PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — Behind every rocket launch, there are excited and proud engineers.
"You can feel it all the way through your body, and the pride that you have behind it," engineer Nicole Cummings said. "It never gets old."
Cummings is a deputy program manager for Aerojet Rocketdyne and L3Harris Technologies company in northern Palm Beach County.
The rocket engine named RL10 is a project that she runs.
"We're here to help design it, build it, test it, deliver it, get it on the vehicle and fly it," Cummings said.
She and her team are bringing new dreams of exploration to life.
"Once we get into orbit our little RL10 is that engine that's going to give it the final nudge to get into lunar orbit," Cummings said.
The engine will someday propel Artemis 2 to the moon. The four astronauts will include the first woman and African American assigned to a lunar mission.
It will mark the first crewed mission around the moon since 1972. They won't land on the moon, but Artemis 2 will pave the way for the Artemis 3 crew to set foot on the moon at a later date.
"I never thought I would be working in a program that's servicing NASA and being on something so historic," Cummings said. "I would have never ever seen this coming."
"What were some of the barriers or challenges that you had to overcome as a woman of color going into this field?" WPTV anchor Janny Rodriguez asked.
"Myself. I always say that when I'm talking to girls, I say, 'You know, a lot of times our biggest barrier is ourselves, thinking that we don't belong there, thinking that we are going into a world that's not for us,'" Cummings said. "I had to get that out of my head to build the confidence."
She credits her family and Florida Atlantic University for playing a big role in her current success.
"FAU is part of my story," Cummings said. "I stand with FAU in pride. That college of engineering prepared me."
She also serves on the FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science advisory board.
"Part of the board is letting the college know what we need in the industry," Cummings said.
It's an industry that she is hoping to diversify by empowering the next generation of engineers, speaking to girls and women at events in Wellington where she grew up and graduated from high school.
"For the children who are seeing this and for the girls who are seeing this, and for the African Americans that are seeing this, and they think this is not a place for them, that there is a place here," Cummings said.
