When the world stopped due to the pandemic, so, too, did plans to explore outer space. In 2019, NASA had five missions scheduled for the next three years, which were halted due to COVID. With NASA behind schedule, Israeli-American scientist Eliad Peretz helped put the organization back on track.
Peretz, 40, is the mission and instrument scientist for NASA’s Heliophysics Science Division at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center In Greenbelt. After the onset of COVID, Peretz assisted in a mission called GTOSat for a small spacecraft team to map radiation belts around earth. Peretz helped develop a mission to explore solar flaring on the surface of the sun. The missions have since come to fruition.
While the Silver Spring resident and Tikvat Israel Congregation member likely isn’t going to be the man on the moon anytime soon, his work has been instrumental to space exploration.
On May 1, NASA honored Peretz with the Exceptional Achievement Medal for his mission design work.
You used to go to the olive groves with your grandfather in Israel. What was the significance of that?
That’s where the first lessons of life come to me. One of them has to deal with planning: being able to look forward, not just a few months, a few weeks, [but to] look forward like one year, two years, three years. And just think about, how does this tree need to be cut to produce more food? Or how much work needs to be done on a grove?
The other one had to do with patience. My grandfather’s parents were immigrants from Morocco to Israel. And they had language challenges. So in Hebrew, we have a term, “ktzat savlanut” — “a little bit of patience.” But my grandparents were Moroccan, so they said, “sak savlanut,” and “sak” means “bag,” so a bag of patience. That stayed with me
for life.
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