Faces of SLS: Ratana Meekham

I’m an electrical integration technician at Qualis Corp. of Huntsville, Alabama, supporting Jacobs ESSSA on the NASA Engineering & Science Services and Skills Augmentation contract. I’m part of a team that assembles the core-stage avionics and hardware on the massive, half-ring structure used by technicians in NASA Marshall’s Software Integration Testing Facility to assess avionics for the world’s most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System.

Avionics will enable the vehicle navigation, communications and other functions critical to human spaceflight, so we rigorously subject it to simulated sensor failures, temperature fluctuations and many other issues future SLS crews might encounter. The system is then further refined to ensure it is “go for launch.” I’m so proud of our team! To date, we’ve installed roughly 5,000 miles of cables and wired, custom-built panels for avionics testing in this high-tech simulation lab.

My family emigrated from Laos to California; I was born there, in the city of Stockton. We later moved to Huntsville to start a new life. To gain the experience I knew I would need for my career, I studied precision machining in high school. Immediately after graduation, I joined the Jacobs ESTS contract as a technician to polish hardware for the joint Russian-NASA Astronomical Roentgen Telescope X-ray Concentrator. Part of the Russian-NASA Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma mission, it is set for launch in 2017 to conduct high-energy astrophysics research.

I love constantly learning new things, and I’m happy to be part of the team dedicated to the success of SLS!