Kate Hendrix Email & Phone Number

Long Beach, Ca, Us

El Segundo, California, Us

San Francisco, California, Us

I led the Power and Avionics team at Astranis, developing next-generation communications micro-satellites.

Hawthorne, California, Us

Lead electrical engineer for Autonomous Flight Termination System (AFTS). First Autonomous Flight Termination System in operation by any orbital-class rocket. System designed and tested in short schedule, with regular interaction from NASA, US Air Force, and FAA. Qualified products to military requirements, system flown on every Falcon 9 booster since it's inaugural flight.I linked an article that goes in depth to the system below. Our air force oversight was quoted in the article.

Hawthorne, California, Us

I design electronics for the SpaceX power group, including digital controls, power converters, signal acquisition, and analog circuity. I also work with radiation testing designs and qualifying our designs for flight.

Hawthorne, California, Us

I designed and tested electronics for the SpaceX power group, including power converters, signal acquisition, digital controls, and analog circuity.I worked with a growing team of engineers to develop and test electronics for the Dragon spacecraft. I was involved with testing and qualification on new power management and distribution electronic hardware for the Dragon C2+ flight, the first successful berthing of the Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. I was in charge of testing hardware and software development, working with a small team of around 3-5 people from the first design review of the box until the delivery of several flight units. The hardware I built comprehensively tested flight hardware on the ground and through rigorous environmental testing.I was involved in the development of new flight hardware, as a redesign of a communications bus between several flight avionics boxes on the Dragon spacecraft. This expanded the bus capability and significantly improved reliability and reduced integration faults. This upgrade was installed on later versions of the Dragon spacecraft and used on successful missions to the ISS. I designed the core electrical bus interface and controllers, which were subsequently installed on affected boxes.I provided design assistance for the design and test of a power management and distribution related avionics box on the Falcon 9 v1.1 launch vehicle. I helped design electrical load switches, protection circuits, current and voltage sensing, point-of-load power supplies, and digital control and telemetry circuits. I also assisted in developing and executing test plans for radiation testing hardware on an ongoing basis. From this experience, I have a working knowledge of and significant interest in single event effects. I also have experience in the design of computers for fault tolerance in radiation environments, and in analog hardware design for single event effects in radiation environments.

Hawthorne, California, Us

Engineer at SpaceX, working on various electronic modules in a test environment. I tested avionics modules for survivability at various environmental conditions, performance, and functionality.I worked on numerous projects in my year and a half with the SpaceX Avionics Test Lab. I helped produce automated test fixtures and assisted with testing and troubleshooting flight hardware. I produced test fixtures for embedded controllers, flight computers, analog filters, power converters, power management units, lithium-ion batteries, flight-termination hardware, communications equipment, and signal conditioning electronics.I have experience with functional, thermal, vibration, thermal-vacuum, and shock testing across a range of electronic devices. I also assisted briefly with water-flow testing.I started the design effort for a Python-based comprehensive test software suite for testing embedded controllers. This program was designed to monitor large amounts of real time data for any deviation in performance, and would log results to a database for storage and post-analysis. This program integrated with internal software, National Instruments drivers, various SCPI-based instruments, and custom electronics. I worked alone and eventually with a small team to bring this product to fruition, undergoing several design revisions in the process.I helped design universal test architectures for various SpaceX hardware, to allow for better resource availability during product testing.I also designed test fixtures for a communications subsystem, and assisted with it's production when the engineer in charge needed assistance.

Worked with team of 12 to create Seawolf III, the club's new platform that debuted in July 2009. The robot placed 15th overall out of 30. We feel our team was very effective, as our total operating budget was $4,000 for creating the craft, while other teams spend in excess of $100,000 for higher placement. Our design was complimented by several of the judges as original and effective.Implemented new design for acoustics system, utilizing powerful memory-mapped DSP+FPGA combination.Senior project completed through club with sponsorship from Analog Devices, with a team of two. We created a hardware-based DSP+FPGA board, and a Data Acquisition board based around the AD9271 data converter over a period of 6 months.Programmed Blackfin 537 DSP and Virtex 4 FPGA to process data from an octal data converter (AD9271) in time domain. The goal of the calculation was to determine the Time Difference of Arrival of a specific frequency arriving at special sensors placed strategically through the craft.Programmed several microcontroller families, including ARM7, Arduino, and AVR Atmega.Worked with team to design H-bridge based motor drivers, interchangeable Arduino boards, craft wiring, sensor data decoding and interpretation, and current monitoring systems.Worked with team to develop FPGA programs for Seawolf II in the 2007-2008 season, implementing UART, SPI, I2C, and PWM modules. Helped debug FPGA programs extensively before and during 2008 competition.Designed MOSFET-based deadman switch, which would kill craft if safety magnet removed.

Wilmington, Ma, Us

Work off-site to help develop and maintain software for interfacing with Analog Devices parts, mostly high-speed data converters.

Wilmington, Ma, Us

Created JESD204A receiver for Stratix II FPGA.Characterized new types of Baluns for under sampling applications.Worked to characterize and experiment with several balun-based front-end designs using a network analyzer.Simulated digital JESD receivers using ModelSim for use with a part in tape-out.Collected data for characterization of newly released ultrasound ICs.

Raleigh, North Carolina, Us

Repaired and maintained classroom equipment, such as computers, amplifiers, Crestron control units, power supplies, DVD/VCR recorders, projectors, and more. Worked with a small team of full-time and part-time employees to maintain a large number of lecture halls, of various sizes. Interacted with staff, faculty, and professors to fix equipment and work around broken equipment if necessary. Provided on-site troubleshooting and also performed 'meet-and-greets' to new professors.I would take emergency calls if equipment malfunctioned during lectures.

Wilmington, Ma, Us

Programmed a two-channel 32k FPGA FIFO block.Assembled and extensively tested a 3G Demonstrator board with a team split amongst two sites. Board implemented full WCDMA signal chain, in direct conversion architecture.Rewrote Verilog code for the AD6636 DDC Evaluation Board.Programmed Python code to control test equipment through GPIB.Filter Characterization for various types of analog and digital filters.

Washington, Dc, Us

Worked with a team of five to create an automated inventory system. Created PHP-based site, with a SQL Lite backend. Site designed with public display of inventory in mind.Hardened site against SQL injection attacks.Cataloged and documented various weather and data processing equipment for showing in a museum.Brought several old computer and electrical equipment to life, including a Data General Desktop Generation machine, a vacuum-tube powered radiosonde receiver, and a stroboscope-based tachometer.