AJ Hartnett...

Pre-NASA

The Saturn V is kind of large

Hello all, my name is Andrew Hartnett. However, most people just call me AJ. I'm a Computer Engineer and one of the many co-ops from Purdue in West Lafayette, IN (BOILER UP!). I grew up in all sorts of places but mainly in Sylvania, OH and attended Northview High School. I've wanted to work for NASA my whole life, so I got started in math and science early. In addition to being the stereotypical engineer that loves math and science, I also love playing the cello/guitar and practicing/competing in martial arts. I've been doing the American Karate System for 11 years, and have been playing cello for about 4 years (with some experience on the piano and violin before hand). I even played some football in high school...although I was quite terrible. The important thing is to make sure that you have things to do that are fun besides academic things like math and science. Even though math is fun. Another thing I do for fun that is math and science is FIRST. I am a mentor for Team 1646 and an alumnus of Team 451. I personally think that FIRST gave me the background while in high school to be able to better myself for the interview for JSC, and being a mentor while in college makes you have good time management skills, because if you don't have good time management, you will make your life miserable for yourself. I would strongly suggest getting involved with FIRST to anyone.

How I got here

Well the obvious answer is through hard work, determination, and a bit of luck. I ran into all sorts of things that I thought would prevent me from getting here. I was rejected to M.I.T., which I had thought would have given me the best route to NASA (its only one of many different routes to get here, but still the first major rejection I had happen to me in academics). After contemplating where I wanted to go between Purdue, Illinois and Georgia Tech, I ended up at Purdue. I found out that Purdue had a very strong co-op program where companies would send their interviewers to Purdue! And actually, Purdue has a ridiculous amount of co-ops at JSC. I was very happy; I thought that I would just need to maintain a good GPA and I would get an interview, and that if I get an interview I would be happy because at that point I would have been given the chance to try to convince someone that I deserve to work for NASA. I kept my grades up, only getting one B (in a Calc III class mind you) and lo and behold, I did not get an interview. I was devastated...but did not give up. I quickly e-mailed the people that I knew at NASA seeing who I should e-mail to get an interview; completely ignoring the fact that Purdue didn't think I was good enough. I was able to get a hold of the wonderful Anne Roemer, had an interview I felt pleased with, and went home knowing I had done all that I could. If I didn't get an offer it would simply have just been because I was not able to portray that I would be the best candidate for a co-op, not due to what someone else thought. After many anxious weeks, I got a call from Anne offering me a co-op, which I was more than happy to accept. I remember it well too; I had been ordering a pizza and had ignored the call from this unrecognizable number (Anne) because I had wanted my pizza. I listened to the voice-mail, and was quite glad that I hadn't actually picked up the call, because I don't think I would have been able to coherently talk to Anne; as it was I had had two good friends of mine around me trying to settle me down after I had listened to the voice mail. If Anne had heard me talk as incoherent as I was...she may have taken back the offer. Haha. The moral of the story is never let others tell you what you are and are not capable of, you know that answer much better than anyone else, so don't give up!

My First Tour

This is where I worked!

My first tour was spent in EV6 - the Government Furnished Equipment Branch of the Avionic Systems Division. Just as a bit of trivia, EV6 no longer exists, it was consumed by EV2.

I was given two main tasks for the Fall of '06. The International Space Station sends HD Video believe it or not back to Earth. However, it uses 30 Mb/s and our bandwidth only allows for 40 Mb/s. Clearly then, it is a major task to send down HD video, because it is pretty much the only information that is able to be sent down due to its size. I was charged with helping a team that was going to try to reduce the bandwidth needed from 30 Mb/s to 5 Mb/s. Needless to say I was pretty excited about getting to work on a task that was so far on the front of technology. However, it was so far at the edge of technology, that it just wasn't quite ready yet. I did however get to work with the company that is working to compress video further, and I learned a ton about video compression and HD video in general.

The other task I was given was to assist with the effort to move NASA into a paperless era...were forms and documents would be filled out and signed electronically instead of on pieces of paperwork. This is helpful because there are a ton of people and NASA, and all at different buildings, so it can be a hassle trying to find someone at the right time to sign things, and move paperwork along. However, the software I was supposed to be working with didn't really come in until late in my tour, so most the work I did was helping my mentor figure out how to prepare for this switch, and I also helped to build some webpages and web-applications.

My Second Tour

My second tour has been in DM32 - the Orbit Flight Dynamics Group of the Mission Operations Directorate. This tour has been a very exciting one - much like last time I have had great people to work with. However this time, I was able to work a little bit more on the projects that I was supposed to. I had three major tasks this summer, Updating an excel macro (VBA script), helping to design, develop, and build a JAVA application, and performing mission support. Obviously the last one is the one most people are interested in hearing. I was able to post data during the mission and contact external customers to make sure they are looking at the freshest data, and these "external customers" are very important people. So I was able to sit in the MPSR (back room to the Mission Control Room) and listen in on the loops, talk to other people on the loops, post data, and some of the other fun things that flight controllers get to do.

The JAVA application I built was to help train flight controllers. There is a lot of debris orbiting the Earth, and it is very important that the shuttle and ISS don't hit it. So NASA recently went from this "box" method to a probability of collision between two objects. Unfortunately its very hard to "create" a piece of debris that has a certain probability of collision for training purposes. My JAVA program gives the trainers the ability to create debris so that when the flight controllers are doing simulations, they can practice the procedures of what to do when we get an Orbital Conjunction Message (OCM). This OCM has data regarding debris we may hit, and then the flight contollers determine the Pc and decide if we need to maneuver to avoid it.

Lastly the Excel program I updated. The program has to do with landing opportunities; it was fairly easy to update, but the cool part about it is that I got to go through the full process of certifying discipline software to be used. This means that my software will hopefully be used for the mission launching on August 8th, 2007.

Play time

A goofy looking bike I rode to get across site quickly to watch the shuttle liftoff

Texas is kind of HUGE! I come from Ohio, where 3 hours can you get you most places in the state. Here, 3 hours gets you maybe to the next big city. I've done all sorts of things around here. There are a ton of restaurants very near to NASA, and I love food. I've gone to play miniature golf at a Putt-Putt, played soccer, kickball, and softball (a lot of co-ops play these things regularlay). I've gone to Mustang Island and camped out on the Gulf Coast, traveled to San Antonio and experience the riverwalk, and done decent car trips (I think about 5-6 hours) to go camping at state parks. I've also gone to Brazos Bend to be withing feet of wild aligators with nothing in between us. I've also gone skydiving. I'm not even talking about my experiences, just listing them and it seems like a lot. Basically, no matter what you enjoy, you can find something here that you like. I typically go to a Bible Study weekly that I always enjoy too, so I don't always have to be active. Tons of co-ops typically will get to see movies...I watch a lot more movies during co-op than I do during my non-coop life. And I'm able to find people that enjoy "The Office" as much as I do here as well. Having so many people here makes it very likely to find someone else that likes the same things as you do so you can get together and have huge LAN parties, parties for premieres of a new show that you might like, or sports games between two colleges that are decently represented by co-ops (like the Ohio State vs. University of Texas football game in 06 - GO BIG TEN).

The coops are constantly getting together to do things...like Putt Putt

Hopefully this has been helpful/informative/not the biggest waste of your life, but whatever it's been, it's done. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at andrew.j.hartnett@nasa.gov or ahartnet@purdue.edu. I promise I'll give you a response.