2010 Tillman Scholar
Military service is nothing new to Katrina Moon. Her military legacy not only includes her grandparents and parents, but also her Air Force pilot husband and her three brothers: a Marine F-18 pilot, a P-3 Naval Flight Officer, and an Army Chinook pilot. Her family didn’t just talk about military service, they’ve lived it.
Katrina’s decision to serve came at age 16 after a mountain climbing expedition to the Mt. Everest Base Camp, with a crew dedicated to building a school for the Nepalese children. She got her first taste of a third world country, and witnessed what poverty and civil unrest really means. She came home as a high school student with a new appreciation for the United States, and a commitment to give back to the country that had given her so much.
Two years later, she enrolled in the United States Naval Academy, earning a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering. After cross commissioning to the Air Force, Katrina worked as a propulsion engineer for F-16’s, deployed to Afghanistan as radar facilities engineer, and then served as a technical engineer for our nation’s intercontinental ballistic missiles. While on active duty, she obtained her Masters in Engineering in Bioastronautics from UC-Boulder through the school’s distance learning program.
While raising three young children, she works as a reservist as a satellite test and development engineer, continuing our knowledge and technical advancement in space. She still dreams to serve our nation outside of our atmosphere, and Katrina has applied to be an astronaut for the NASA class of 2017.