Explore Lagniappe for July 2024 featuring:
- NASA Stennis Achieves Primary Success for Historic In-Space Mission
- Mississippi Comic Convention Experiences NASA
- NASA Stennis Hosts Take Our Children to Work Day
Gator Speaks
Conversations filled the room with anticipation for the day ahead.
NASA's Stennis Space Center hosted Take Our Children to Work Day on June 27 with a day set aside for children of employees to see up close the work carried out at NASA Stennis by its diverse workforce.
A video featuring NASA Stennis Associate Director Rodney McKellip welcomed the enthusiastic crowd. He shared about the different hats worn by the more than 5,000 employees throughout the NASA Stennis federal city.
There are engineers who help make the south Mississippi NASA center the premier rocket engine test facility in the country. NASA Stennis, the place that tested rocket stages to put the first humans on the Moon, remains on the frontlines of preparing NASA and the United States for its return to the Moon through the Artemis campaign to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.
Those attending Take Our Children to Work Day learned how NASA Stennis has many rocket scientists and test engineers carrying out this work, but that is not all.
A team of folks, including accountants, lawyers, environmental specialists, educators, and public affairs specialists, wear the NASA hat to ensure mission success too.
There also are teams climbing on test stands, installing rocket engines into the stands, working with piping, electrical, welding, construction projects, safety inspections, and more.
In addition to being the premier propulsion test site supporting NASA's mission, NASA Stennis is where commercial companies experience success and benefit from the expertise of NASA personnel. Companies like Relativity Space, Rocket Lab, and Evolution Space have established ongoing operations at NASA Stennis as the commercialization of space continues.
The NASA Stennis federal city also includes a range agencies, universities, and companies sharing costs and carrying out individual missions.
It is the command site for the largest collection of oceanographers in the world and where Navy Seals train.
Participants learned about such operations from a panel of employees from NASA, Aerojet Rocketdyne, an L3 Harris Technologies company, Lockheed Martin, and Relativity Space.
They toured NASA Stennis and participated in activities facilitated by NASA, Aerojet Rocketdyne, and the National Data Buoy Center.
The NASA Stennis associate director left them with a final thought before their day started: If you hear something loud during the day, just know that is the sound of progress at the nation's premier rocket propulsion test facility and federal city known as NASA Stennis.
Sure enough, that afternoon, the unmistakable sound of engine testing could be heard across the site. For this ol' Gator, it sounds like music to the ears.
NASA Stennis Top News
NASA Stennis Achieves Primary Success for Historic In-Space Mission
NASA's Stennis Space Center and partner Sidus Space Inc. announced primary mission success July 2 for the center's historic in-space mission - an autonomous systems payload aboard an orbiting satellite.
