Surname: Olivia Billett
Title: Systems engineer and Lockheed Martin Science Phase Lead for ORISIS-REx.
education: BS Physics and Astronomy from Yale. Masters Degree in Aerospace from Stanford University.
Superpower Ability: Multitasking, a basic requirement for systems engineer and mother
Hobbies: to travel
Oliva Billett still laughs at the first time she thought about a career in science and technology. She and nine other top physics students from her high school entered an engineering competition. “We had no idea what it was about,” said Billett. “I said yes because we left school for a day.”
You solved problems in the morning. In the afternoon, the competition organizers gave the teams a trunk lock and asked them to improve it. “You would ask us if it rained and that part of your trunk lock was rusted. How would you fix it,” said Billett. “I loved it. I was exposed to engineering as a real problem-solving skill, as opposed to a class.”
Today Billett is a systems engineer at Lockheed Martin and the head of the science phase for NASA‘s first asteroid sample return mission OSIRIS-REx. In 5 days, OSIRIS-REx will touch an asteroid called Bennu, take a sample of pebbles and dirt, and return that sample to Earth for investigation in 2023. She is responsible for operating spacecraft near the asteroid Bennu and works with the science and navigation teams to design and plan scientific activities around the asteroid.
“I love the diversity of my job. Our teams are generally small and fast, which requires each of us to understand the entire system to make sure everything works together, Billett said. ”
Olivia Billett visits Germany. Image Credit: Courtesy of Oliva Billet
The Billett team deals with problems that no one has encountered before and tackles every problem in the blink of an eye.
“I am often reminded of what a team sport technique is,” said Billett. “It’s not obvious when you choose a path in college, but I do understand it every day at work. Our success depends on our ability to work as a team. ”
Billett has worked on several planetary orbiters, including the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Phoenix Mars Lander, the Juno Jupiter Mission and the MAVEN Mars aviation mission.
“I came to the mission with a lot of experience in space operations and design,” said Billett. “But that experience almost got in the way because Bennu is not a planet. Understanding how we would fly around required a change in mindset. ”
Because of the delicate dance the spaceship has to perform in order to stay in close proximity to Bennu, the asteroid is a constant threat to OSIRIS-REx. In comparison, says Billett, the Mars orbiters are not at risk once you’ve got the spacecraft through the burn of the Mars orbit insertion.
OSIRIS-REx orbits Bennu about 1.6 kilometers from its center, where gravity is only five millionths of Earth’s gravity – barely enough gravity to keep a spaceship in orbit.
Solar radiation pressure or changes in spacecraft configuration can easily push the spacecraft out of Bennu’s orbit. Small burns can also put the spaceship into another orbit and trajectory. That doesn’t happen when orbiting larger, more massive objects like moons and planets, and Billett says this requires a new way of thinking.
OSIRIS-REx’s trajectory can vary so much that the mission operations team needs to be able to react much faster than other space missions. The Billett team must update the spaceship, which points to maneuvers and scientific observations, within 24 hours of any activity performed on board. It’s a very quick turnaround that the team does several times a week. To make sure they are prepared when the spaceship lands in a series of trajectories within a few weeks, their team regularly conducts parallel analyzes to ensure the spaceship is always safe.
The navigation team uses trim maneuvers to correct the spacecraft’s orbit to move it in one direction or another. You also have many contingencies on the table ready to go if a burn does not occur.
Billett loves to work closely with science, which it has not done on previous space missions. On other missions, engineers fly the spaceship, download the scientific data and pass it on to the scientists. The science teams take it and work with it. While she occasionally sees it at various quarterly science meetings or when papers come out. At OSIRIS-REx, however, the science of the asteroid is the mission.
“We’re a lot more involved in the data that comes down,” said Billett. “That’s so exciting for me as a space freak and a science nerd.”
Billett loves to travel. She has been to six continents, including a year in Antarctica when she worked as a research assistant at McMurdo Station in 2003 and stayed there during the Antarctic winter.
“It was an amazing experience, to say the least! It was beautiful and unique and challenging in unexpected ways. The landscape was simply breathtaking, ”said Billett. “I was expecting the darkness and the cold to be surprisingly manageable, but the isolation was proving to be more difficult to manage. But the relationship with the environment and the sense of community were strengthened. ”
Looking back on her childhood, Billett says her family nurtured her interest in science. Her mother was a doctor and her father was an engineer in the military. She has done many projects around the house and the yard with her father. These experiences taught them to be comfortable and to solve problems.
