Damaris Guevara

"NIKA: Enhancing Direct-to-Earth Communication"

ABSTRACT -- During her talk, Damaris Guevara, project manager of NIKA, will highlight the NIKA system, its unique benefits, the engineering challenges overcome, and the systems first in-space users. NIKA is establishing four tri-band antennas around the globe in Fairbanks, Alaska; Wallops Island, Virginia; Punta Arenas, Chile; and Svalbard, Norway. These antennas will provide past, present, and future missions with S-, X-, and Ka-band communications capabilities, bringing unprecedented flexibility to the Near Space Network and enhancing direct-to-Earth communications.

SPEAKER -- Damaris Guevara, project manager of the Near Space Network Initiative for Ka-band Advancement (NIKA), has been with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center since 2001. After earning her Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Capital University in 2001, she joined Goddard’s Flight Data Systems & Radiation Effects Branch, Code 561. There, she developed FPGAs and circuit boards. Although her background is in circuit design, her work has always connected back to space communications in some way. She currently has communications boards flying on the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS), the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), and more. Next, Damaris moved to the Telecommunication Networks and Technology Branch, Code 566, where she worked on ground modems for flight projects. It was this ground system experience that brought her to NIKA. In 2017, Damaris was matrixed to the Exploration and Space Communications, Code 450, as a system engineer for NIKA. Since then, she has risen within the effort and is now the project manager.

Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov