A 13-year-old Louisiana girl might just be the first person to land on Mars, and before you make assumptions, be aware she's already in training with NASA.
Alyssa Carson of Baton Rouge, after studying science and learning several languages, has become the first person to attend all of the space agency's 5-day space camps around the world, training events offered to would-be astronauts.
That includes Space Camp Turkey and Space Camp Canada.
She even has her own NASA call sign: "Blueberry."
At the space camps, Carson has launched mini rockets, ridden in space simulators and worked out on zero gravity machines.
She's spent years training herself toward the goal of being aboard a manned mission to Mars, which could happen in 2033.
"I want to go to Mars because it is a place nobody has been," she says. "It is really deserted right now so I want to take that first step.
"I think that I have a high chance of going to Mars basically because I've been training for nine years so far," she says.
NASA says Carson is going about things the right way.
"NASA takes people like Alyssa very seriously," spokesman Paul Foreman says. "She's doing the right things, taking the right steps."
Now a seventh-grader at Baton Rouge International School where she studies in four foreign languages -- French, Spanish, Chinese and Turkish -- in 2013 Carson became the first person to complete the space agency's Passport Program, making trips to all 14 of NASA's Visitor Centers in the United States.
She's witnessed three launches of NASA Space Shuttles and attended Sally Ride Camp at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She has her own Facebook page as NASABlueberry.
About that name, she says, "it is my call sign that was given to me at my second Space Camp. I was wearing a deep blue flight suit and [was] one of the smallest in my group. From that I was called Blueberry and have kept that as my call sign since then."
She even finds time in her busy training schedule to give motivational speeches to other children.
Why start so young and work so hard?
"As I get older and continue to do more things the resume will just get longer and hopefully help me stand out and help me look unique compared to other people," she says of her long years of training and study.
