Langley Celebrates Black History Month: Alexus Cottonham

Alexus Cottonham is an aerospace engineer supporting NASA Langley’s Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate. She completed a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in systems engineering at Colorado State University. She started with NASA in 2020 at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and is completing her first year at NASA Langley.

Who or what inspired you to choose your career and why?

Growing up, I actually didn’t like science. I found science fairs so stressful, and I wanted nothing to do with it. It wasn’t until I took physics in high school, and I was like, “Wow! This is amazing! You can predict the future? You can use this mathematical equation to tell me where Mars will be and its orbit 20 years from now?” I just fell in love. I had a high school teacher, high school physics teacher, Mr. [William] Budell who saw my enthusiasm and really encouraged me to think about a career in engineering, which I had never done before. As I was exploring different career options, I found aerospace, where I could combine my love of space and engineering.

What do you find most rewarding about working with NASA?

The most rewarding thing I find about working at NASA is the culture here. We really do have that ‘One NASA’ mindset. We’re all working towards a shared vision. Not to say that we don’t have our challenges or disagreements, but it makes finding solutions to those challenges so much easier knowing that we’re all working for the benefit of humankind.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

Outside of work, I have a lot of different interests. I enjoy spending time in nature, checking out city parks, state parks, and national parks nearby. I also enjoy board gaming. I love to travel and I’m usually planning my next big trip outside of work, and whenever I can, I like to support local theater.

What advice would you give young people who might be interested in pursuing a career at NASA?

To those who are interested in a career at NASA, I usually give advice to two different groups. You have a group of young people who know that they want to work at NASA but aren’t really sure what they’re dream job is, and that’s perfectly okay. I would say to that group, find your passion. Find the thing that sparks joy in you, and you can do that by pursuing internships, finding extracurriculars that spark interest, and once you find that passion, follow it! I used to think that NASA was only for scientists and engineers, but that’s so not true! We have communications specialists and accountants, lawyers, and artists and so many different fields of careers here, so I would explore whatever you’re passionate about.

Then to the second group, to people who know what their dream job is I would say, find a mentor, somebody who’s in the next stage of life that you trust and ask them questions. How did they get to where they are? How would they have done things differently if they had the opportunity?

Last piece of advice to both groups I would say is to be open to opportunities. You may not always find a direct path to where you’re going but you can find opportunities along the way that will help you gain the skills and make connections that will eventually get you to where you want to go.

How does your background and heritage contribute to your perspective and approach in your role at NASA?

Growing up, I heard the old African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child” many, many times. And that’s true to my experience. Growing up in a single-parent household I saw my mom make connections with friends, with my teachers, and rely on my extended family to give me anything and everything that I needed, whether it be childcare or new clothes for school, or supporting me in my extracurriculars. And that principle is something that I like to bring into my current work. Nobody goes into space alone. It takes a village. It takes a team, and so not only do I look for strengths in myself that I can bring to my team to help us achieve our goals, but I’m also always looking around to others to see, “Hey! that person is doing amazing work!” or “This team is really awesome at this.” How can we partner together to improve our processes, to better our design, and achieve our goals together?

The 2024 theme for Black History Month is “African Americans and the Arts,” spanning the many impacts that Black Americans have had on visual arts, music, cultural movements and more. How have the arts played a role in your life? 

The arts have played a big role in my life. Growing up I was so shy. I would have never agreed to do a video interview or give a presentation to dozens or hundreds of people like I have at NASA. I got over my nerves and I jumped into drama club in middle school, and I loved it and I stuck with it all throughout high school becoming the president of the drama club my senior year. I learned so many skills that I still use today in my role. From customer interactions and customer satisfaction that we had to learn while we were selling tickets for our shows. I also learned how to consider different perspectives. When you’re putting on a show you have to think about the audience, how they’re going to react. You have to think about the actors on stage and the crew backstage and how it all comes together to complete our mission, which is putting on a great show. These are principles I still use in my work today.

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Julia L. Bradshaw

NASA, Intuitive Machines to Discuss Moon Mission, Science Successes

NASA and Intuitive Machines will co-host a televised news conference at 2 p.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 28, from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to highlight the company’s first mission, known as IM-1.

The lander, called Odysseus, carried six NASA science instruments to the South Pole region of the Moon as part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, and Artemis campaign. The IM-1 mission is the first U.S. soft landing on the Moon in more than 50 years, successfully landing on Feb. 22.

The news conference will air on NASA+, NASA Television, and the agency’s website

Learn how to stream NASA TV on a variety of platforms, including social media.

Participants in the news conference include:

• Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator, Exploration, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington
• Sue Lederer, CLPS project scientist, NASA Johnson
• Steve Altemus, chief executive officer and co-founder, Intuitive Machines
• Tim Crain, chief technology officer and co-founder, Intuitive Machines

Media interested in participating in person must RSVP no later than 11 a.m. on Feb. 28. To participate by telephone, media must RSVP no later than one hour before the start of the news conference. Submit either request to the NASA Johnson newsroom at 281-483-5111 or jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov. The agency’s media accreditation policy is online.

