For astronaut and Lenox Elementary alum, next stop: space
Long before she was tapped to lead a team of fellow NASA astronauts into space, Jasmin Moghbeli was a Long Island sixth-grader at Lenox Elementary School in Baldwin who knew her dreams were among the stars.
Moghbeli will be living those dreams in a few months when she serves as spacecraft commander for a SpaceX Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station. But Monday, Moghbeli was back walking the Lenox halls she had traversed so many years ago, this time encouraging students to see her story as proof that working hard can lead them to achieve their dreams.
“I want them to see I went to the same school,” Moghbeli said.
She added: "And now I’m here and they can do [it] as well.”
At Lenox, she talked with students about the importance of community, space travel and how to be an astronaut. Students created rockets made from balloons, tape, straws and strings. They tabulated which rocket went the fastest.
An inspiration
Gabrielle Reid, 10, who made one of the fastest rockets, said Moghbeli was an inspiration.
“It feels pretty awesome that she is going into space. It feels really cool that she’s sharing her life with us,” Gabrielle said.
Julius Castillo, also 10, wants to be the second Lenox student into space as an astronaut. Meeting Moghbeli confirmed to him it's possible.
“I can follow my dream like she did” Julius said, looking over at a plaque with two pictures: one showing Moghbeli in elementary school next to another of her as an astronaut.
“See that poster over there?” he said. “That’s her when she was in school and that’s her right now.”
For Moghbeli, a book report on Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova — who, in 1963, was the first woman to go to space — was the launchpad for the sixth-grader. For the report, she and her mother created a makeshift astronaut costume, assembled using a “white windbreaker, winter boots and a plastic container for the helmet,” Newsday has reported.
On Monday, her mother, Fereshteh Moghbeli, was also back at Lenox, watching her daughter in amazement as the astronaut spoke with the young students.
“Just being back here is amazing and watching her talk to the kids is really some experience that I couldn’t even express how it is,” she said of her daughter's visit to Lenox, adding later: “It’s really something surreal that she actually got to where she is.”
Her mother said it was a combination of determination and serendipity.
Born in Germany, Jasmin Moghbeli was the child of immigrants who fled Iran after the country’s 1979 revolution. The family eventually chose to come to Baldwin.
Dreams of space exploration
As she continued to kindle her dreams of space exploration, Moghbeli excelled academically and played basketball and lacrosse at Baldwin High School, which she also visited Monday. But Moghbeli said it wasn’t always easy and some subjects, such as history, did not come with the same ease as mathematics.
Moghbeli later got her bachelor's degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by a master's in aerospace engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in California. Moghbeli then became an AH-1W Super Cobra pilot and Marine Corps test pilot, logging in more than 150 combat missions.
In 2020, she graduated from NASA's astronaut school, making her among around a dozen chosen from 18,000 applicants.
In a few months, those years of hard work will be on full display when she becomes commander of the mission to the space station. She'll be in space for six months.
Still, Moghbeli said, sometimes it feels unreal to even her.
"I still wake up and go, 'I can’t believe that I’m actually a NASA astronaut,'" Moghbeli said.
But even with her achievements, Moghbeli keeps her alma mater close. When she goes into space, three Lenox items will be among the roughly shoebox-sized personal items she’s allowed to carry — a "Lenox strong" bracelet, a pin about Lenox pride and a drawing from a school fifth-grader.
Education: Howard University
Tiffany Cusaac-Smith came to Newsday in 2023 after being a race and history reporter at USA TODAY, where she wrote enterprise and spot articles examining how the past shapes the present. Previously, she worked as the race and justice reporter at the USA TODAY Network of New York, covering issues such as criminal justice reform, housing, environmental justice, health care and politics. At The Journal News/lohud.com in Westchester County, she covered Yonkers, the state's third-largest city. She also worked at The Associated Press in Atlanta.
Honors and Awards: Criminal justice reporting fellowship with the National Press Foundation; New York News Publishers Association award for distinguished investigative reporting; Contributed reporting for Best of Gannett honor; Member of Table Stakes, a program funded by the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund and managed by the American Press Institute to transform local news.
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