[9] She then returned to University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), graduating summa cum laude in communication studies in 1977, with a thesis on international direct-broadcast satellites.

As an undergraduate, she became a convert to Gerard K. O'Neill's "High Frontier" plan for space colonization after analyzing his 1974 Physics Today cover story on the concept as a project for Professor Harland Epps' Topics in Modern Astronomy seminar.

In 1982, she left to study astronomy at the University of Maryland, College Park, but was soon retained by NASA to obtain FCC approval for the IEEE C band system on its tracking and data relay satellites and by the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Radio Frequencies to safeguard before the FCC radio astronomy quiet bands used for deep space research.

Later that year she was also retained as vice president by Gerard K. O'Neill to handle business and regulatory matters for her newly invented satellite navigation technology, known as the Geostar System.

[13] In 1984, she was retained by Rene Anselmo, founder of Spanish International Network, to implement her PanAmSat MBA thesis as a new company that would compete with the global telecommunications satellite monopoly, Intelsat.

[6] In January 2022, Rothblatt's company Lung Biotechnology made an attempt at effectuating her Ph.D. dissertation by transplanting the first genetically-modified porcine heart in hopes that it would successfully save the life of a patient.

[24] In June 2022, Rothblatt unveiled the world's most complex 3D printed object, a human lung scaffold, based on 44 trillion voxels of data and comprising four thousand kilometers of capillaries and 200 million alveoli.

[30][31] The helicopter, a modified Robinson R44 weighed 2,500 pounds with Webb as its test pilot, flew for five minutes, attained 400 feet and exceeded 80 knots airspeed, all completely powered by rechargeable batteries.

On March 4, 2017, Rothblatt and Ric Webb set a world speed record for electric helicopters of 100 knots at Los Alamitos Army Airfield under an FAA Experimental permit for tail number N3115T.

[44][45] In September 2018 Rothblatt inaugurated the world's largest net zero office building site, called the Unisphere, containing 210,000 square feet of space in Silver Spring, Maryland, powered, heated and cooled completely from on-site sustainable energy technologies.

[52][failed verification][5] In 2004, Rothblatt launched the Terasem Movement, a transhumanist school of thought focused on promoting joy, diversity, and the prospect of technological immortality via mind uploading and geoethical nanotechnology.

Rothblatt is an advocate for LGBTQ rights and an outspoken opponent of North Carolina's controversial Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act or HB-2 law.

[54] In 2016, she gave the keynote presentation at the Moving Trans History Forward conference in Victoria, BC, Canada, entitled From Transgender to Transhuman to Virtually Human.

[62] Rhetorician and technocritic Dale Carrico harshly criticized Rothblatt's writings for promoting what he argues to be the pseudoscience of mind uploading and the techno-utopianism of the Californian Ideology.

[65] Describing a conversation with BINA48, one of "humanity's first cybernetic companions," created by Rothblatt and Hanson Robotics, journalist Amy Harmon concluded it was "not that different from interviewing certain flesh and blood subjects.

[68] In September 2017 Forbes magazine named Rothblatt one of the 100 Greatest Living Business Minds of the past century, with special reference to her roles as a "perpetual reinventor, founder of Sirius and United Therapeutics, and creator of PanAmSat.

[70] In January 2018 Rothblatt was presented the UCLA Medal, the university's highest award, in recognition of her creation of Sirius XM satellite radio, advancing organ transplant technology, and having "expanded the way we understand fundamental concepts ranging from communication to gender to the nature of consciousness and mortality.

"[71] On May 16, 2018, Rothblatt and Didi Chuxing President Jean Liu were awarded Doctors of Commercial Science degrees, honoris causa, at NYU's 186th Commencement at Yankee Stadium.

[79] In April 2023, Rothblatt received the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences in recognition of her many transformative, diverse, singular scientific and public service contributions.