Presently, I'm serving as a branch chief supervisor where I'm supporting the space launch system program—known as the SLS—which replaces space vehicles and the retired space shuttles. In my branch, I am providing systems engineering and integration function, which is all the operations concepts for the design, development, and integration of the vehicles that will be used at the Kennedy Space Center, where they actually assemble and launch the SLS.

Lam: Have you always been passionate about space exploration?

Duncan: I've always been passionate about the space program, but I grew up back in the 1950s in Montgomery, Alabama—the Deep South. My interest was really in urban community development, transportation, and communication—the things that get services to us, that makes us understand what is going on around us. And at an early age, I recognized that my interests have always been in the connectedness of the world, the universe itself.

I was drawn to space exploration because I realized it’s about these technologies that not only help us learn about the universe, but also find out if there is someone out there like us. It also provides technologies and innovations that we need to understand and improve life here on Earth.

Space was the answer, but I knew that there had to be some way to get us more connected. I’m also interested in bringing us together here on Earth. I grew up out in rural America, where it was really dark. I didn't have an interest in astronomy, but I always wondered about what other civilizations or groups of people were out there, and whether [they] somehow get along better than we do. I’m interested in how technology can get rid of the artificial barriers that separate us. That's what space exploration is about.

Lam: How did you come to work at the Marshall Space Flight Center?

Duncan: I went to graduate school at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and I thought I would work for a state or even a federal transportation agency, or the Department of Energy because they paid for my advanced studies. And at that time, in 1980, Marshall was in need of systems engineers, and they also didn't have many minorities. I'm a double minority, I'm a female and I'm also African American.

I applied, and they interviewed me. The processes that I had used for urban systems development are the same processes that we use on the space program. The rest is history. They hired me to do simulations of the environment in lieu of orbit. I worked at the first space lab mission on orbit where I sat on the consuls working with the researchers to get their commands and controls up to the low-Earth orbit.

It was an indirect route, still doing what I wanted to do in terms of enabling technology for transportation, bridges, highways, and communications systems. I thought I’d be doing that on earth, but I had the opportunities to really impact some of the research at NASA.