Popular Mechanics selects NASA engineer for 2017 Breakthrough Award
2017-10-11
If NASA team members happen to thumb through the November issue of Popular Mechanics, they may find a familiar face. The magazine editors named Cody Kelly, the Orion spacecraft’s post-landing survival equipment subsystem manager, as a recipient for one of their prestigious honors—the Breakthrough Awards.
In the early 2020s, NASA’s Orion—America’s spacecraft for the next generation—will take astronauts farther than they’ve ever gone in deep space, and engineers like Kelly are using their skillset and ingenuity to ensure their landing is a safe one.
“The awards are all about celebrating innovation,” said James Lynch, Popular Mechanics editorial assistant. “We look across a variety of fields to try to find the individuals, researchers, scientists, engineers, students, educators, who have made a big step forward in the past year. It’s about pushing us into the future, a better future.”
Although Popular Mechanics staff are always looking for creative, inspirational people to highlight, this year they it decided to look at candidates early in their careers. Kelly stood out, not just because of his NASA Early Career Achievement Medal for “unusual and significant performance” during his first 10 years of government service—in Kelly’s case, five years—but for his dedication and problem solving in a variety of areas.
“We were drawn to Cody, not only for his years of innovation, but for his career that is already densely packed with accomplishments. While we like innovation across all fields, we are especially drawn to people who are making the world a bit better,” Lynch said.
As a young man growing up in the small, rural blue-collar town of Bandera, Texas, Kelly was an avid reader with an early passion for human spaceflight, particularly following the effort and energy of a dedicated NASA workforce returning to flight after the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy. Kelly was only 15 years old, but that event sparked an interest in safety, prevention and helping people in need—and giving back to his community.
He said the crew survival and escape element of human spaceflight intrigued him so much that he set his sights on an opportunity for rising seniors managed by NASA Johnson Space Center’s Office of Education: the Texas High School Aerospace Scholars (HAS) program. His congressman gave him a recommendation, which led to Kelly being chosen as a HAS recipient. The program exposed Kelly to science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, team challenges and the NASA culture during a formative time in his life.
His HAS experience helped him earn a full-ride scholarship at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.
“I wouldn’t have been able to go to college without a scholarship, luck and hard work,” Kelly said. In his sophomore year—and as a HAS veteran—he was in the education pipeline and was accepted into the JSC cooperative education student program, where he focused his work on rescue and recovery operations.
Kelly’s success in these education initiatives led to a full-time position as a member of the Orion Crew Survival Engineering team, where NASA collaborates with the Department of Defense to conduct astronaut search and rescue and evaluate how the crew will exit Orion after splashdown following deep space missions.
Kelly said he would not be at Johnson without people investing in him. To pay it forward, he mentors HAS students just as role models shaped him.
“It’s good for the kids to see that programs like this are a tangible way to start a career at NASA or in the STEM fields,” Kelly said. He is grateful to now be part of a team of engineers who are young and hungry and want to make a difference in human spaceflight. “NASA captivated me. I can’t believe they pay me to come to work.”
In addition to being the survival kit design engineer and key agency technical expert for post-landing survival hardware development, Kelly also is the project lead for Orion crew exit strategies and the chief engineer for the super-lightweight life raft development for Orion and NASA commercial industry partners.
He’s also part of the team that is evolving the satellite-based Advanced Next-Generation Emergency Locator (ANGEL) system, a tool for the safe location, survival and rescue of NASA astronauts, military personnel and civilians worldwide. His commitment to prevention and protection comes from knowing people depend on him and his team.
“People trust us with their lives,” Kelly said.
One day Kelly can be found evaluating Orion crew landing and recovery techniques in the open waters in the Gulf of Mexico. The next day, evaluating modified launch/entry spacesuits at one of the world’s largest pools—the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at Johnson’s Sonny Carter Training Facility, where astronauts simulate a post-mission landing in the ocean with survival equipment built into the spacesuits so global rescue forces can locate them.
