Alum's career is out of this world

Interplanetary travel may be a dream for some children, but Barbara (Bendkowski) Hilton really has been a space traveler – several times.

For the last three years, the Granville native has helped her friend and Illinois Valley Community College Ed’Venture camp instructor Jyllian Ossola while home on leave from her job at NASA. Besides helping youngsters squirm into suitably sized space gear or cutting helmets out of paper bags for the children to decorate, Hilton shares her experiences at NASA.

In her career in the aeronautics and space industry, Hilton has overseen the design, construction, and testing of spacecraft, launched spacecraft and exploratory probes bristling with scientific instruments, and arranged partnerships with telecom or private interests to share a craft and its technology.

The delicate dragonfly earrings Hilton wears signal her current project, which she expects to be a career-defining mission. Dragonfly is a robotic rotorcraft expected to launch in 2028 for a six-year flight to explore Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. It would be the first aircraft on Titan and the first to fly itself to the ground and across the moon’s surface to multiple sample sites, as well as one of the largest probes in the fleet.

Titan is believed to most closely resemble what a new Earth once was. “NASA’s primary goal is to learn more about Earth, and we do that by learning about the solar system that we live in.” She is intrigued rather than bothered that new discoveries can reveal how little is really known about the world we live in. "It means the possibilities are unlimited!”

Hilton says the most awesome part of her job is watching rockets launch into space, but she is as awed by what comes back to Earth as what leaves Earth. “Each mission helps the next mission get better and produce more science.”

There was no single moment when a starlight twinkle signaled her destiny; Hilton just always knew she wanted to work in space. “That was the coolest thing in the world to me. I loved math and physics and anything space related.”

She expected she might one day be teaching astronauts, but she never wanted to be one. She’s satisfied that her technology can take her farther than manned flight has gone or is likely to go. “I can take a robot anywhere in the universe. It becomes my eyes and ears to places a human will never see.”

Currently, she is a program executive who ensures the mission gets to the launch pad on time and within budget. She has been associated with a constellation of star-studded and pioneering missions, including Odyssey, Genesis, and Stardust. Looking back on Stardust – her first mission – she realized she did not fully grasp its immensity, but “it is just exciting to be part of the team.”

The Illinois Valley, St. Bede Academy and IVCC provided a wonderful launching pad for her dream, which led her to renowned Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. She insists no one should be surprised to see Illinois Valley and NASA in the same sentence.

“If you want to achieve a goal, you can set yourself up to get to any career path you want with the resources you have. Career possibilities in the aerospace industry are unlimited. Any job outside the NASA world – artist, international relations, plumbing – NASA does.”

Mentors throughout her career have been invaluable because they know that “the next generation learns from what they teach and takes over where they leave off.” She also draws strength from a “really great network” of college friends who work in the industry.

At home in Virginia, Hilton is mom to 10-year-old Jadzia, loves to garden, and leads her daughter’s Scout troop. When she is home in Granville, she is busy remodeling the family home and helping at IVCC summer camps or giving presentations, which become a way to give back to a community that gave her a start.

“I want to show my daughter that when you do something you enjoy, there are ways to share it and give back. When she was little, my job was just a job. Now she is realizing that Mommy has a cool job that is actually fun!”