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By NASA
Christina Zeringue is the chief safety and mission assurance officer at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. She is responsible for the safety and mission success of all activities, including rocket propulsion testing and operation of the NASA Stennis federal city.NASA/Danny Nowlin Christina Zeringue remembers being 10 years old, looking to the sky through her new telescope to view the Moon and planets on Christmas night. It opened her eyes to space and inspired her journey from the backyard to NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
“I became fascinated with astronomy and learning about stars and constellations, the solar system and planetary orbits, solar and lunar eclipses, and challenging myself to find stars and nebula at different distances from Earth,” Zeringue said. “I was able to do and learn so much just from my own yard.”
She became obsessed with following the development and images produced from the Hubble Space Telescope, which launched on a space shuttle that featured three main engines tested at NASA Stennis.
Zeringue desired to learn more about the universe and find a way to be part of the effort to continue exploring. The Kenner, Louisiana, native ultimately made her way to NASA Stennis following graduation from the University of New Orleans.
As the NASA Stennis chief safety and mission assurance officer, Zeringue is responsible for safety and mission success of all site activities. These include both rocket propulsion testing and operation of the NASA Stennis federal city, where NASA and more than 50 federal, state, academic, public, and private aerospace, technology, and research organizations located onsite share in operating costs while pursuing individual missions.
Christina Zeringue enjoys viewing the partial solar eclipse on Oct. 14, 2023, from Slidell, Louisiana. NASA/Danny Nowlin “I have a broad range of responsibilities, which allows me to work with many talented people, pushes me to learn and develop new skills, and keeps my work interesting every day,” Zeringue said.
Zeringue’s work has supported NASA’s Artemis campaign to return astronauts to the Moon through her contributions to RS-25 engine testing and Green Run testing of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) core stage ahead of the successful launch of Artemis I.
The Pearl River, Louisiana, resident often encounters engineering or safety challenges where there is not a clear answer to the solution.
“We work together to understand new problems, determine the best course of action, and create new processes and ways to handle every challenge,” she said.
In total, Zeringue has worked 28 years at NASA Stennis – 14 as a contractor and 14 with NASA.
As a contractor, Zeringue initially worked as test article engineer for the Space Shuttle Main Engine Program. She followed that by serving as the quality systems manager, responsible for the quality engineering and configuration management of various engine systems, such as the space shuttle main engine, the RS-68 engine or Delta IV vehicles, and the J-2X upper stage engine.
Zeringue transitioned to NASA in 2011, first as a facility systems safety engineer and then as chief of the operations support division within the NASA Stennis Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate.
Her proudest career moment came early when working on final inspection of a new high pressure fuel turbopump. She noted a piece of contamination lodged behind the turbine shroud, which had been missed in previous inspections. Ultimately, the part was returned for disassembly before its next flight.
“While our post-test inspections can sometimes become routine, that day still stands out to me as a way that I really knew I directly contributed to the safety of our astronauts,” she said.
From the time Zeringue first looked through her new telescope, to her role as NASA Stennis chief safety and mission assurance officer, each moment along the way has contributed to the advice Zeringue shares with anyone considering a career with NASA. “Stay curious, invest in your own development, share your expertise with others, and try something new every day,” she said.
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By European Space Agency
ESA’s groundbreaking Biomass satellite, designed to provide unprecedented insights into the world’s forests and their crucial role in Earth’s carbon cycle, has been launched. The satellite lifted off aboard a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on 29 April at 11:15 CEST (06:15 local time).
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By European Space Agency
The first IRIDE satellite – the Pathfinder Hawk – is now in orbit around Earth after lifting off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on 14 January.
As its ‘Pathfinder’ name suggests, this new microsatellite is a prototype for one of the six IRIDE constellations, which are tailored to provide information for a wide range of environmental, emergency and security services for Italy.
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
HyAxiom’s 440-kilowatt phosphoric acid fuel cell is now its flagship product, and it still builds on technical know-how developed under the Apollo and space shuttle programs.Credit: HyAxiom Inc. NASA’s investment in fuel cells dates to the 1960s when most of the world was still reliant on fossil fuels. A fuel cell generates electricity and heat when hydrogen and oxygen bond through an electrolyte. Because its only by-product is water, it’s an environmentally friendly power source.
The agency’s interest in fuel cells came when NASA needed to fuel missions to the Moon. Engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston looked to fuel cells because they could provide more energy per pound than batteries could over the course of a long mission. At that time, fuel cells were just a concept that had never been put to practical use.
NASA funded development of the first practical fuel cells because they were necessary to cut weight from the Apollo spacecraft for Moon missions. Three fuel cells in the Apollo service module provided electricity for the capsule containing the astronauts. The division of Pratt & Whitney that made the fuel cells later became UTC Power, now a subsidiary of Doosan Group known as HyAxiom Inc.Credit: NASA NASA funded three companies, including a portion of Pratt & Whitney, to develop prototypes. For Apollo mission fuel cells, NASA selected the Pratt & Whitney group, which soon became UTC Power, as the supplier of all the space shuttle fuel cells. With the agency funding and shaping its technology development, UTC Power eventually started offering commercial fuel cells. The company is now known as HyAxiom Inc. and operates from the same plant in South Windsor, Connecticut, that produced fuel cells for the agency.
The company released its first commercial fuel cell in the mid-1990s and introduced its current product line about a decade later.
“The models they built for these products we use today had a lot of the electrochemistry understanding from the space program,” said Sridhar Kanuri, HyAxiom’s chief technology officer.
HyAxiom now produces around 120 units per year but expects to ramp up as government investments in fuel cells increase. The U.S. government plans to use fuel cells to store energy from renewable sources.
Today’s commercial fuel cell companies received much of their knowledge base from NASA. John Scott, NASA’s principal technologist for power and energy storage said, “All these companies trace their intellectual property heritage, their corporate heritage, even the generations of personnel to those companies NASA funded back in the early 1960s.”
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Last Updated Jul 15, 2024 Related Terms
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