Powtawche Valerino | |
|---|---|
 Valerino in 2017 | |
| Nationality | Mississippi Choctaw, American |
| Alma mater | Rice University Stanford University |
| Occupation | Engineer |
| Employer | NASA |
Powtawche N. Valerino is an American mechanical engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She worked as a navigation engineer for the Cassini mission.
Valerino was born to a Mississippi Choctaw mother and African-American father. She grew up on the Mississippi Choctaw reservation and is an enrolled member of the tribe. [1] When she was ten, she moved with her family to New Orleans. A few years later she saw the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion on television and became interested in science. [2] Valerino learned cello at age twelve, and still plays in the Pasadena Community Orchestra. [1] [3] During high school, Valerino interned as a mechanical engineer as part of NASA's Summer High School Apprenticeship Research Program, where highly achieving students shadow NASA professionals. [4]
She obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University, and received her master's degree and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from Rice University. [5] During summers at graduate school, Valerino interned at Johnson Space Center in Houston and Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi, where she worked on the X-38 vehicle (International Space Station lifeboat) team. [6] Her dissertation, Optimizing Interplanetary Trajectories to Mars via Electrical Propulsion, was submitted to Rice in 2005. [7] She was the first Native American to earn a PhD in engineering at Rice University. [6]
Valerino joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mission Design and Navigation Section in 2005. [5] She first worked on the proposed Jupiter Icy Moon Orbiter mission, then transferred to the Cassini mission, where she was a navigator with the maneuver and trajectory team. [8] [9] The Cassini mission far outlived the predicted four-year lifetime, with engineers like Valerino pushing it to thirteen years. [10] Throughout the Cassini mission, Valerino shared the spacecraft status and findings with the public. [11]
Her most recent project was the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft, [12] which launched on August 12, 2018. [13] It became the first satellite to fly as close to the sun as Helios 2 did in 1976. [14] [15]
Valerino has worked to recruit and encourage the participation of under-represented groups in science. [16] This has included working with Soledad O'Brien to encourage black and Latina young women to pursue careers in STEM at the PowHERful Summit. [17] In 2016 she received the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Education Award for her outreach activities. [18] In 2017, Valerino joined 21st Century Fox in their promotion of the film Hidden Figures , which tells of the role of outstanding African-American mathematicians and scientists in the Apollo program. [19] [20] [21] [22]
Valerino is a fan of comic books. She has also discussed strong women in graphic novels on podcasts. [23]
Spacecraft propulsion is any method used to accelerate spacecraft and artificial satellites. In-space propulsion exclusively deals with propulsion systems used in the vacuum of space and should not be confused with space launch or atmospheric entry.
Cassini–Huygens, commonly called Cassini, was a space-research mission by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to send a space probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and natural satellites. The Flagship-class robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's Cassini space probe and ESA's Huygens lander, which landed on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit, where it stayed from 2004 to 2017. The two craft took their names from the astronomers Giovanni Cassini and Christiaan Huygens.
Aerobraking is a spaceflight maneuver that reduces the high point of an elliptical orbit (apoapsis) by flying the vehicle through the atmosphere at the low point of the orbit (periapsis). The resulting drag slows the spacecraft. Aerobraking is used when a spacecraft requires a low orbit after arriving at a body with an atmosphere, as it requires less fuel than using propulsion to slow down.
A gravity assist, gravity assist maneuver, swing-by, or generally a gravitational slingshot in orbital mechanics, is a type of spaceflight flyby which makes use of the relative movement and gravity of a planet or other astronomical object to alter the path and speed of a spacecraft, typically to save propellant and reduce expense.
The Interplanetary Transport Network (ITN) is a collection of gravitationally determined pathways through the Solar System that require very little energy for an object to follow. The ITN makes particular use of Lagrange points as locations where trajectories through space can be redirected using little or no energy. These points have the peculiar property of allowing objects to orbit around them, despite lacking an object to orbit. While it would use little energy, transport along the network would take a long time.
This article provides a timeline of the Cassini–Huygens mission. Cassini was a collaboration between the United States' NASA, the European Space Agency ("ESA"), and the Italian Space Agency ("ASI") to send a probe to study the Saturnian system, including the planet, its rings, and its natural satellites. The Flagship-class uncrewed robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's Cassini probe, and ESA's Huygens lander which was designed to land on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit. The craft were named after astronomers Giovanni Cassini and Christiaan Huygens.
