From watching his grandfather work as a machinist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, to working on his own toy model rocket as a kid, Jerit Wendlandt’s interest in space exploration began much earlier than the start of his career at Aerojet Rocketdyne 21 years ago.
Wendlandt continued working on model rockets through high school, which inspired him to study engineering in college. However, his journey to becoming an engineer was not an easy one. Due to domestic and financial issues, it took Wendlandt seven years and four school transfers to earn his degree.
Wendlandt is now a systems engineer at Aerojet Rocketdyne, the maker of the RS-25 engines that power NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), where he models how the RS-25 engine works and how it interfaces with the rocket. His work has helped the SLS rocket come to fruition as NASA and its partners prepare for Artemis I, an uncrewed flight test that will see SLS launch the Orion spacecraft thousands of miles past the Moon and return it back to Earth.
“It’s the perfect job for me because we span a broad range of topics,” said Wendlandt. “I got lucky because my job is the engineer’s dream. You get to work all the different subjects you’ve learned in school.”
While Wendlandt’s passion for model rocketry helped steer his educational path, his grandfather’s passion for space that was then passed onto him was the original guiding point for his career. “My grandpa built probes that went to every planet from Mercury to Neptune, so we always saw Voyager 2 and others as ‘grandpa’s probes,’” Wendlandt said. “Long after he had retired, I was able to see the data from Voyager 2, and I was hooked ever since.”
July 4, 2006 – the day NASA launched the Space Shuttle Discovery – was momentous for Wendlandt for more than one reason. On his way to support the shuttle launch that day, Wendlandt visited his grandfather in hospice and he still vividly remembers his grandfather’s words.
“I remember my grandfather started talking about Mars and how he wanted me to help us get there,” Wendlandt recalled. “I didn’t think much about it at the time, but now those words are so special to me because that’s exactly what we’re doing now and that’s where we’re headed.”