Hey! So, as of the time of this writing (since there’s been some scary talk about layoffs where I work recently), I work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on both the Psyche and Mars Sample Return missions. It’s been a wild ride thus far, but let me spin you a yarn on how I went from testing and verifying requirements as an Avionics Systems Engineer to working launch and early spacecraft operations.
Leading Up to That Day #
Lead: Hey Josh, you busy on launch day?
Me: Dunno, might fly out to Florida to see the launch. What's up?
Lead: Want to staff the launch as an Avionics chair?
Me: A chair...in JPL Mission Control?
Lead: Yep.
Me: Yeah totally that would be alright I guess sure
I was trying so hard to contain my excitement when my lead asked me to be on launch staff. To me, it was the kind of thing I only knew from movies. Something your grandparents told you about seeing on their 70s televisions. A 5th grade science fair project with a coke bottle and Mentos. In no way could it possibly be real.
But it was.
Sitting in the Chair #
I showed up early as heck for that shift. Our shift started around 2:30am, since Psyche was launching off of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy all the way at the Cape in Florida. The launch wasn’t until around 7:30am, but there were hours of important checks and procedures to get through. Impostor syndrome had never been at an all time high, but luckily my lead was also an Avionics chair that day. I wouldn’t be stumbling blind into my job that day.
But then I sat in the chair and put on my headset. The vocal chatter of multiple teams ensuring launch preparation filled my ears. In that moment, while I still felt like an impostor among all the seasoned NASA veterans, I knew what I had to do.
And it Happened #
Many hours of actually-somewhat-monotonous-checking-and-dispositioning-of-issues later, we were polling each substation of the JPL mission control room on their GO or NO-GO status. At each substation (there were tens of them, this was no simple spacecraft) sat two people, each experienced in all the ins and outs of their piece of Psyche.
After doing some last checks with my lead next to me, she mentioned that I should report our GO status for our chair. Needless to say, I was delighted. All at once, I was not only the excited kid watching the dramatized launch sequence in the movies, but also the man in the chair, assuring the flight director that the avionics subsystem was ready for launch.
“Avionics, Flight?” “Flight, Avionics is GO.”
And just like that, the engines ignited. Falcon Heavy leapt into the air, clutching Psyche tightly in its fairing. For now, our work was done, and we could breathe a moment.
“An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.” - Niels Bohr