|
 |
Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. is responsible for the spacecraft, system testing, and operations support.
 Kyle Bygott - WISE FSW Engineer
Kyle Bygott was born and raised in Colorado, and his love of the Rockies
never let him get far from home. He majored in Electrical and Computer
Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and starting
working for Ball Aerospace after graduating in 2003. At BATC, his first
project was the NextSat/CSC spacecraft on the Orbital Express
mission--which he continued to work during on-orbit operations.
Following this successful mission all the way through development,
production, and working an operations console from launch through
decommissioning was extremely rewarding, and he now carries that
experience and excitement to the WISE mission.
Outside of work, Kyle enjoys anything that gets him into the mountains.
In the warm months that includes camping, hiking, climbing 14ers,
backpacking, and fly fishing. The winter months are mostly devoted to
snowboarding, with a bit of snowshoeing for variety. When he can't make
it into the mountains he can be found attempting to keep is salsa garden
alive, or playing at the dog park with Keelin.
 Joan Howard - Spacecraft Program Manager
Joan Howard is the program manager for the spacecraft development and for the flight system integration and test. She has 30 years of experience in the development of high tech hardware for both military and NASA programs. She has been at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. since 1996 and before that she worked at Loral Infrared and Hughes Aircraft in the development of infrared sensors.
 Laurren Kanner - WISE Spacecraft Systems Engineer
Laurren Kanner is currently a graduate student in the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Aerospace Engineering Sciences (AES) Department, from which she also received her Batchelor’s degree in 2005. She started at Ball as an intern in Strategic Intelligence during the summer of 2004, and transferred into Systems Engineering as a regular employee by the fall. After a brief stint working on some proposal efforts, Laurren joined the WISE team just before the Spacecraft Requirements Review and has been part of the WISE team at Ball ever since. She is also an avid writer of papers for student paper conferences; she has written and presented 7 times since 2005 on various topics, with all of them being recognized as one of the top 3 papers of their respective conferences. The most recent paper Laurren wrote was based on a WISE study, and took 1st place in the Graduate Division of the 2007 AIAA Region V (Rocky Mountain) Student Paper Conference and subsequently won the Graduate Division of the 2008 AIAA International Student Paper Conference which hosted the winners from all the 2007 AIAA regional conferences.
In what spare time is left after work and grad school, Laurren participates in K-12 outreach and periodically teaches an engineering skills course for freshmen in the AES Department at CU Boulder. As a well-rounded individual, she also co-operates West Water Weddings (a wedding photography company in Colorado), works as a fashion and vintage-style pinup model, and likes to practice swing dancing whenever she gets a chance.
 Martha Kendall – Attitude Determination and Control Subsystem Engineer
Martha Kendall has worked on WISE for over 8 years – starting with the 2001 proposal. She is the Attitude Determination and Control Subsystem (ADCS) engineer for the spacecraft. Included in this task is to ensure that the instrument does not look at the Sun or the Earth, which would cause the cryostat to lose precious hydrogen. She has received a bachelor of science in Space Science (a mixture of astronomy, physics, and engineering) from Florida Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Martha is the 3rd generation in her family to work in the aerospace industry and recalls being fascinated with space from the moment she sat atop her grandfather’s shoulders watching a rocket launch.
Martha has worked at Ball for 10 years and worked at Lockheed Martin Space Mission Systems prior to coming to Ball. While she has lived in Ohio, California, Washington state, and Florida, she truly calls Boulder home. She loves the people, its weather, and its proximity to the mountains. When she is not working on WISE she enjoys volleyball, soccer, traveling, hiking, camping, gardening, reading and scrapbooking.
 Cindy Rueckert - Mission Assurance Manager
Cindy Rueckert has worked at BATC for about four years and has joined the WISE team just in the last year. Before working at BATC she worked at the Navel Undersea Warfare Center as an Obsolescence Engineer for the new Virginia Class Submarine. Cindy has her degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington. Away from work Cindy enjoys spending time outdoors with her husband Jeff and their dog Logan.
 Amy Walsh - WISE C&DH Technical Lead
Amy Walsh enjoys the problem solving aspect of her job as technical lead for the WISE Command and Data Handling Subsystem; the more illusive the problem, the more interesting it becomes. Growing up on the South Coast of California and the Western Slope of Colorado, she did well in math and science as a kid, but she didn’t realize she was an engineer until a high-school teacher pointed her in that direction after her junior year. She was lured in by thoughts of wind tunnels and aircraft and then in college, her imagination was captured by spacecraft.
Amy’s degree is in Aerospace Engineering from UCLA, and she has 15 very rewarding years of experience in the industry working on missions such as Deep Impact, Cassini and Galileo. Her most memorable work experience so far was seeing Comet 9P/Tempel 1 get larger and larger in the images sent from the two Deep Impact spacecraft as the Impactor maneuvered to collide with the comet on July 4, 2005. She is looking forward to delivering excellent data to the WISE science team in the hope that they will advance our understanding of the universe with the new information that WISE will collect.
Outside of work, Amy spends time with her husband, daughter and wolf-dog, preferably running, hiking, mountain biking, motorcycling, or relaxing in front of the wood-burning stove with a good book.
 Alan Lopez
Alan Lopez was born in East Moline, Illinois and attended Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois where he studied Electrical Engineering. After graduating in 1985 he began working at TRW in Redondo Beach California. At that time he earned his MSEE from the University of Southern California. From 1990 to 2005 he worked as a satellite communications engineer at Hughes Space and Communications in El Segundo, California. In 2005 he relocated to Boulder, Colorado to work at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. He is responsible for the Telecommunications subsystem for the WISE spacecraft including the low data rate S-Band spacecraft Command and state-of-health Telemetry hardware as well as the high data rate Ku-Band Science data hardware for the return link through the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). His favorite pastime is spending time with daughter Sydney and wife Janet, preferably camping and fishing.
 Mark Shannon
 Jennifer Marquardt – Thermal Lead
Jennifer Marquardt has worked at BATC for six years, and joined the WISE team as the thermal lead in February 2008. Previous work at Ball includes cryo-thermal lead on the GOES HES study and cryogenic integration and thermal analysis for the Ball cryocooler group. Jennifer has mechanical engineering degrees from the University of Denver and the University of Colorado. Outside of work Jennifer enjoys spending time with her husband Eric.
Joe Hackel – WISE Lead Flight System Structural Engineer
Joe grew up in Washington DC and went off to Swarthmore for college, majoring in Engineering. After working for a couple of years in Singapore for a local computing firm, he returned to the States to get a MS in Aerospace Engineering at University of Colorado, (Boulder) in Aerospace Engineering, working there “hands-on” with a Colorado Space Grant Consortium student spacecraft. Joe started working for Ball Aerospace in 2000 and has had exposure to a wide range of civil, defense, and commercial spacecraft, as well as high precision optical assemblies, becoming a senior member of AIAA. He has also designed missions for a multitude of launch vehicles, including Pegasus, Taurus, Delta II, Delta IV, Atlas V, and Minotaur IV. In his spare time, he likes to kayak and snowboard. He wishes he had more spare time, but he has two young boys (one 3, the other 3 months) that keep him busy.
|
|
