Images courtesy of NASA Satellite Servicing Projects Division
Last Tuesday, Julie, Jimmy, Dan D., and I attended a meeting at Goddard where members of the Satellite Servicing Projects Division met with industry partners to discuss private sector uses for their technology. There's not a whole lot we can tell you about what we learned, but I can say that yet again everyone at NASA was wonderful, welcoming, and incredibly helpful and that we gathered some information that will be useful as we start testing our robot arm and refining the design. We even got to have lunch with Zakiya, who gave us the tour of SSPD in December, and peppered her with questions about interning and why not to use certain types of grippers on our arm.
During our time there, I was able to sit down with Peter Sooy, the Education and Public Outreach Coordinator for SSPD. He was generous enough to let me interview him about life at NASA and to provide some advice for people who want to join the agency.
What is your position
with NASA and what does it entail?
My official title is Education and Public Outreach Lead for
the Satellite Servicing Projects Division. So what does that entail?
Interacting with student groups, so that’s the education part. I give tours to
students of all levels of our robotics operation center. I just counted up- in
2017, we had 239 tours that we gave to 3,002 people. And I don’t know how many
I gave, but I probably gave 50 in a year and all the other ones I coordinate. I
do all the scheduling and coordinating tour leaders, so that’s the education
part.
The public outreach part is going to events and running a
booth or exhibitions. We go to, like, three to six events a year. They're either
local, like in DC, or national. We’ve been to SXSW, we’ve traveled to other
places. We run a booth and I coordinate the volunteers then ship everything out
and run the booth. It’s a way to promote our office, to promote satellite
servicing, and if along the way we meet a young engineer and they say, “You
know, I love this and I love you guys!” we always say, “Yes, please!” I give
out my card and if they're willing to travel to DC we try to accommodate student
groups as much as we can.
What is your
educational background?
I have a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from University of
Maryland just down the road. I graduated in 2009.
What are your
favorite parts of your job?
I’d have to say the pace of it, being able to be at an event
like this today where I can talk to a bunch of professionals from industry and
then the next day give a tour to a bunch of 8-year-olds. It’s just having a lot of different things to
do and its exciting, fast paced, and different. It’s not the same task everyday
so it doesn’t get boring.
What are some perks
of working at NASA that we might not know about?
There are perks! In addition to going to events, which are
very cool, sometimes you get to see exhibits or famous people. Going to
launches, I’ve only been to one, but it was really cool. That was a really cool
perk. Last year we had a project go up to space station that launched from
Kennedy. It was a SpaceX launch from Pad 39A, which is where Buzz Aldrin went
to the moon. They brought him to the launch and I got to meet him which was an
additional perk. When I started working here, I never thought I’d get to meet
Buzz Aldrin, so that’s an easy perk to pick out.
What are some
challenges you face at work?
Staying focused and keeping a broad vision, not getting
tunnel vision on one event for one day and keeping everything moving with a lot
of different tasks going on at once. Sometimes that can be problematic for me,
where I focus on one task and then something that I’m not focusing on can have the
ball dropped. So staying on track and organized and aware.
What surprised you
most about working at NASA?
I don’t know about for all of NASA, but definitely for this
division it’s the people. I expected, even as a kid, the people at NASA would
be smart, but I’ve worked in other industries with smart people but they
haven’t been nice to work with, they were difficult and mean and rude. The
people here are very nice. So in addition to being highly intelligent they’re
nice to work with and I’ve really run into few people that are hard to work
with which is rare.
What is the most
expensive thing you’ve touched?
Um…to be honest they don’t let me touch a lot of things, I’m
not an engineer. But we have some expensive stuff in our robotics facility that
needs to be covered up to be photo safe, so nothing sensitive is showing. The
other week I did go in and cover up out robotic arm, our cutting-edge robotic
arm, under supervision of our engineer. I wore my little gown and wrist strap
and I covered it with safety bags. I didn’t get to touch it, but it does cost
upwards of $5 million so…that was expensive!
What is your favorite
thing in the cafeteria?
Not very exciting but the Subway. The Italian BMT is my
favorite thing.
What advice do you
have for students that want to join NASA?
I get asked that a lot, so I always tell kids to pursue what
you enjoy. If that’s engineering, that’s great. Truthfully, most people who
work at NASA are engineers. But if it’s your dream to work here and you’re not
an engineer, just keep trying. This is a big agency there’s almost 100,000
people at all of NASA so to keep all that working you need more than engineers,
you need business people, you need communications people, you need human
resources people. I always tell people to keep trying, to not give up on their
dreams. If you really want to work here, you can in some capacity. So you may
not be the one touching the hardware but you might be the one helping write the
contract for publicizing the hardware. It takes a village to make this all
work.
Which NASA center is
the best?
Oh man! I think Goddard is. For work-life balance, I’d say
Goddard is. I’m an East Coast person, I’m local to the area so I like being
near D.C. but being out here with all the green space is kind of like Mayberry,
very nice.
If you’re going for mission and all that …I’ve been down to
Kennedy and I did like Kennedy. It’s in the middle of nowhere in Florida. For a
day trip? I’d say Kennedy, that was nice. I’ve been to JPL, LA is hard to beat
but I like Goddard.
Thanks, Peter, for letting me pick your brain and thanks SSPD for having us. We hope to see you again soon!
