NASA — Selected Systems & Integration

Mechanical design, integration, inspection & testing at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Mechanical DesignIntegration & TestingInventorANSYS

Overview

Over two summers at NASA Goddard, I worked on flight-grade mechanical systems covering design, analysis, and hands-on integration and testing. Work spanned mounting and support systems, gear-train design and verification, and qualification testing of seals and optical assemblies.

Experiences

Summer 2024

Model-T Gear Train Design

Modeled and verified the Model-T deployable telescope gear train, defining geometry, material choices, and torsional requirements to meet launch and deployment constraints. Used Autodesk Inventor for CAD and Mathcad to justify torque, fatigue, and durability choices, and performed trade studies to reduce stress while improving performance.

Summer 2025

Rigging System Design and I&T

Summer 2025 centered on rigging system design for the Landsat Next startracker, plus hands-on integration and testing for the Da Vinci probe. That included precision metal seal and sapphire window qualification, optical alignment, vibration and leak testing, and tolerance verification across multiple flight subsystems.

Project Media

Working at a lab bench at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center — Working at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center during the Summer 2025 internship, focused on integration and testing of flight-grade hardware and optical assemblies.

Presenting or explaining technical work to colleagues at NASA — Collaborative testing session on flight-grade hardware at NASA Goddard.

Focused bench work during hardware inspection or assembly at NASA — Focused work during integration and testing activities at NASA Goddard.

Team gathering or luncheon event at NASA Goddard — 2024 Space Club Scholars cohort.

Tools & Methods

Autodesk InventorANSYSMSC Nastran/ADAMSMathcadMATLAB