Systems in aeronautics and astronautics are becoming more complex, and the importance of understanding how they interrelate in projects is more crucial than ever. With satellites having launch costs of about $50k per kilo and life cycles measured in decades, the cost of a mistake along the way can be staggering. To avoid mistakes and manufacture effective satellites, the industry needs experienced engineers.

The problem? "It can take ten years to create a systems engineer," says Lockheed Martin Chief Engineer, John Snyder. Stanford University's Professor Robert Twiggs of the AA Department directs the four course Spacecraft Design and Operation Proficiency Certificate Program, which addresses this problem. Snyder continues, "The program allows industry engineers to participate in every aspect of the life cycle of a satellite in about a year, giving them valuable systems experience. There is no other program like it in the world." Lockheed Martin and Stanford have partnered to bring this program to Lockheed employees working on all aspects of satellite development.

A Lockheed team of five employees completed this program with the launch of QuakeSat, a small, fully operational satellite for QuakeFinder in June. They designed, built and completed the project in less than two years while working fulltime. Two members of the team give their account of the experience and why it has been a win/win, wild ride for all concerned.

"After meeting Professor Twiggs, I knew whatever was going to happen was going to be a wild ride," says Allen Lorenz, a senior scientific programmer and a thirteen-year Lockheed veteran. "Sometimes you find yourself in a rut and you don't know it until you are there, re-solving the same problem over and over, if you will. It was Professor Twiggs' opening remarks from two years ago. 'How many of you have wanted your thumbprint in space?' I was hooked."

It was a wild ride. Eric D. Tapio, a software engineer with Lockheed for three years, says, "It's actually quite a phenomenal experience. We were one of the first groups to go through the process and were pioneering the program, so the completion time was about a year and a half. It resolved into weekends and evenings pretty quickly. Here we were, five students with no real prior knowledge about building satellites, and we had to go from the paper design through the hands-on building. Through this one small project we had to reach out to different areas throughout our company. We started out with twenty-five students in four teams. There was so much of a time commitment that three quit."

Lorenz and Tapio enthusiastically embraced not only the time commitment, but also the learning challenges involved.

Lorenz opted to work in his area of expertise. "I've worked on software that drives hardware, so my experience was suited to the mission. But even with what I was doing, on a project like this, if it doesn't work it's not like you can go over and reboot it." He points out, however, that there were many opportunities to get real-life experience in areas far removed from his job.

Lorenz was, however, drawn to the overall challenges of QuakeFinder's project from the start. "I pushed for us to take this complex project from QuakeFinder instead of simpler projects presented by other companies," he recalls. "This project may have required five times the work, and we went for the highest jump possible. The excitement is in not knowing whether you will succeed. If we were successful, they'd be writing about it for years."

Tapio was equally committed to a challenge. "I'm a software engineer, but I was really looking for an opportunity for a transfer of abilities. I volunteered for the electrical engineering pieces. I cut the cables, bought the parts and did the soldering for the antennae all by myself. I had no experience with this. It was what I wanted."

"We had to be in contact with the upper level management at Lockheed to get important information," says Tapio, "but along the way we also had to meet people for testing: solar ray people, the radio people, people throughout the company. Normally I see the software unit all day, all year."

Lorenz agrees that this was new territory, adding, "Not all engineers have to get up and make presentations. I made more presentations in front of upper management in this program than I have in my whole career at Lockheed. My first reaction would have been to run back to the lab, but now I am a lot more comfortable being able to do this."

The team also worked closely with QuakeFinder, the customer, throughout the process. "The up-front part of the process was to take a look at cost, schedule, and you MUST look at risk," says Tapio. "We had to look at costs as worked into the design. Normally we don't even see our customer, but constant close communication with them was paramount."

Furthermore, because the launch would be in Russia, the team even had to deal with foreign regulations, an area Lorenz says, he would never have even thought about. "The paper work to get this launched weighed more than the satellite."

"There were so many areas we didn't know, that we had to learn," says Lorenz. "Even though we performed every test you can dream of, given the lack of knowledge and experience, you woke up at night thinking 'did we miss something?'"

"We didn't get launch confirmation immediately; it was a poor signal from Russia," says Lorenz. "All we knew was that if they did launch it on time it would take about fourteen minutes before we got a signal. One of the last things we implemented was a beacon signal and it was the first thing we'd hear. We wanted to know if the batteries were charging- a common area for failure. It was so quiet at QuakeFinder, you could hear the fans whirring."

"Man," says Tapio, "when we were actually in contact with Russia, they asked me to sit down in front of the radio. And we waited. The signal was about thirty seconds late. Those were a long thirty seconds. When that signal came, I may have been the happiest guy there."

The signal was clear, and today QuakeSat is transmitting raw data at the rate of a megadata per day, relaying measurable events that may predict large earthquakes.

Lorenz now looks at the bigger picture in his own work. "I've learned that, if a process takes a few years, you need to go back to the customer to check the needs and solutions to be sure that there aren't changes. You've adopted sort of second sight," he says. "I step back and ask myself what other people are doing on a project and why, rather than just take my little piece and solve it."

"It was phenomenal how much parallelism there was between this project and the process of building the larger satellites," says Tapio. "The whole program is the practical application of theory. Our customer is using what we created every day. That's relevance." He has taken on the administrative duties of QuakeSat projects for Lockheed and is helping a team that is nearing completion of QuakeSat II.

He concludes by saying "Working and completing a project like this, outer space didn't seem so far somehow. We are certainly setting a new milestone in terms of flight history, and in terms of possibly helping to define a future for the industry."

"We actually did put our thumbprints on a poster before it was launched and it was taped inside the satellite," says Lorenz. The team's thumbprints are in space. Yours can be too.

QuakeSat continues to be a productive partnership for QuakeFinder, Lockheed Martin and Stanford. For specific, technical information on the QuakeSat project and its mission, go to http://www.quakefinder.com/quakesat.htm. For more on the Spacecraft Design and Operation Proficiency Certificate Program, go to http://scpd.stanford.edu/scpd/programs/certs/aeroAstro.htm#space.