From a Rough Sketch to the Rocketship, Building Things for Spaceflight is Hard

Glyn A. Collinson

NASA Research Associate
Principal Investigator, NASA Endurance 2022 Sounding Rocket Mission

Wed, October 6, 2021 - 4:00 PM
Karl Herzfeld Auditorium of Hannan Hall - Rm 108

Five years ago pen was first put to paper to try and invent a new type of space instrument that would finally let us measure a mysterious electrical field generated by Earth’s ionosphere and thought to play a key role in making life possible. Over the next year with the expertise and support of a small team of expert engineers and scientists from NASA GSFC’s Heliophysics Science Division and CUA, the instrument went from a sketch to a functioning prototype. After years of development, the new instrument finally got its shot at spaceflight in July aboard the DYNAMO-2 sounding rocket. Then, just weeks from launch, the instrument was smashed during a testing mishap with the spacecraft. Our team had just 3 weeks to build a new instrument that had taken 5 years to develop. Principal Investigator Glyn Collinson (CUA/GSFC) describes the rocky road to the launch pad of the Dual Electrostatic Analyzer (DESA), and its triumphs and tragedies.

 

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