Kelly said ANGEL is revolutionary technology developed by NASA engineers and industry partners, which will be available not just astronauts, but to hikers, the military and the search-and-rescue community in the near future. During testing in the Orion landing zone as part of the Underway Recovery Test, ANGEL demonstrated a quicker, tighter location range with higher accuracy. It uses a more robust wave form, allowing beacon signals to be more resistant to obstructions from atmosphere, buildings, mountains and oceans.
This achievement did not go unnoticed by Popular Mechanics.
“Cody’s career focus has been on making our space program safer for all involved; in particular, our astronauts,” Lynch said. “This is a large part of the reason we chose Cody. When we heard the scope of ANGEL, the way in which it works and the drastic difference it will make in the amount of time it will take to recover our astronauts, we knew we had to include Cody.”
Beyond his technical capability outside the office, Kelly is dedicated to community service. He’s a volunteer firefighter who uses the tools he’s cultivated at NASA and as a first responder to help develop on-scene search-and-rescue patterns for maritime and urban operations. After Hurricane Harvey, which caused widespread flooding in Houston, Kelly worked with his fire department to deliver rescue services following the catastrophic disaster. He applied to assist the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security’s Urban Search and Rescue response team as part of Texas Task Force-1 in hopes of leveraging his engineering experiences in a real-world operational rescue setting.
“The more I’ve been exposed to federal agencies, the military and the intelligence community, the more it’s opened my eyes to opportunities as a first responder and engineer, and understand what I want to do as a professional and volunteer,” Kelly said. He said these are exciting times for NASA, and he’s delighted to be a part of pushing the boundaries of technology and touching the future of spaceflight every day.
He’s also ecstatic about his work being recognized by Popular Mechanics.
“I’m both honored and humbled to have been selected for this award, and hope that the work our NASA team is doing continues to inspire the next generation of students, while laying a foundation for assured astronaut survivability and global rescue for all those who find themselves lost,” Kelly said.
Laura Rochon
NASA Johnson Space Center
In the early 2020s, NASA’s Orion—America’s spacecraft for the next generation—will take astronauts farther than they’ve ever gone in deep space, and engineers like Kelly are using their skillset and ingenuity to ensure their landing is a safe one.
“The awards are all about celebrating innovation,” said James Lynch, Popular Mechanics editorial assistant. “We look across a variety of fields to try to find the individuals, researchers, scientists, engineers, students, educators, who have made a big step forward in the past year. It’s about pushing us into the future, a better future.”
Although Popular Mechanics staff are always looking for creative, inspirational people to highlight, this year they it decided to look at candidates early in their careers. Kelly stood out, not just because of his NASA Early Career Achievement Medal for “unusual and significant performance” during his first 10 years of government service—in Kelly’s case, five years—but for his dedication and problem solving in a variety of areas.
“We were drawn to Cody, not only for his years of innovation, but for his career that is already densely packed with accomplishments. While we like innovation across all fields, we are especially drawn to people who are making the world a bit better,” Lynch said.
As a young man growing up in the small, rural blue-collar town of Bandera, Texas, Kelly was an avid reader with an early passion for human spaceflight, particularly following the effort and energy of a dedicated NASA workforce returning to flight after the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy. Kelly was only 15 years old, but that event sparked an interest in safety, prevention and helping people in need—and giving back to his community.
He said the crew survival and escape element of human spaceflight intrigued him so much that he set his sights on an opportunity for rising seniors managed by NASA Johnson Space Center’s Office of Education: the Texas High School Aerospace Scholars (HAS) program. His congressman gave him a recommendation, which led to Kelly being chosen as a HAS recipient. The program exposed Kelly to science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, team challenges and the NASA culture during a formative time in his life.
His HAS experience helped him earn a full-ride scholarship at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.
“I wouldn’t have been able to go to college without a scholarship, luck and hard work,” Kelly said. In his sophomore year—and as a HAS veteran—he was in the education pipeline and was accepted into the JSC cooperative education student program, where he focused his work on rescue and recovery operations.
Kelly’s success in these education initiatives led to a full-time position as a member of the Orion Crew Survival Engineering team, where NASA collaborates with the Department of Defense to conduct astronaut search and rescue and evaluate how the crew will exit Orion after splashdown following deep space missions.
