: In April, renovations began on the roof of the Boeing Aviation Hangar, a two-year project scheduled for completion in May 2022. (The center was built in 2003.) To protect the artifacts, sections are being covered by clear plastic (the north end is currently under repair) so visitors can still view the historical pieces. The restaurant is being renovated; a Shake Shack will open early next year.
The team also spent that time retrofitting the museum for COVID-19 guidelines. The National Mall museum has remained closed throughout the pandemic, but Udvar-Hazy reopened July 24 in a limited manner. Timed tickets were available for up to 2,000 people a day. (The facility spans 760,000 square feet.) There were the requisite sanitization requirements: mask-wearing, social distancing, hand-cleansing stations. There were technological developments, as well: When you entered, a monitor projected an image of one of the volunteers, who could answer your questions from home. “It scared people sometimes,” Stofan says. The team planned to add more monitors around the artifacts so people could ask docents virtual questions, and Stofan wanted to implement safe ways to bring back storytime and live lectures and to reopen the simulators and IMAX. However, in November, due to rising coronavirus cases, it closed once again. As of press time, there was no reopening date set.
A constant? The incredible pieces on display. Stofan’s most beloved area is the overlook, where you can take in the SR-71, one of her favorite artifacts, and the Discovery behind it. “It was one of the first places I went when Hazy reopened,” she shares. “That view is such a joy.” Look through the glass wall of the restoration hangar and you can see antique aircraft being restored—like the Flak-Bait, the longest-serving bomber from World War II. And all of the artifacts from the DC museum’s west half, other than the nose of the 747, were removed from the building, which is also undergoing a multiyear revamp, and are either in storage or at the Hazy Center for conservation.
“It’s an opportunity to look over our shoulders and see how we preserve aircraft,” Stofan says. “We’re not trying to make them shiny and new, rather what they looked like at the time they were used.”
That’s been the beauty of her position—bringing history to life and sparking new intrigue in the young and curious. Nothing will ever match the summer of 2019, she says, when the museum celebrated Apollo 11’s 50th anniversary. An image of the Saturn V rocket was projected on the Washington Monument, and a video re-creating the launch was screened. An estimated 1 million people came out for the various events.
“To walk through the kids [gathered on the Mall] and hear them wonder if they’ll land on the moon … it’s amazing the tension that was in the air,” she says.
This year had far less fanfare but the same vision. “I sent an email to our staff to watch the 17-minute video and remember what we can do next,” she says.
Stofan calls herself an “extremely nervous launch-watcher.” That first one she witnessed as a 4-year-old failed (it was unmanned). She admits she was filled with anticipation when SpaceX took off earlier this year. She’d wanted to attend in person, but the pandemic prevented her. Regardless, it was personal.
“Having this combination of working in NASA when commercial crew was really moving forward and then seeing it finally come to fruition was exciting,” she says. “We’re moving to a new era.” She looks forward to when the agency lands people on Mars—in the late 2030s, by her educated guess. Mars has a thin atmosphere, and getting people on the surface is difficult. But it’s not for want of technology; it’s funding.
And no, she doesn’t want to go—unless it has a purpose. “If someone said, ‘You can go to Mars and put your skills to use,’ I would do it. But going into orbit and back is not my thing.” Her schtick is geology. She likes doing field work in Italy and Hawaii. She brought her son with her to do volcano field work at one point, which he loved—though he didn’t follow her line of study. He served in the Peace Corps in Africa for five years; his wife just had a baby in October. Stofan’s middle daughter is earning her master’s in security studies. And her youngest daughter is getting a master’s in international security, including space policy. “I’ll take that,” Stofan says. “I gave them one too many geology lessons. We’d drive by a roadcut on a freeway, and they’d get a 10-minute lecture on how a rock is formed. ‘Mom, don’t look out the window,’ they’d [beg].”
Being a mother in her career wasn’t easy. When her son was 5, he asked if she’d be his nanny. “It was obviously a struggle to balance it all—I was traveling and working on space missions, and [parenting] was an investment.” When her third child was born, she took 12 years to work part-time from home. “I was able to, luckily, which many people can’t.” It’s why she’s passionate about career flexibility. “Your life ebbs and flows, and whether it’s caregiving for a child or a parent, these things change,” she says. “Having workplace flexibility, especially for women, allows them to re-enter the workspace. You’re letting talent back in. She has incredible skills to offer.”
And these women, like her, can be role models to future generations. “There are so many women scientists,” she says. “We need to make sure that we tell all their stories so an 8- or 10-year-old girl will say, ‘I can do that. People who look like me do these things. I’d be welcome in that job.’”
Those skills start with places like Udvar-Hazy, which, as it turns out, has been able to increasingly serve NoVA residents of all ages during the pandemic. “We’re bringing in more locals than ever,” says Stofan, who says she loves to frequent Sky Meadow State Park when she’s not leading the charge. “I regard us as being a NoVA community museum, in addition to a national museum.”
It’s an exciting time to be here. “Frankly, that inspiration is what we need right now. To be able to walk around the floor at Hazy and see the kids looking up at the space shuttle with that wonder on their face. We need to understand what we’re capable of.” Perhaps her new granddaughter will embrace that idea, too.
This story originally appeared in the January issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to our monthly print magazine.