I am the project scientist for Parker Solar Probe the coolest hottest mission
Under the Sun and as the project scientists I have the job of really
leading the science team but also working day to day with the engineers to
make sure that the goals of the science team are really going to be met by the
spacecraft and the instruments that are going to go up into orbit
I'm Betty Congdon I am the lead engineer for the heat shield for Parker Solar
Probe we call the heat shield the thermal protection system or a TPS
I'm Yanping Guo and I'm the mission design and the navigation manager for NASA's
Parker Solar Probe mission. My name is Annette Dolbow
I'm the integration and test or int lead engineer for Parker Solar Probe. Parker
Solar Probe really is a historic mission it was first dreamed of in 1958 and it's
remained the highest priority mission throughout that period the reason it
hasn't flown is just because it's taken a while for technology to catch up with
the dreams that we had for this amazing mission of all the space missions I've
worked on Parker Solar Probe is the most the challenging and the complex mission
to design and it to fly the launch energy required to reach the Sun it's 55
times of required to get to the Mars and two times to Pluto
The biggest challenge I'd say that I've personally faced but not just me the
whole team of people was figuring out how to build a heat shield to protect
the spacecraft there are a lot of women involved in Parker Solar Probe. We approach in very
key roles almost any piece of the spacecraft any piece of the instrument
you can think of there is a woman involved in that
one of the great things about APL is the encouragement of collaboration. In order
to make the heatshield work on Parker Solar Probe we needed resources
throughout the lab not just in the space department but in our research and
developed department as well as in our missile defense department and so it's
been so great to be a part of that team and see that collaboration in action
people may think mission design is solitary work sitting in front of the
computer all day to design orbits running computer simulations but my job
actually requires a lot of interactions and the coordinations
were the many colleagues on the mission my favorite part of what I do on Solar
Probe is that I get to see the spacecraft from this very very beginning
and put it together like a puzzle and watch as it all comes together for me
the tensest moment I think will be launch itself just the beginning it's I
don't know exactly how I'm gonna feel to be perfectly honest with you to put 10
years of your life into something but then also the first closest approach
will be a very interesting time I mean we'll obviously be working towards
closest approach for a long time and getting science back from the very
beginning but the heat shield has to do as artists work seven years into the
mission which has always been an interesting construct of the method so
the tensest moment for me after launch is when we're sitting in the control
room and we're waiting for that Green telemetry to show that the spacecraft
has turned on and we can actually talk to it the most interesting thing about
working on a historic mission such as Parker Solar Probe is that we're going
to be rewriting textbooks that kids in the future are going to see the solar
system in such a different way because of the work that me and my colleagues
are doing and that's so exciting the coolest thing about my job is just
the sheer feeling that this is a 60 year journey that people have gone on to make
Parker Solar Probe a reality and to be there at the finish line as we're on the
pad and ready to launch that is definitely the coolest thing about my
job