Sarah Wright ’06 (M.E. ’08)
Chief Technologist, NASA Wallops Flight Facility
Sarah Wright says her first summer as an intern in the software engineering branch at NASA Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore in 2004 was fun but also “a little rough.”
“I really felt like, ‘I’m not smart enough to do this. I don’t understand enough of this software code,’” recalls Wright, who majored in math at 51鱨վ. “But I hung with it and then by the second summer, my project totally aligned with what I was studying in school.”
She found her niche in modeling and simulation and participated in an innovative project to establish a Mission Planning Lab at Wallops where rocket flight is simulated in a 3D visualization environment. “From that summer forward, it was like magic happening all the time.”
Now, as the facility’s chief technologist for the past three years, Wright helps craft NASA Wallops’ strategy for pursuing new technologies and capabilities.
“For me it’s being part of the leading edge of the organization,” she says. “We’re out in front thinking about those sometimes very complex, but also squishy things that are way out there and trying to drive our programs in the organization in that direction.”
Did you always want to work at NASA?
I just fell into it, like pure chance. I was aware of NASA to some degree. I had an uncle who used to work at NASA Langley. He was my cool uncle, and he always had these neat toys at his house. He had the largest telescope I've ever seen anybody have that's not in a museum or at a planetarium. But I never thought, “Oh, I definitely have to work there. I want to be an astronaut when I grow up.”
A friend of mine in college — she was a computer science major, and we had some overlapping computer science classes — said, “Hey, Sarah, I saw this opening for a NASA internship. I'm going to apply. You should, too.”
We put our applications in together. She got one at our parent NASA center, which is Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and I got the opening at Wallops in the software engineering branch.
What’s the best or most surprising thing about working at NASA?
The fact that not everyone has to be an uber genius (to work at NASA).
(Also,) there are so many different types of jobs at NASA. It's not just the engineer and astronaut that you see on most front pages. There are businesspeople, accountants and anything in the finance world. There are lawyers — you wouldn't think you need them, right? In my role now I need our legal folks to help us set up partnerships with companies that we might want to develop collaborations with to help us do new technology development or transfer technologies to them so they can further evolve it.
There are electricians and plumbers and so many facilities support personnel who are always around and that we need to help keep our labs running and make sure we have the unique HVAC systems to cool labs down for specialized electronics.
It really takes everyone to enable the mission.
What’s the coolest or most challenging project you’ve worked on (or one that makes you most proud)?
When I was the test director in 2013, we were bringing online our capability to launch the Antares ELV (expendable launch vehicle). An ELV is a small- to medium-sized orbital class launch vehicle that puts something into orbit, like a spacecraft or takes supplies to the International Space Station. For the NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, we were using the Antares ELV, which was a commercial launch vehicle. We hadn't ever launched that size rocket from here before. We had to build an entirely new launch pad and infrastructure. It's a liquid-fueled rocket, which we (also) hadn't ever launched from here before.
I was the chairperson for the engineering review panel for that launchpad to make sure that everything was ready and tested and validated, and that it was going to meet all the requirements with no safety issues. It was very challenging handling the personalities that were part of it at the time, but it was also an intense learning experience and opportunity to really understand the nuts and bolts behind what was going to be happening on the day of launch.
When I turned around and was the test director, which is the position that's the final go or no-go, we had two successful test flights and then that first full mission right after that where we successfully sent supplies and new science experiments to the astronauts on the space station. I was like, “Wow, I did that.”
Since then, we've had 18 launches of that rocket to the space station. I don't perceive myself as an old person that's been around NASA forever, but I feel like there's some legacy there. I did that 10 years ago and it's still going on today.
How did 51鱨վ prepare you for what you’re doing now?
My first year, I was like, “I'm going to be an engineer.” At the time, the setup at 51鱨վ was such that you got a chance to touch every type of engineering discipline to help you understand what the difference is between them and what they are. Having that exposure to all the different types of engineering helped open my mindset to, “Wow, there's so many different things that somebody can do here.”
How it stuck with me along the way is that I like some exposure to different kinds of things, and I didn't know that until I showed up at 51鱨վ.
Also, in difficult classes like fluid mechanics, having to do a group project forced me to learn how to work with people with different personalities, how to juggle priorities and communicate. It's those intangible things that are hard to teach.
What would you tell young Monarchs to convince them to add NASA to their list of employers to explore after graduation?
Don't fall prey to the imposter syndrome. Don't sell yourself short, don't close any doors or opportunities. If you think you might want to work at NASA, go for it. It's not an elitist group of folks, it's really a lot of regular everyday people just like you and me that just happen to love what they do and love the work that NASA does.