When NASA and its international partners launch the precision science instrument Hi-C – or High-Resolution Coronal Imager – aboard a sounding rocket later this month to study the sun’s atmosphere, it will include improvements to its camera performed by engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Capable of delivering some of the sharpest images ever of the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, Hi-C is designed to take pictures of the corona for about five minutes before returning to Earth. It’s part of NASA’s mission to learn more about our sun and its impacts on our home planet.
Marshall’s Science and Technology Office chief engineer Dave Edwards and his team of engineers worked with the Hi-C’s specialized camera to get it ready for its second flight to see into the sun’s multi-million degree corona.
This camera was developed by the Marshall team. They purchased the charged-coupled device and developed customized printed circuit boards in-house to operate the camera and reduce the noise in the camera system. The software team developed complex code to control the camera and maintain a highly constrained operating environment. As a result, the Marshall team developed a camera system unlike anything ever produced.
“The team is now out at White Sands assembling the payload, preparing for launch,” said Edwards. “We’re really excited about that.”
That’s what chief engineers do. They tackle challenging problems. They find solutions. They make instruments work better.
While growing up in Florence, Alabama, Edwards was never far from the activities of Marshall. He remembers how his family used to travel to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville to see Ms. Baker, a squirrel monkey that was one of the first two animals launched into space by the United States and recovered alive.
Edwards has now held many different positions within the agency, most recently as the Deputy Director of Program and Technical Integration in the Space Flight Systems Directorate at the Glenn Research Center. “I really enjoyed the detail at Glenn and gained a tremendous appreciation for their expertise and capabilities,” said Edwards. “I’m excited to continue working with colleagues at Glenn on projects such as iSAT, GHAPS and eCryo that use our compatible capabilities.”
In his daily activities, Edwards’ role is to support the Science and Technology Office, which includes serving as Chief Engineer on several projects, keeping track of the more than 30 activities and projects that are within his portfolio and keeping the engineering managers apprised of the current status of these projects.
“Within Science and Technology, it’s a very dynamic world,” said Edwards. “Things are going well one minute and challenging the next. It’s simply the nature of technology development – it moves at a very fast pace.”
After graduating from the University of North Alabama in Florence in 1985, Edwards moved to Auburn, Alabama, and enrolled in Auburn University’s graduate program in physics. It was there Edwards was introduced to NASA. His mentoring professor, John Williams, was receiving an educational grant from the agency at the time to investigate the effects of atomic oxygen on materials.
One day, as Edwards visited Huntsville to give Marshall’s Materials and Processes Laboratory a status update on their research, he received a form from Dr. Ann Whitaker, Division Chief of the Engineering Physics Division.
“It was a standard form 171 – that’s how we used to do the applications. And I said, ‘Alright I’ll take it back and fill it out,’” said Edwards. “She said, ‘No, here’s a pencil, fill it out now.’ That’s how I came to work at Marshall Space Flight Center. Ann brought me on board to build a Space Environmental Effects test capability here.”
A few years later, following in the footsteps of Dr. Whitaker, Edwards completed a PhD in Materials Engineering through the Full-Time Study Program.
“I was not one of those kids who said, ‘I’ve got to go to work at NASA,’” Edwards explained. “It was always something that was cool and seemed unreachable. And then when I had an opportunity to work here and build my own facility — that was a dream come true.”
Edwards has a great appreciation for the numerous possibilities NASA provides.
“I don’t know of another organization that offers as much opportunity as NASA,” he said. “There is so much opportunity within this agency for those willing to pursue it.”
When asked for advice for people just starting out with NASA, Edwards explains that one of the lessons he has had to learn is that fear is a normal part of life.
“Everyone has some kind of fear, and we can take those fears and in our own mind, we can create giant monsters out of them,” he said. “In reality, things are never as bad as we imagine. Accepting that will enable you to stretch well outside of your comfort zone.”
Currently, Edwards and his team are working on maturing the technologies necessary for the nation’s journey to Mars, and are making sure the technologies reach a usable, reliable state when it comes time to employ them.
One such technology is in-space manufacturing, which allows 3-D printers to create critical hardware and tools to perform maintenance.
“On a long-duration mission, crews are going to need spare parts,” Edwards explained. “We don’t have a sack big enough to carry all the spare parts we might need. One way to resolve that is in-space manufacturing.”
When he’s not fixing problems, Edwards enjoys hunting and fishing.
“We live in one of the richest areas in the world for hunting and fishing – the Tennessee River Valley,” he said. “Mostly, for me, it’s a vigorous walk in the woods or being out on the river in a boat, either is a great way to spend a day.”
As for the goals of his office, Edwards says the single most important objective of the Chief Engineers Office is to ensure any project they work on is successful.
“Whatever success means for the mission, when we achieve that, the Chief Engineers Office did its job and lived up to the expectations everybody has of us.”
The one technology that stands out the most for Edwards in terms of his enjoyment and interest is solar sail propulsion.
“It has its application, so I’m excited to see solar sail technology moving into the realm where it can provide another useful propulsion system to the nation,” he said.
Throughout his 27-year career, his excitement about NASA and space exploration in general has continued to develop. Edwards takes great pride in what he does and in the agency he works for.
“In the grand scheme of things, what we do here at NASA is just cool and we have absolutely won the lottery when you think about it,” he said. “We live in the greatest country on the planet, we work for the greatest organization that has been conceived by mankind, and we are enabling the future of space exploration at this very moment.”
Hi-C will launch on a NASA Black Brant V sounding rocket from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico no earlier than July 27 and travel on a parabolic trajectory for the duration of its flight. The Hi-C payload will land by parachute and be recovered. The Imager contains significant improvements in camera quality from its first flight in 2012, which captured the highest-resolution images ever taken of the sun’s corona.