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Brian T. Smith 鈥�93 EE

As the College鈥檚 Patrick J. Cunningham, Jr. and Susan Ward '80 Endowed Lecture Series in Engineering speaker, NASA flight director Brian T. Smith 鈥�93 EE, presented 鈥淭he International Space Station: Engineering the Unknown鈥�.

Describing the International Space Station as 鈥渢he greatest engineering feat of mankind,鈥� Smith explained how, after 11 years of construction and 115 space flights conducted on five different types of launch vehicles, the ISS now serves as a world class orbiting laboratory. 鈥淭hat orbiting laboratory,鈥� he added, 鈥渉as sustained a permanent human presence for over 17 years, making it also a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, closet, gym and shipping/receiving center.鈥� Keeping the ISS operational and supplied is a 24/7 job performed by specialized engineering and operations teams from around the world. Smith noted that despite the wealth of knowledge amassed over the years, and the testing, training and meticulous planning involved in their execution, 鈥淢issions do not always go as planned, and sometimes there is not a lot of information available to figure out why.鈥� Smith shared how the NASA community uses creative engineering, reverse engineering and real-time engineering to solve problems in the absence of key information.

Smith鈥檚 NASA Resume

• After graduating from 棉花糖直播 magna cum laude in 1993, Smith spent five years as a hardware engineer for L-3 Communication Systems鈥揈ast, where he designed, built and tested communication flight hardware for the International Space Station.
• In 1998, he moved to Houston, TX, where he worked for the United Space Alliance as an International Space Station flight controller in NASA鈥檚 Mission Control Center. In this role he was responsible for all communication systems on the ISS, some of which he designed, built and tested in his prior job. He logged over 3000 hours in Mission Control as a flight controller.
• In February, 2005, Smith was selected as a NASA flight director and earned his ISS certification a year later, becoming the 64th flight director in NASA鈥檚 manned space flight history. Highlights in his NASA career include:
  • Leading the first non-Russian unmanned cargo flight to ISS鈥攖he European Space Agency鈥檚 Automated Transfer Vehicle Jules Verne mission
  • Serving as NASA鈥檚 lead FD for Orbital Science Corporation鈥檚 Cygnus unmanned cargo mission, Orb-1
  • Leading a critical, rapid response team to plan and execute a contingency spacewalk in 11 days to replace a failed computer on the outside of ISS
  • Three years later, leading the same team in responding to a similar failure, this time completing the mission in just over two days
  • Twice serving as the operations lead to the agency-wide NASA team assembled to investigate the failure of two Russian unmanned cargo spacecraft missions
  • Currently leading the first expandable module in manned space flight history, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, as well as the Dream Chaser Cargo System, an unmanned cargo spacecraft system