Brittany Graffis...

Welcome to my co-op biography page! My name is Brittany Graffis and I'm happy to tell you about my experience as a NASA Co-op. First, let me give you a run down of the past 21 years of my life. I am from the tiny town of Centerview , Missouri , where there isn't even a stop light to blink and miss. The area is primarily rural and my parents own a ton of land, raise cattle and lease land for farming. I wanted to work at NASA since I was in the 6th grade, when I did a report on Venus. Sounds cliché, right? But from them on, I was facinated with NASA, the solar system and rockets that took us there. And I talked about it, a lot.

In high school held some pretty cool leadership roles, like being president of my Junior class, then Student Council President the next year. When I started considering colleges I knew I had to go somewhere that allowed the NASA co-op program; I had done my research. I finally decided to go to the University of Oklahoma , which turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life.

In August of 2002 I began my college career in Norman, Oklahoma. I knew aerospace engineering was the degree for me so I enrolled as many engineering classes as possible, always keeping in mind the co-op program. After building a robot in an honors class one semester, I met Jessica Culler, a NASA co-op herself, and she helped me get the ball rolling to apply for a coop.

To make a long story short, Bob Musgrove emailed me in May 2002 to request an interview. Since I did not want to do a phone interview, but actually wanted to come down and visit JSC, my mom and I flew down to Houston for a short 2 day trip and I interviewed with Bob in person. I knew how competitive the program was (they get over 800 applications a year!) so I emailed him every so often for 6 months to keep him up to date on what kinds of things I was doing in school. Finally, in November, the fall semester of my sophomore year, I got a message from Bob on my home phone. He needed to talk to me as soon as possible. Of course, he was in meetings all day, so after a long day of waiting, he offered me the job!

Right now, I am rounding out the end of my first tour, which has been incredible. I am working in Station Mechanical and Robotics Systems Training. My group basically trains all the station crewmembers how to use the Canadarm2, the robotic arm on the ISS. The arm, donated by Canada , is pretty important, especially since it has constructed almost the entire station. My first task here was to complete Generic Robotics Training, which is a 15 lesson course on robotics, and the first set of lessons the astronauts have to take to learn to use a robotic arm. Next, I worked on some self study lessons crew members use when they are practicing on their on in the simulators. These lessons are vital because they help keep their skills proficient when they are not doing flight specific training. Finally, my large project was to write a new lesson to be implementted into Generic Robotics Training. The lesson is now taught on the hydraulic arm in the mock up facility. I spent a great deal of time flying the arm in the facility to come up with new fly-to tasks for the lesson. By the end of this tour I will have become certified to teach the lesson, and will have taught a crewmember. This was such an awesome project for me because I really believe robotics is the ticket to our future in space. The fact that I spent so much time in these awesome facilities, oberving astronauts taking classes and flying the arm myself is unbelieveable.

This semester I also volunteered to head up two co-op committies: Housing and Education Outreach. The Housing Committee managed to update almost the entire guide and do some minor reformatting changes. It has been very rewarding to help new coops find a place to live. For education outreach, the coops have supported 5 outreach events, most during work hours. We have judged competitions: science fair and first robotics, gone to speak at an aviation camp and much more. It has been an amazing experience to help fellow coops become committed to inspiring others to get excited about science.

And, as if there was time left over, I went to a great number of lectures sponsored by our lectures committee. I have had the extreme pleasure of meeting Gene Kranz, Chris Kraft, General Howell, Sy Liebergot, astronaut Joe Tanner and much much more.

Plus, I became an aunt for the second time around this semester when my sister had little Ellie Marie in October!

If you have any questions about NASA, robotics, my projects, or anything at all, please email me. I would love to talk to you!

brittany-engineer@ou.edu