Bridgit Mendler was not in Hollywood anymore. Instead, she found herself in rural North Dakota, where the stars sparkled overhead rather than on the silver screen. And she was freezing.
When her team tumbled out of their rental cars after midnight, temperatures had already plummeted into the 40s. Howling winds carried their breath away before it could fog the air. So it was with no small sense of urgency that the group scrambled to assemble a jury-rigged antenna to talk to a spacecraft that would soon come whizzing over the horizon. A few hours later, the rosy light of dawn shone on the faces of a typically scrappy space startup: mostly male, mostly disheveled.
Then there was Mendler, the former Disney star and pop music sensation—and she was running the whole show.