Powell on NASA launch team

Zack Powell, 2010 graduate of Odessa High School and son of Steve and Dr. Linda Powell of Odessa, helped design both the crew module and service module portions of the NASA Orion spacecraft, set to launch Thursday, December 4, at 4 a.m.

"I work as part of the design team as a member of the avionics, power and wiring subsystem. Specifically, I work on the wiring harnessing team which is responsible for designing the cables and connectors that tie all of the components of the vehicle together. And I don't actually work for NASA directly; I work for Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for the Orion Program. NASA is more of our customer in that they are paying us to do the design for them," says Zack.

When asked about his journey to Lockheed Martin, Zack humbly stated, "The path I took to get here was pretty simple actually; I graduated in May from the Colorado School of Mines with a degree in mechanical engineering and applied for a lot of jobs along the way. I was always interested in aerospace so it worked out well that Lockheed Martin is where I ended up."

The Orion spacecraft, powered by the gigantic United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket, will be the first mission since Apollo to carry a spacecraft built for humans to deep space. This particular Orion mission will tell its designers and builders, like Zack, how it stacks up technically. Orion will only be in space for 4.5 hours while orbiting the Earth twice, and will have no one on board. The spacecraft designed for deep-space human travel needs to undergo unmanned testing first, including an all-important descent through Earth's atmosphere and splashdown. "This aspect of the design is really cool, because we are one of the only teams that get to interact with the entire vehicle and we get to be a part of the manufacturing process at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. As a group we interface with our NASA customer as well as the European Space Agency which is designing parts of the service module," says Zack.

With valuable data gathered from Orion's flight test, NASA can improve the spacecraft's design, while building the first Space Launch System rocket; a rocket with a heavy booster powerful enough to send the next Orion around the moon for Exploration Mission-1. Meanwhile, astronauts are training to fly Orion on the second SLS rocket with the dream of missions that return humans to deep-space for the first time in more than 40 years: future human missions to an asteroid and even to Mars.

On an interesting side note, Zack said, "Several pieces of memorabilia will be sent up on the Orion, and serves two purposes: it acts as a mass simulator for the crew since there won't be any living people on the first mission, and it helps the publicity of the mission. To me, human exploration of space is very important for a variety of reasons. We have accomplished a lot in space with robots, exploring Mars and analyzing all the other planets in amazing detail, but there are things that just work better with people doing the work. Plus, I tend to think that a thirst for new frontiers is part of the human spirit and space, as is so famously said in Star Trek, is the final frontier!"