• Question: whats it like working at nasa

    Asked by suns521vest on 19 May 2025.
    • Photo: Alistair Glasse

      Alistair Glasse answered on 19 May 2025:

      I spent several periods of a couple of months during the 2010s at the NASA Goddard and NASA Jonhson sites (in Maryland and Texas) as well as visiting NASA JPL in Pasadena. My longest period working with the NASA team was 6 months at the Webb control centre om Baltimore in 2022. My job was leading the team testing (and in-flight commissioning) the MIRI instrument on Webb, and it was the most challenging, but also the most rewarding work of my career. It was very stressful getting MIRI working properly, but my team of young, gender diverse engineers and scientists from across Europe and the US were amazing, working 8 hour shifts night and day to get MIRI able to make the incredible discoveries in astronomy it has delivered over the past few years.
      Mind you, we have our own space agency in Europe (ESA) who are pretty amazing too!!!

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