Mission to Mars
Darian Dixon spent his childhood nights staring at the glowing stars and planets adorning the walls and ceiling of his small bedroom. But weighed down by his circumstances on Earth, young Darian wondered if he’d ever get much closer to space than that.
“I was a poor Black boy with an uncertain future in a single-parent household, a prime recipe for a ‘statistic’,” Dixon says. Once, when his mother, Gloria, was between jobs, she called him into her room and sat him down. “She holds up two pennies and tells me, ‘Sweetheart, this is all we have now.’ But she also told me this wouldn’t be for long. And com shell or high water, we would find a way.”
Gloria was right. And today, Dixon’s path has taken him all the way to the surface of Mars.
Darian Dixon spent his childhood nights staring at the glowing stars and planets adorning the walls and ceiling of his small bedroom. But weighed down by his circumstances on Earth, young Darian wondered if he’d ever get much closer to space than that.
