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Interview with Safety & Mission Operations Assurance Manager, Khanara Ellers
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What is your role on the mission?
I’m the JPL safety and mission operations assurance manager for Stardust-NExT.
Have you only worked on comet missions?
I'm currently working on another comet mission called EPOXI, which is the Deep Impact extended mission.
What are some of the challenges that accompany your job?
Some of the challenges in an operations mission are:
- With a post launch, we have to be extra cognizant of the hardware aging and pay close attention to hardware performance to understand the risk of the hardware exceeding its qualified life. One of the big decisions that the team is currently evaluating is whether or not we should swap RCS from primary A-string to the secondary B-string side—because the A side is exceeding the qualification life test.
- We need to be alert of the space environment activities, such as solar flare etc..
- And most of all, my job as MOAM is to be part of the team and at the same time, independently, provide the team's check-and-balance.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
As a nine-year-old watching Neil Amstrong walk on the moon, I knew that I wanted to be an engineer working in the space program. However, because I lived with my family in a third world country, Cambodia, it was a huge challenge to dream of being a woman engineer—Cambodian women are typically home makers, secretaries or teachers.
Who inspired you growing up?
I was inspired by watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon in 1969 on our freshly bought black-and-white TV. Right then and there, I decided to be an engineer for the space program—I’m pretty sure that I was not the only youngster that was inspired by this moon walk.
How is your job important to the mission's success?
My job is to provide independent assessment to the project to ensure that the risk of operation is identified, assessed and mitigated, as well as to bring in the appropriate "guru" in the specific disciplines to help the team analyze the mitigation approach. In other words, I am the second set of independent eyes for the project.
Is this the only mission you've worked on?
No, I’m working on another comet mission called EPOXI as well as two other technology demonstration instruments for the international space station.
