Holiday Spirit: Engineering Ornament Challenge

by Noah J. Michelsohn | 2019-12-10

The Engineering Directorate (EA) decided to take seasonal spirit to the next level this year by using their unique skillset to decorate a tree with some out-of-this-world ornaments.

A selection of ornaments from the tree. Scroll to the bottom of the article to view the full tree, as well as other ornaments.

After decorating a tree with the same ornaments for a number of years, EA Deputy Director Julie Kramer decided to bring some directorate flavor to the tree decorations by creating a competition across EA to develop an ornament around the theme "Boots on the Moon 2024." The stakes were raised, as the winning submission would win a pizza lunch for the entire division within EA.

"EA is very competitive organization. If you offer them food and bragging rights over their sister organizations, they will compete for anything," Kramer said. "We gave them some basic constraints on dimensions and mass, and then told them to be as creative as they wanted!"

Some basic rules for the contest were that the ornaments had to weigh less than eight ounces, fit in a 5x5x5-inch cube and follow the Boots on the Moon theme. While the divisions were hard at work creating unique ornaments for the tree, the EA Director's Office was hard at work decorating a tree worthy of holding the creative submissions.

The leadership team settled on a blue, gold and white tree to represent NASA's lunar mission, which included 3D-printed Moon ornaments created by EA Associate Director Mary Beth Schwartz and "Giant Leaps Start Here" ornaments to add Johnson Space Center flair. While the tree is truly stunning, the star of the show may be the lack of a star at the top altogether. In its place is a one-of-a-kind tree topper featuring a NASA meatball orbited by a moving Santa Claus and reindeer.

The EA tree pictured in the Director's Suite in Building 1.

Once Santa was in his spot, the only thing missing was NASA spacecraft, so Kramer recruited Sam Pedrotty from the Aeroscience and Flight Mechanics Division to 3D print Orion, Dragon, Starliner, Cygnus and an EA favorite, SEEKER.

The division ornaments were submitted on Dec. 2 and judged by a celebrity panel consisting of JSC Deputy Director Vanessa Wyche, Deputy Director of the Flight Operations Directorate Norm Knight and Deputy Director of the External Relations Office Arturo Sanchez. The judging was based on how well the submission fit the theme, represented the submitter's division within EA, creativeness, colorfulness, title and, of course, holiday appearance.

In the end, the winner of the contest was a submission from the Crew and Thermal Systems Division created by Jeannie Corte, Sean Miller, Mark Schaefbauer, Kyra Markosian and John Garison. The winning ornament (below) included multiple elements, including a 3D printed suited crew, the Engineering Directorate logo, and a far off Mars, to symbolize NASA;'s ultimate goal.

A subset of the winning team photographed with their ornament. From left to right, Jeannie Corte, Kyra Markosian, John Garison.