In astrodynamics, orbital station-keeping is keeping a spacecraft at a fixed distance from another spacecraft or celestial body. It requires a series of orbital maneuvers made with thruster burns to keep the active craft in the same orbit as its target. For many low Earth orbit satellites, the effects of non-Keplerian forces, i.e. the deviations of the gravitational force of the Earth from that of a homogeneous sphere, gravitational forces from Sun/Moon, solar radiation pressure and air drag, must be counteracted.
Martin Wen-Yu Lo is an American mathematician who currently works as a spacecraft trajectory expert at the NASA-owned Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Martin Lo is well known for discovering the Interplanetary Superhighway, also known as the Interplanetary Transport Network. The superhighway is created by combined gravitational forces of several planets that connects planets by a network of “tunnels” and is the most efficient way to navigate the solar system. This continues to be his main area of research.
In orbital mechanics, a free-return trajectory is a trajectory of a spacecraft traveling away from a primary body where gravity due to a secondary body causes the spacecraft to return to the primary body without propulsion.
A low-energy transfer, or low-energy trajectory, is a route in space that allows spacecraft to change orbits using significantly less fuel than traditional transfers. These routes work in the Earth–Moon system and also in other systems, such as between the moons of Jupiter. The drawback of such trajectories is that they take longer to complete than higher-energy (more-fuel) transfers, such as Hohmann transfer orbits.
DIDO is a MATLAB optimal control toolbox for solving general-purpose optimal control problems. It is widely used in academia, industry, and NASA. Hailed as a breakthrough software, DIDO is based on the pseudospectral optimal control theory of Ross and Fahroo. The latest enhancements to DIDO are described in Ross.
Kathleen Connor Howell is an American aerospace engineer known for her contributions to dynamical systems theory applied to spacecraft trajectory design which led to the use of halo orbit in multiple NASA space missions. She is currently the Hsu Lo Distinguished Professor at Purdue University in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In acknowledgment of her many achievements, Discover magazine recognized her in 2002 as one of the 50 most important women in science.
Mason Peck is an associate professor at Cornell University and former NASA Chief Technologist. His immediate predecessor in the NASA position was Bobby Braun.
Richard "Dick" Horace Battin was an American engineer, applied mathematician and educator who led the design of the Apollo guidance computer during the Apollo missions during the 1960s.
Amanda R. Hendrix is an American planetary scientist known for her pioneering studies of solar system bodies at ultraviolet wavelengths. She is a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. Her research interests include moon and asteroid surface composition, space weathering effects and radiation products. She is a co-investigator on the Cassini UVIS instrument, was a co-investigator on the Galileo UVS instrument, is a Participating Scientist on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter LAMP instrument and is a Principal Investigator on Hubble Space Telescope observing programs. As of 2019, she is also the co-lead of the NASA Roadmaps to Oceans World Group.
Alejandro Miguel San Martín is an Argentine engineer of NASA and a science educator. He is best known for his work as Chief Engineer for the Guidance, Navigation, and Control system in the latest missions to Mars. His best known contribution is the Sky Crane system, of which he is coinventor, used in the Curiosity mission for the descent of the rover.
Team Miles was a 6U CubeSat that was to demonstrate navigation in deep space using innovative plasma thrusters. It was also to test a software-defined radio operating in the S-band for communications from about 4 million kilometers from Earth. Team Miles was one of ten CubeSats launched with the Artemis 1 mission into a heliocentric orbit in cislunar space on the maiden flight of the Space Launch System (SLS), that took place on 16 November 2022. Team Miles was deployed but contact was not established with the spacecraft.
Moriba Kemessia Jah CorrFRSE is an American space scientist and aerospace engineer who describes himself as a "space environmentalist", specializing in orbit determination and prediction, especially as related to space situational awareness and space traffic monitoring. He is currently an associate professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin. Jah previously worked as a spacecraft navigator at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he was a navigator for the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, Mars Exploration Rover, and his last mission was the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. He is a Fellow of the American Astronautical Society, the Air Force Research Laboratory, the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety and, the Royal Astronomical Society. Jah was also selected into the 10th anniversary class of TED Fellows and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2022. He also was selected into the AIAA class of Fellows and Honorary Fellows in the year of the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11. The AIAA "confers the distinction of Fellow upon individuals in recognition of their notable and valuable contributions to the arts, sciences or technology of aeronautics and astronautics."
Swati Mohan is an Indian-American aerospace engineer and was the Guidance and Controls Operations Lead on the NASA Mars 2020 mission.
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