Passkale - Untitled
More Posts from Passkale and Others
NASA Spotlight: Christina Hernandez, NASA Mars 2020 Rover Instrument Engineer
“I was in love with the beauty of space. It was my introduction to appreciating the beauty of complex, chaotic things—black holes, giant gas planets, or killer asteroids—that got my imagination riled up.“ -Christina Hernandez
Christina Hernandez, a space enthusiast and self-proclaimed nerd, is an aerospace engineer at our Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California where she works as an instrument engineer on our newest rover mission – Mars2020. The Mars2020 rover is a robotic scientist that is launching to the Red Planet next year. If you would like to launch to the Red Planet as well, you can Send Your Name to Mars along with millions of other people! Christina’s job is to make sure that the instruments we send to the Martian surface are designed, built, tested and operated correctly so we can retrieve allll the science. When she isn’t building space robots, she loves exploring new hiking trails, reading science fiction and experimenting in the kitchen. Christina took a break from building our next Martian scientist to answer some questions about her life and her career:
If you could go to Mars, would you? And what are three things you’d bring with you?
Only if I had a round trip ticket! I like the tacos and beach here on Earth too much. If I could go, I would bring a bag of Hot Cheetos, a Metallica album, and the book On the Shoulders of Giants.
If you could name the Mars2020 rover, what would you name it and why?
Pilas, a reference to a phrase my family says a lot, ponte las pilas. It literally means put your batteries on or in other words, get to work, look alive or put some energy into it. Our rover is going to need to have her batteries up and running for all the science she is going to be doing! Luckily, the rover has a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) to help keep the batteries charged!
What’s been your most memorable day at NASA?
It’s been seeing three of the instruments I worked on getting bolted and connected to the flight rover. I’ll never forget seeing the first 1’s and 0’s being exchanged between the rover compute element (RCE), the rover’s on-board brain, and the instruments’ electronics boxes (their brains). I am sure it was a wonderful conversation between the two!
It’s a long journey to get from Earth to Mars. What would be on your ultimate road trip playlist?
Metallica, The Cure, Queen, Echo and the Bunnymen, Frank Sinatra, Ramon Ayala, AC/DC, Selena, Los Angeles Azules, ughhhh – I think I just need a Spotify subscription to Mars.
What is one piece of advice you wish someone would’ve told you?
Take your ego out of the solution space when problem solving.
Do you have any secret skills, talents, or hobbies?
I love reading. Each year I read a minimum of 20 books, with my goal this year being 30 books. It’s funny I increased my goal during what has definitely been my busiest year at work. I recently got into watercolor painting. After spending so much time connected at work, I started looking for more analog hobbies. I am a terrible painter right now, but I painted my first painting the other day. It was of two nebulas! It’s not too bad! I am hoping watercolor can help connect me more to the color complexities of nature…and it’s fun!
What’s a project or problem that you would love the ability to tackle/work on?
I would love to work on designs for planetary human explorers. So far, I have focused on robotic explore, but when you throw a “loveable, warm, squishy thing” into the loop, its creates a different dimension to design – both with respect to operability and risk.
Thanks so much Christina! The Mars2020 rover is planned to launch on July 17, 2020, and touch down in Jezero crater on Mars on February 18, 2021.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Go Star Gazing: Let Star Walk 2 be your guide to the skies.
Captain Charles E. Yeager, 5/1948, NARA ID 542345.
XS-1 in flight, speed of sound GIF, NARA ID 295649.
FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF SOUND! #OTD 1947 USAF Capt. Chuck Yeager breaks sound barrier!
Yeager made history on Oct. 14, 1947, when he climbed out of a B-29 bomber as it ascended over the Mojave Desert and entered the cockpit of an orange, bullet-shaped, rocket-powered experimental plane attached to the bomb bay. The plane was a Bell Aircraft X-1, at an altitude of 23,000 feet, and when he reached 43,000 feet, history’s first sonic boom reverberated across the floor of the dry lake beds. He reached 700 miles an hour, breaking the sound barrier. His initial response to this incredible feat?
After all the anticipation to achieve this moment, it really was a letdown. There should’ve been a bump in the road, something to let you know that you had just punched a nice, clean hole through the sonic barrier. The Unknown was a poke through Jell-O. Later on, I realized that this mission had to end in a letdown because the real barrier wasn’t in the sky but in our knowledge and experience of supersonic flight.From Yeager’s memoir:
XS-1 control panel, online here.
Yeager, safely on the ground, reviews his records at the National Archives at College Park, 9/16/2013.
Author Tom Wolfe described "Right Stuff" legendary aviator, WWII fighter ace and USAF General Yeager as “the most righteous of all the possessors of the right stuff.” His bio reads like a Harrison Ford/Nicholas Cage/Tom Cruise adventure film hybrid, especially given that Yeager:
Had only a high school education.
Got airsick his first time in plane.
Enlisted at age 18 as a mechanic, and 2 years later was a pilot
Not only did he break the sound barrier, he did so with 2 broken ribs!
Pilot’s Notes from the Ninth Powered Flight of the XS-1, NARA ID 295644
Yeager was a fighter ace in WWII, shooting down 5 German planes in a single day and 13 total. He was shot down over occupied France in March 1944 and rescued by the French resistance. In appreciation, he showed them how to make homemade bombs! Read his incredible personal account here.
Escape and Evasion Case File for Flight Officer Chuck Yeager, NARA ID 305272.
He became a test pilot after WWII, at what became Edwards Air Force Base. Not only did he break the sound barrier, he did so with 2 broken ribs! He’d fallen off a horse and broke two ribs the night before the flight, and went to a civilian doctor rather than risk not being able to attempt the flight. Because of the secrecy of the X-1 project, Yeager’s achievement was not announced until June 1948. He continued to serve as a test pilot, and in 1953 he flew 1,650 miles per hour in an X-1A rocket plane.
He was the first commandant of the USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School and trained astronauts and test pilots for the Air Force. But given that he only had a high school education, he could not be an astronaut.
He flew 414 hours of combat time in the Vietnam war - 127 missions while training bomber pilots. He was promoted to Brigadier General in 1969.He retired from the Air Force in 1975, but continued to work for the Air Force until 1995. President Reagan appointed him to the Rogers Commission, the body that investigated the 1986 Challenger Shuttle disaster. Yeager died on December 7, 2020, at age 97.
Yeager was very modest about his accomplishments:
All I know is I worked my tail off learning to learn how to fly, and worked hard at it all the way. If there is such a thing as the right stuff in piloting, then it is experience. The secret to my success was that somehow I always managed to live to fly another day. Yeager’s memoir.
More online:
Chuck Yeager – Evader, March 1944, Text Message blog by archivist David Langbart.
https://vimeo.com/309213859
Tumblr
-
passkale liked this · 3 years ago -
passkale reblogged this · 3 years ago