Kelly said he would not be at Johnson without people investing in him. To pay it forward, he mentors HAS students just as role models shaped him.
“It’s good for the kids to see that programs like this are a tangible way to start a career at NASA or in the STEM fields,” Kelly said. He is grateful to now be part of a team of engineers who are young and hungry and want to make a difference in human spaceflight. “NASA captivated me. I can’t believe they pay me to come to work.”
In addition to being the survival kit design engineer and key agency technical expert for post-landing survival hardware development, Kelly also is the project lead for Orion crew exit strategies and the chief engineer for the super-lightweight life raft development for Orion and NASA commercial industry partners.
He’s also part of the team that is evolving the satellite-based Advanced Next-Generation Emergency Locator (ANGEL) system, a tool for the safe location, survival and rescue of NASA astronauts, military personnel and civilians worldwide. His commitment to prevention and protection comes from knowing people depend on him and his team.
“People trust us with their lives,” Kelly said.
One day Kelly can be found evaluating Orion crew landing and recovery techniques in the open waters in the Gulf of Mexico. The next day, evaluating modified launch/entry spacesuits at one of the world’s largest pools—the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at Johnson’s Sonny Carter Training Facility, where astronauts simulate a post-mission landing in the ocean with survival equipment built into the spacesuits so global rescue forces can locate them.
Kelly said ANGEL is revolutionary technology developed by NASA engineers and industry partners, which will be available not just astronauts, but to hikers, the military and the search-and-rescue community in the near future. During testing in the Orion landing zone as part of the Underway Recovery Test, ANGEL demonstrated a quicker, tighter location range with higher accuracy. It uses a more robust wave form, allowing beacon signals to be more resistant to obstructions from atmosphere, buildings, mountains and oceans.
This achievement did not go unnoticed by Popular Mechanics.
“Cody’s career focus has been on making our space program safer for all involved; in particular, our astronauts,” Lynch said. “This is a large part of the reason we chose Cody. When we heard the scope of ANGEL, the way in which it works and the drastic difference it will make in the amount of time it will take to recover our astronauts, we knew we had to include Cody.”
Beyond his technical capability outside the office, Kelly is dedicated to community service. He’s a volunteer firefighter who uses the tools he’s cultivated at NASA and as a first responder to help develop on-scene search-and-rescue patterns for maritime and urban operations. After Hurricane Harvey, which caused widespread flooding in Houston, Kelly worked with his fire department to deliver rescue services following the catastrophic disaster. He applied to assist the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security’s Urban Search and Rescue response team as part of Texas Task Force-1 in hopes of leveraging his engineering experiences in a real-world operational rescue setting.
“The more I’ve been exposed to federal agencies, the military and the intelligence community, the more it’s opened my eyes to opportunities as a first responder and engineer, and understand what I want to do as a professional and volunteer,” Kelly said. He said these are exciting times for NASA, and he’s delighted to be a part of pushing the boundaries of technology and touching the future of spaceflight every day.
He’s also ecstatic about his work being recognized by Popular Mechanics.
“I’m both honored and humbled to have been selected for this award, and hope that the work our NASA team is doing continues to inspire the next generation of students, while laying a foundation for assured astronaut survivability and global rescue for all those who find themselves lost,” Kelly said.
Laura Rochon
NASA Johnson Space Center
Cody Kelly, the Orion spacecraft’s post-landing survival equipment subsystem manager, poses in the crew section of a super-lightweight life raft currently being developed with industry partners for spaceflight landing/rescue use. Image Credit: NASA
NASA astronaut Stan Love practices contingency egress from the Orion side hatch while Kelly observes hardware performance in a moderate sea state. Image Credit: NASA
Kelly puts the finishing touches on a prototype life raft sunshield prior to open-water testing off the coast of Galveston, Texas. Image Credit: NASA
Kelly observes as NASA astronaut Mike Fincke deploys a prototype life raft developed by the Orion Crew Survival Systems team and industry partners. Image Credit: NASA