Thermal Vacuum Testing Lab Manager
CurrentI function as the Thermal Vacuum Testing Laboratory Manager at Langley Research Center. TVAC testing is a critical step in the development cycle of any and all space flight hardware to ensure its ability to survive and function in the space environment. Designing and building flight hardware is a very rigorous process, but in the end it comes down to testing this hardware in an TVAC environment that closely resembles it’s operational conditions that determines its flight worthiness. We are also quite often involved in the early stages of the development process testing engineering development units,EDUs. These early tests act as a guide for the development engineers as they work to create a piece of flight hardware. Finally we also function to help prepare materials that eventually go into the manufacturing of space hardware. Many soft good materials will outgas volatiles when exposed to a TVAC environment. Those volatiles can sometimes deposit onto surfaces and components that can diminish performance and in some situations make a component worthless. With the proper conditioning of these soft goods they can perform their function without an impact to the system function.
