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I Am Building SLS: Dee VanCleave, Structural Test Engineer

I was always fascinated with aerospace work, whether it was launching rockets or flying in an airplane. When I was a senior in high school, we were asked to write an essay called, “What Does Your Future Look Like in 10 Years?” One of things I wrote down was working for NASA.  I started working for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., in May 2008.  It has lived up to my dream in every way.

I am a structural test engineer in the Structural Strength Test Lab at the Marshall Center. I was the lead test engineer for the recent Orion stage adapter structural qualification test. The adapter will connect the Orion spacecraft to a Delta IV rocket for Orion’s first mission, Exploration Flight Test (EFT)-1. I led all the test planning and test set-up activities for the loads test, where we pushed, pulled and twisted a test article adapter with similar conditions it will experience in flight. We basically want to ensure the flight adapter can handle those conditions.

There is such a variety of work required of the lead test engineer.  It is never boring and constantly produces new challenges.  It’s always exciting to see real flight hardware, much less be responsible for lifting it, attaching hardware to it and actually applying structural loads to it.

My advice to students is to study hard (because that really does matter), and dream big.  As long as we have dreams and goals, I think we are pursuing them, even if we don’t realize it.

Image credit: NASA/MSFC