For more information about the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/clps

-end-

Cheryl Warner / Karen Fox
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
cheryl.m.warner@nasa.gov/ karen.c.fox@nasa.gov

Nilufar Ramji / Laura Sorto
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
nilufar.ramji@nasa.gov/ laura.g.sorto@nasa.gov

Josh Marshall
Intuitive Machines, Houston
jmarshall@intuitivemachines.com

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Jennifer M. Dooren

A Splash of Pink

A pair of roseate spoonbills add a pop of color to this image taken Sept. 13, 2005, in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, northwest of Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Spoonbills like this female (left) and male duo inhabit areas of mangrove such as on the coasts of southern Florida and Texas. These birds feed on shrimps and fish in the shallow water, sweeping their bills from side to side.

This and other wildlife abound throughout Kennedy as it shares a boundary with the Wildlife Refuge, home to some of the nation’s rarest and most unusual species of wildlife. The wildlife refuge is a habitat for more than 310 species of birds, 25 mammals, 117 fishes and 65 amphibians and reptiles.

Image Credit: NASA

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Monika Luabeya

NASA Grants to Engage Students in Quiet Supersonic Community Overflight

NASA has issued new grants to five universities to help develop education plans for the community overflight phase of the agency’s Quesst mission, which aims to demonstrate the possibility of supersonic flight without the typical loud sonic booms.

The new grants, from NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement, will provide each university team with $40,000 to develop science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) engagement strategic implementation plans for those Quesst community overflights. The awards will focus on plans for engaging with students and educators in the communities that NASA will eventually select for overflights. This will help ensure communities are accurately informed about this phase of Quesst and what involvement in the mission will look like for their community.

“The Quesst mission is unique at NASA, with community input playing a major part in its success,” said Eric Miller, deputy mission integration manager for Quesst. “These new awards will allow NASA to learn from other STEM professionals, informing us as we develop a framework to effectively engage with students and educators.”

The selected institutions and their projects, are:

• Carthage College, Kenosha, Wisconsin – STEM Quesst, Wisconsin Space Grant
• Cornell University, Ithaca, New York –Quesst Community Overflight STEM Engagement New York Space Grant Consortium
• Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia – Engaging the National NASA Space Grant Network in Support of the Quesst Community Overflight STEM Engagement
• University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, San Juan, Puerto Rico – Space Grant Quesst Community Overflight STEM Engagement: Sounds of Our World
• University of California, San Diego, San Diego, California – California Space Grant Planning Support for the Quesst Community Overflight STEM Engagement

The deliverables from the awards will help inform a student engagement approach that can be implemented in any community, state, and region that may be selected. NASA has yet to select communities for the overflights.

Through Quesst, NASA is developing its X-59 experimental aircraft, which will fly faster than the speed of sound while producing only a quiet sonic “thump.” After the X-59 completes a series of flight tests, NASA will fly it over a number of communities across the country, gathering data about what people below hear.

For more information about Quesst, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission/quesst/

-end-

Gerelle Dodson
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-4637
gerelle.q.dodson@nasa.gov

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Lauren E. Low

Former Student Launch Competitor Turns Experience into NASA Engineering Career

By Jessica Barnett

Sometimes, all it takes is a few years and the right people to completely change a person’s career trajectory. One such example is Meredith Patterson, an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, who went from knowing little to nothing about rockets to being part of the team that is working to put humans back on the Moon.

She credits her success in large part to NASA’s Student Launch, which not only helped her uncover her passion for aerospace engineering but gave her the knowledge and experience she needed to get where she is today.

The annual Student Launch competition invites student teams from across the U.S. to spend nine months designing, building, and testing a high-powered rocket carrying a scientific or engineering payload. The hands-on, research-based engineering activity culminates each year in a final launch in Huntsville. This year’s challenge conclusion is set for April 10-14, with the final launch date set for April 13 at Bragg Farms in Toney, Alabama.

While Student Launch is open to students as young as sixth grade, Patterson was in her junior year of high school when she learned about the competition during a tour of North Carolina State University.

“When I walked into the rocketry lab there, I knew then, however many years it was going to take, I wanted to be the person who was able to run that and help put together everything for us to be successful in Student Launch,” Patterson said.

She attended North Carolina State for five years, participating in each year’s Student Launch competition and leading the team to a fourth-place win during her final year. She received her Level I and Level II certifications from Tripoli Rocketry Association through Student Launch, and she was able to connect with mentors from Tripoli and the National Rocketry Association that helped her get the hands-on experience and technical know-how she believes are key to success in the aerospace industry.

“My leadership skills grew, my system engineering skills grew, and my technical writing skills grew,” Patterson said. “Having mentors through the competition allowed me to ask questions and learn on the technical side of things, too. I think I use more information from Student Launch day to day than from almost any of my classes in college.”

She said attending an engineering camp at 16 years old first unlocked her interest in spaceflight and rocketry, but it was through Student Launch that she got to really dive in and deepen her passion.

“It’s crazy to think that less than 10 years ago, I had never even built a rocket, and now I can build Level II-sized rockets on my own and I’m actively working on the biggest solid rocket boosters in the world,” Patterson said. “Just in the past year, I’ve gone from the L-class motor that we used for Student Launch to casting 11-inch motors to now actively watching the casting of the SLS (Space Launch System) boosters.”

Student Launch is part of NASA’s Artemis Student Challenges. Seventy teams representing 24 states and Puerto Rico were selected to compete in the 2024 Student Launch Challenge.

Marshall hosts the Student Launch challenge with management support provided by NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement – Southeast Region. Funding is provided, in part, by NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate and NASA’s Next Gen STEM project.

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