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My name is Kathryn Mitchell and I work as a Space Suit Assembly Engineer at the Johnson Space Center in the Crew
and Thermal Systems division, Spacesuit and Crew Survival Systems Branch. So I got involve with NASA through the
Cooperative Education program back when I was a freshman in college. So to give you a little bit of background, I went
to Purdue University and was studying aerospace engineering there. My freshman year NASA came out and did some
interviews for a co-op positions so I completed an interview and found out that I was given an offer to come down to the
Johnson Space Center in Houston and start a co-op. So then, kind of throughout school I completed several different co-op
rotations which are similar to internships, so several internships here at the Johnson Space Center and then was
offered a position full time once I graduated school. Alright, so when I first hired on, back in the August of 2008,
I began working on the Constellation program so I was working on Lunar Suit Development for that program. As
NASA as an agency has transitioned away from the Constellation program and on to other things, I've also kind
of transitioned, and I've been doing more what you would call suit technology development. So working on future suit
technologies that would get us to a suit for whatever our next mission may be, whether that's going to an asteroid or
somewhere like the Moon or Mars. So then, specifically, I'm looking at a couple of the areas on the suits that I've worked
with. I've been doing a lot of focused work with materials research and materials work for future suits and also working
with a lot of glove development. So, looking at taking where we are at with the current gloves and improving those for
future missions. There are several aspects of my job that really excite me and make me excited to come into work everyday.
One of those is just the variety of different work that I get to do. So doing a lot of development work, I feel like I'm constantly
kind of on the cutting edge of what we're doing with space suit development. So I get to be over in our lab, we have an
Advanced Suit Development Lab, over in the lab doing hands on work building up new prototype spacesuits. I also am
involved with a lot of test work with the various spacesuits that we have in our lab. And fortunately we get to test the suits in
several different environments, so anything from taking them out into the field, different desert locations, different field locations
to test them there. We get to do testing on the Reduced Gravity Aircraft, so looking on the reduced gravity both microgravity
and lunar or martian gravity on the aircraft. And also thereÕs been opportunities to go out and do tests in the NBL, which is
the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, or the big pool that NASA has which they train their astronauts underwater in. So, we've
gotten to take suits out there and do testing there as well. Those, that variety of different locations makes the job a lot of fun.
Fortunately I get to apply the lessons I learned in school to my job almost every day and in many different ways as well. So
one of the ways is kind of doing straight up math work, so those days when I'm doing calculations for something like the strength
of one of the materials on the suit and seeing if it can take the structural loading that weÕre putting into it when weÕre doing a
certain test. I also, one of the big things you learn in all your science, engineering, and mathematics classes is problem solving
so if we do have an issue with one of the suits in a test that we are doing, you know, we go through and we troubleshoot that.
And we use, kind of, a method where we go through, figure out what went wrong, look at ways we can fix it, and then go an and
perform future tests. So a lot of math, a lot of problem solving, and then also one of the big ones is teamwork. So IÕm constantly
working on teams of other scientists and engineers. You know, any of those team projects that I did back in school really have
helped me to get along with other people, to communicate well with other folks, and get in that teamwork aspect.