2019 AIAA LA-LV Annual Awards Dinner

Please join us for our annual Awards Dinner
Thursday, May 9, 2019
Recognizing Excellence in our Chapter

• Come to meet with Aerospace industry professionals with diverse backgrounds
• Enjoy great food, dessert, and drinks while networking and fostering professional development opportunities
• Learn more about recent achievements by local pioneering aerospace industries
• Learn more about how to become an astronaut
• Congratulate & recognize the award winners and celebrate their achievements
• Learn more about STEM activities in AIAA / LA-LV Section to educate and inspire
• Support & encourage students' STEM efforts, celebrate their accomplishment, and appreciate the efforts from the students and their teachers
• Meet with the next generation- emerging high school students, student technical essay award winners and their teachers

Virgin Galactic Representatives
Mark "Forger" Stucky

Mark P. "Forger" Stucky (born 9 November 1958) is an American test pilot and commercial astronaut. In these roles, he is an employee of Virgin Galactic, a private spaceflight company which is developing sub-orbital space tourism flights.

On 13 December 2018, Stucky and co-pilot Frederick Sturckow flew VSS Unity VP-03, a Virgin Galactic test flight which reached an apogee of 82.7 km (51.4 mi). This surpassed the United States convention for the boundary of outer space, (50 mi (80.47 km)). The flight was notable as an uncommon example of a high-altitude flight with an apogee falling between the two altitudes; other examples include eleven flights of the North American X-15 and Soyuz MS-10, an aborted spaceflight which had occurred weeks earlier.

Stucky is an accomplished aviator with experience in military, commercial, and experimental flight.

Beth Moses

Beth Moses is Chief Astronaut Instructor and Interiors Program Manager for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo program, and is a commercial astronaut. She was the first woman to make a spaceflight on a commercially launched vehicle.

Natalie Beth Stubbings grew up in Northbrook, Illinois and attended Glenbrook North High School. She obtained bachelor's (1992) and master's (1994) degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from Purdue University School of Aeronautics and Astronautics and as a senior engineer in the NASA/JSC EVA Project Office. As a student, she conducted materials research in parabolic flight.

She worked for NASA as the assembly manager for the International Space Station where she led the global program of human-in-the-loop testing which designed, developed, and verified the spacewalk mechanisms used to assemble and maintain the station. Moses later joined Virgin Galactic where she serves as Chief Astronaut Instructor and Interiors Program Manager.

During her spaceflight on 22 Feb 2019, she became the first person on a suborbital mission known to have unstrapped and floated around the cabin, as part of her job evaluating the future passenger experience. On mission VF-01 she reached a height of 89.9 km above the Earth's surface, high enough to achieve Commercial Astronaut status by surpassing an altitude of 80 kilometers (50 mi).

Guest Speaker
Sanford M. Krasner
 

Sandy Krasner was the End-to-End Information System Engineer and Entry Descent and Landing Communications Lead for the InSight mission. In these roles, he makes sure that all the computer systems, in the instruments, spacecraft and ground system, talk to each other. He has now moved on to the same role with the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission.

Sandy has been at the Jet Propulsion Lab since 1979, and has worked on missions to every planet from Mercury to Saturn, along with the occasional comet and asteroid. He received Bachelors and Masters degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 1975 and 1976.

Guest Presentation

The InSight Mission – Exploring the interior of Mars

On November 26, 2018, after the proverbial “6 minutes of terror”, the InSight mission landed on Mars to begin exploring the interior of Mars. InSight will measure Marsquakes and meteor strikes, and will be the first mission to go beyond literally scratching the surface of another planet. Exploring the interior of Mars will help us better understand how Mars and the Earth formed, and the early history of the Solar System. Come see how we made it to Mars, and what happens next.