Mines Nancy is pleased to welcome Erin Hayward, an engineer at NASA, for a conference titled “Surviving Space: Life as a Materials Engineer for NASA,” followed by a Q&A session on Monday, October 14th, from 5:00 to 6:00 pm in Amphitheater 200. Below you will find an excerpt from her presentation and a short biography. This is your opportunity to ask her any questions about her profession, her career, and her experiences as a flight controller for the ISS and an analogue astronaut.
Surviving Space: life as a materials engineer for NASA
NASA conducts a huge variety of science and exploration missions across the solar system. One thing that all these missions have in common is that hardware must survive and perform in the harsh space environment. Dr. Erin Hayward will give an overview of the most important environmental factors that affect materials and technologies in space (including vacuum, radiation, thermal extremes, and more!), and share details of her experiences in conducting ground-based space environmental effects testing campaigns.
Dr. Erin Hayward joined NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in 2017 as a member of the Space Environmental Effects Testing Team, part of the Non-Metallic Materials and Space Environmental Effects Branch at Marshall Space Flight Center (Huntsville, Alabama, USA). She has also trained as a payload flight controller for International Space Station and served as an analog astronaut. Before coming to NASA, Erin spent 18 months as a postdoctoral fellow at CEA (Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives) in Saclay, France. She graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2012 with a PhD in Nuclear and Radiological Engineering, and received her Bachelor of Science in Physics from Tulane University in 2007.
