Rochelle Stortz...

Hi! My name is Rochelle Stortz, but most of my friends call me Shelley or Shells. I am currently a senior at Penn State University (home of the Nittany Lion), majoring in Electrical Engineering. I grew up in Bethlehem, PA, which is in the middle of lots of corn and about an hour from Philadelphia and about 22 hours from Houston, TX! I’m a Flyers fan and a huge Penn State Football fan as well. I also like doing almost every extreme sport you can imagine. Downhill skiing is my favorite winter sport and rock climbing and skydiving keep me busy for the rest of the year. Perhaps I will become certified in accelerated freefall for skydiving later this year. I’m also a part-time magician. That’s right, a magician, and I’ve been performing magic since I was 8. But enough about my personal life, I’m sure you want to know more about NASA and being a coop, so here it goes.

This is my third work tour here at Johnson Space Center and I work in the Robotics Division – Robotics Systems and Technology Branch (ER4). I am currently doing two back-to-back tours from May to December. Last summer I worked in the Avionics Division (EV2) which dealt more with flight hardware. When I first decided that I wanted to co-op, NASA was not even on my list (nor did I know anything about space or the space program). But as I walked by the booth at the career fair in fall of 2001, I saw a short line and decided that I might as well give it a shot. Well here I am two years later still working at the coolest job on the planet! When I was first offered this job by Bob Musgrove, the co-op recruiter, I was not really sure that I wanted to move over 1500 miles away from my parents and friends, but let me tell you it was the best decision of my life. I would not trade this job for anything. As a co-op you are basically treated like a full time employee, only you get a lot of extra benefits. First you have the opportunity to work at and tour some really cool areas of NASA, such as the space shuttle mock-ups, the neutral buoyancy lab, mission control, and even meet and talk to astronauts. Also, you have the opportunity to work in at least three different branches of NASA to help you get a really broad idea of what’s waiting for you when you graduate. Not to mention I’m learning all this really interesting stuff about space exploration that I never even knew I had an interest in.

Well, you already know that I work in the Robotics Division, and for me this is a perfect match. There is nowhere else within NASA that I would rather work. I am currently designing and fabricating a sensor board for Robonaut. Robonaut is an anthropomorphic teleoperated robot that was designed to assist humans in space exploration. Its anatomy is like that of a human and his 5-fingered hand is highly dexterous. He has many degrees of freedom, which allow him to do many complicated tasks that most robots cannot do.

I am currently designing a system that will allow Robonaut to ‘feel’ like a human does. When my sensor board is completed he will be able to have up to 64 force sensors located in each of his hands that will allow the teleoperator to know how much pressure the robot is applying to a particular object. After creating my design using a pic microcontroller, I laid out a six layer board using Capture and sent it off to a manufacturer for fabrication. Once my board is finished, it will be populated in house and then tested. After ensuring the board works perfectly it will be placed in Robonaut’s arm and a cover will be created to protect it.

Oh yeah, and one more thing that you might be interested in is co-op social life. The co-op family down here is very close and well organized. There is always something going on at night and very rarely do you have a free moment to even sleep (trust me on this one). Most days I come into work between 7and 8 am just so I can leave early to get everything done at night that I want to. Some of the more popular activities include rock climbing, ultimate Frisbee, tennis, baseball, volleyball, clubbing, swing dancing, and of course beach party (it’s a co-op tradition)! If you like going out and partying, Houston is definitely the place for you, and if not then there are plenty of other things going on to keep you occupied (lots of shopping). Most nights you will have to choose between several different activities because there is just too much going on. Oh yea, and I also run as a volunteer EMT and Firefighter in my “free time.”

If you want to know anything else about the co-op program or about NASA in general feel free to e-mail me whenever you’d like! rls299@psu.edu.

“Who says what is impossible? The dream of yesterday, is the hope of today, and the reality of tomorrow” – Dr. Goddard.