Emily Calandrelli: The Space Gal Who Went to Space
On November 22, 2024, Emily Calandrelli strapped into a Blue Origin capsule and crossed the Kármán line, becoming the 100th woman ever to fly to space and the first person from West Virginia to do it. She had spent more than a decade explaining rockets to children on television before she rode in one herself.
From Morgantown to Mission Control
Calandrelli grew up in Morgantown, West Virginia, and attended Morgantown High School before enrolling at West Virginia University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering in 2010. Along the way she was named to the USA Today all-academic team, won a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, and was voted Ms. Mountaineer. She then went to MIT, earning two master's degrees in 2013, one in aeronautics and astronautics and another in technology and policy, and picked up the university's René Miller Prize in Systems Engineering. During her time as a NASA intern she designed a simulation for the Phoenix Mars Lander's soil-testing experiment, ran laser research aimed at cutting jet engine emissions, and helped develop chemical detection sensors. It was during that internship that she met Tommy Franklin, a fellow aerospace engineer who would become her husband.
Building "The Space Gal"
Rather than staying in a lab, Calandrelli turned herself into a broadcaster. In 2014 she became host and executive producer of Fox's *Xploration Outer Space*, a science program aimed at young viewers, and branded herself online as "The Space Gal." The persona stuck. In 2017 she joined Netflix's *Bill Nye Saves the World* as a correspondent, earning a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Host, and in August 2020 she debuted her own Netflix series, *Emily's Wonder Lab*, which she filmed while nine months pregnant. She has since written the *Ada Lace* children's book series with Tamson Weston, along with titles like *Reach for the Stars* and *Stay Curious and Keep Exploring*, and has spoken at Google, Pixar, MIT, and Texas Instruments. In April 2018 she delivered a TED talk titled, bluntly, "Making science nicer, stupid."
Twenty questions, eight minutes on the clock, and a percentile measured against everyone who has taken it. No sign-up.
Take the IQ test →The Flight Itself
Her trip on Blue Origin's NS-28 mission was more than a publicity moment. Calandrelli became the tenth woman to fly above the Kármán line and the 100th woman in space overall, a round-number milestone that drew attention to how recently, and how slowly, spaceflight has opened to women since the Soviet Union sent Valentina Tereshkova up in 1963. As a West Virginian, she also became a symbol for a state rarely associated with the space program, and in 2023 McMaster University recognized her work with an honorary doctorate.
Advocacy Beyond the Rocket
Calandrelli has used her platform for causes tied directly to her own experience. In 2022 she went public about being forced to check her breastfeeding supplies at airport security despite having documentation that should have exempted her, and she contacted Representative Katie Porter's office about legislation to fix how the TSA handles breast milk and related equipment. She has also pushed for better parental leave policies within the aerospace industry, arguing that an industry trying to recruit more women cannot ignore the practical barriers that push them out. In 2023 and 2024 the White House invited her to lead science demonstrations at the Easter Egg Roll, putting her signature blend of showmanship and STEM advocacy in front of a national audience of children.
A Disclosed Conflict
Her public-facing career has not been free of scrutiny. The New York Times reported in 2023 that internal documents showed Calandrelli working as a paid influencer for the propane industry through the Propane Education and Research Council, a relationship that sits uneasily alongside her identity as a science communicator, given propane's status as a fossil fuel with its own advocacy interests in home energy policy.
Why Emily Is Called a Genius
The case for calling Calandrelli a genius rests less on raw intellect, though her MIT credentials are real, and more on translation: the specific, unglamorous skill of taking orbital mechanics and soil chemistry and making them legible to an eight-year-old without insulting either the child or the science. That is a communicative gift, not a discovery, and nobody in the source record uses the word "genius" about her directly. Her actual achievements are engineering competence (a NASA internship doing real simulation and sensor work), broadcasting range (Emmy-nominated hosting), and a historic if largely symbolic spaceflight milestone as the 100th woman in space. The honest counter-case is straightforward: she did not invent a technology, publish a scientific breakthrough, or build a company. Her fame rests on hosting, writing, and being a well-credentialed passenger on a commercial rocket. That is a legitimate and unusual career, but it is craft and advocacy, amplified by television, more than it is genius in the classical sense.
Legacy
Calandrelli's lasting mark will likely be less about any single discovery and more about numbers: the 100th woman in space, and one of the relatively few science broadcasters who has actually left the atmosphere she spent a career describing to children.
.jpg)
