Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM
Monday, 21 September, 2009 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium
Neil Dennehy
"The NASA Engineering and Safety Center: Providing Independent Test and Analysis for NASA's High Risk Projects"
ABSTRACT -- NASA Engineering and Safety Center's (NESC) mission is to perform value-added independent testing, analysis, and assessments of NASA's high-risk projects to ensure safety and mission success. The NESC, based at Langley Research Center, is an organization dedicated to promoting safety through engineering engineering excellence, unaffected and unbiased by the programs it is evaluating. It is an Agency resource and is meant to benefit the programs and organizations across NASA, the Centers, and the people who work there.This talk will focus on the NESC organization and the way in which NESC works to help NASA avoid future problems by using a dedicated team of technical experts to provide objective engineering and safety assessments of critical, high-risk projects. At the core of the NESC is an established knowledge base of technical specialists pulled from the ten NASA Centers and from a group of partner and organizations external to the Agency. This ready group of engineering experts is organized into 15 disciplines areas called Technical Discipline Teams (TDT). TDT members are from other NASA organizations, industry, academia, and other government agencies. By drawing on the minds of leading engineers across the country, the NESC consistently optimizes its processes, deepens its knowledge base, strengthens its technical capabilities, and broadens its perspectives, thereby further executing its commitment to engineering excellence. NESC’s technical evaluation and consultation products are delivered in the form of written reports that include solution-driven, preventative, and corrective recommendations. In this talk Mr. Dennehy will discuss how the TDTs are formed and operated. He will also highlight some of the specific accomplishments of his GN&C TDT. One particular activity Mr. Dennehy will discuss in detail is the recent successful flight demonstration performed by NESC of an alternate abort system envisioned as a means for future astronauts to escape their launch vehicle. Results of the simulated launch pad abort flight test of the Max Launch Abort System, or MLAS, which took place on 8 July 2009 at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, will be presented in this talk.
SPEAKER -- Mr. Dennehy currently serves as the NASA Technical Fellow for Guidance, Navigation and Control (GN&C). Mr. Dennehy joined NASA in 2000 as the Assistant Chief for Technology for the Guidance, Navigation and Control Division at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. In this capacity he was responsible for leading multiple GN&C technology developments needed to enable Goddard's future Earth and Space science missions. Mr. Dennehy planned and directed a varied portfolio of technology developments that included disturbance rejection systems, miniaturized sensor/actuator avionics for Microsat mission applications, and the common GN&C elements needed for both multi-spacecraft precision formation flight and for space platform rendezvous. Prior to being selected for his current position with the NESC, Mr. Dennehy was the Assistant Chief for Technology for Goddard's Mission Engineering & Systems Analysis Division (Code 590) and he served as the lead technologist within Goddard's Exploration Systems Office. Mr. Dennehy has over 25 years experience in the design, development, integration and operation of GN&C systems for communications, national security, remote sensing and scientific platform applications. Prior to joining NASA, Mr. Dennehy held engineering and management positions with several aerospace industry organizations including SPACECOM, TASC, Fairchild Space Company, EOSAT, Welch Engineering, and the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. He is the primary author or co-author of over twenty technical publications in the GN&C, space systems and technology areas. His principal areas of expertise and interest include spacecraft attitude determination and control system design, space platform Controls-Structures Interaction modeling, simulation and analysis, MEMS inertial sensors and the infusion of technology into NASA's future robotic and crewed spacecraft. Mr. Dennehy received a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the S.M. degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.