• Question: what was it like working with nasa

    Asked by jamestighe to Pawel on 10 Nov 2021.
    • Photo: Pawel Rulikowski

      Pawel Rulikowski answered on 10 Nov 2021:

      In such big projects like flying to the moon, you work with many people and many different organizations contractors – the test were done in USA and Ireland, radio design in Dublin, France and Finland. I did not work directly with NASA but communicated with people who supervised the project on behalf of Nokia and main system integrator – a German company. The simulated lunar surface tests were done at Canaries (Africa/Spain) and Dubai desert. It can be very challenging as you work to sometimes very tight deadlines and many different teams need to come together to build the spacecraft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Transportation_Systems). I worked on ALINA lander and ALQ rovers designed by Audi.
      Because every project is unique one needs to build lots of things from ground up and many things do not work properly at first. We spend huge amount of time designing an enclosure for the antenna system (so called radome – radar/radiation dome). Many different materials were tested from radio frequency and mechanical viewpoints.
      All great experience dealing with different cultures, different styles of work in different organizations. I would definitely do it again!

Comments