Page 23 - Aerotech News and Review, Oct 5 2018 - NASA Anniversary Special

Pentagon, but returned to her computer science roots as Director, Transformation Initiatives in the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office.
The Air Force then sent her to the midwest — Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio — where she held leadership positions within the Aeronautical Systems Center at the Advanced Computational Analysis and the Capabilities Integration Direc- torates. After three years as a Joint Test Director in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in Nor- folk, Va., she took her final active duty position as the chief, Modeling and Simulation Policy Division, for the Air Force CIO at the Pentagon.
During her military career she served as a flight test engineer, instructor and test squadron commander. She was a senior non-rated aircrew member and flew more than 700 hours as a flight test engineer in more than 25 different aircraft, primarily the F-4, F-16, C-130 and C-141.
Bjorkman was awarded numerous medals in- cluding the Defense Superior Service and Meri- torious Service Medals, Legion of Merit with oak leaf cluster, Meritorious Service Medal with four oak leaf clusters, Air Force Commendation Medal with oak leaf cluster and 2008 Military Tester of the Year, National Defense Industrial Association, Office of the Secretary of Defense. She was a distinguished graduate from AFIT during both her undergraduate and graduate studies. She was named the Military Analyst of the Year in 1995, and the Military Tester of the Year in 2008.
Dr. Bjorkman was appointed as a Senior Lead- er executive in January 2010. She has served as a Senior Adviser to the Air Force Chief Infor- mation Office and Technical Adviser at the Air Force Test Center, Edwards AFB. After a brief stint in the private sector, she returned to the Air Force, entering the Senior Executive Service in 2015. Awards and recognition have continued in her civil service career, receiving the Air Force Meritorious Civilian Service Award from 2011- 2013 and 2015-2017.
Bjorkman’s love of flying has extended into her personal life as well. She holds Airline Transport Pilot and Certificated Flight Instruc- tor ratings and she has 2,000 hours of flying time and specializes in aerobatics and tailwheel flying. She owned a Bellanca Decathlon for 18 years and now has part ownership of a 2003 Super Decathlon. When asked for advice that helped her become so successful, Bjorkman said to “never stop learning even after graduat- ing from AFIT.” She has spent her career in a technical environment and says that whenever she finds a new and interesting topic, her first in- stinct is to find out as much about it as possible. She credits her interest in chaos theory 20 years ago for her ability to understand the complex systems we have in today’s Air Force.
Laurie Grindle
Engineer, project manager, NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center
Laurie Grindle is the deputy director for Pro- grams at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., and has worked in that capacity since February 2017.
As such, Grindle supports the director for Programs, providing leadership to the center to implement agency programs and flight research projects in support of NASA’s mission.
Grindle began her career with NASA during a 1992 internship in Dryden’s Aerodynamics Branch, which she followed up with a full-time position in the same branch in 1993. At Dryden, Grindle served as a principal investigator on the Advanced L-Probe Air Data Integration experi-
October 5, 2018
ment flown on the F-18 Systems Research Air- craft, on which air pressure was used to determine angles of attack and sideslip and traditional air- data measurements. Grindle was an aerospace re- searcher on the F-16XL ship 2 Supersonic Lami- nar Flow project and involved in analysis of space shuttle maneuvers that resulted in expansion of the shuttle’s aeronautical database.
She became chief engineer for the X-43A hypersonic project in 2004 after serving as the X-43A launch vehicle chief engineer starting in 2001. The X-43A was a 12-foot-long, autono- mous aircraft that, when flying at test conditions, demonstrated an “air-breathing” engine called a scramjet. In 2005, she became Dryden’s Un- manned Air Vehicle Business Unit Chief Engi- neer. While in that role, she monitored technical aspects of NASA UAV projects, including X-48B Blended Wing Body Low Speed Vehicle and Global Hawk programs, to ensure that objectives were met.
Grindle was the NASA project manager for the Abort Test Booster for Project Orion from 2007 to 2011. In that role, she was responsible for man- agement of NASA’s interests in the ATB project.
As the Associate Mission Director for Aero- nautics at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center from 2011 to 2013, she assisted the Aeronautics Mission Director in the management and technical direction of aeronautics activities at the Center to ensure the effective and timely support of manned and unmanned flight research programs.
Grindle was the Project Manager for the NASA Unmanned Aircraft System Integration in the Na- tional Airspace System (NAS) Project from 2013 to 2017. Grindle was responsible for the execution of this $290 million project designed to conduct technology development, to reduce technical bar- riers related to the safety and operational chal- lenges associated with enabling routine UAS ac- cess to the NAS.
Grindle graduated from the University of California at Davis with a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical and mechanical engineer- ing in 1993. She earned an Engineer-in-Training license in 1994. She received a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering in 1998 from California State University at Fresno.
Kelly J. Latimer, retired Air Force lieutenant colonel
NASA test pilot, pilot for Virgin Galactic
Kelly Latimer was born in Dover, Del., in 1964, and as a child she dreamed of becoming an astronaut.
She received her commission from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1987 with a Bachelor of Science in astronautical engineering. She then earned a Master of Science in astronautics from George Washington University, Washing- ton, D.C. Her first association with NASA was while attending graduate school, as her studies included work with the Joint Institute for the Ad- vancement of Flight Sciences at NASA’s Lang- ley Research Center, Hampton, Va.
In 1989, Latimer attended undergraduate pilot training at Reese Air Force Base, Texas. She re- mained at Reese as a T-38 instructor pilot until 1993, when she was assigned as a C-141 air- craft commander at McChord Air Force Base, Tacoma, Wash., serving there until 1996. While at McChord, Latimer was selected to attend the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB, Calif., in Class 96B. She served as a C-17 and C-141 experimental test pilot in the 418th Flight Test Squadron at Edwards until 2000. She then became the chief of the Performance Branch and a T-38 instructor pilot at the Air Force Test Pilot School.
After 9/11, Kelly wanted to “join the fight” and returned to operational flying at McChord, where she was a C-17 aircraft commander and the operations officer for the 62nd Operations Support Squadron.
In 2004, Latimer was selected to become the commander of Edwards’ 418th Flight Test Squadron and director of the Global Reach Com- bined Test Force. She flew an Air Force C-17 during a 2005 NASA study to reduce aircraft noise. A team of California Polytechnic State University students and Northrop Grumman personnel were stationed on Rogers Dry Lake located at Edwards AFB to record the noise foot- print of the aircraft as it made various landing approaches to Edwards’ runway. Following that assignment, she deployed to Iraq as an adviser to the Iraqi air force. Her last active duty tour was as an instructor at the Air Force Test Pilot School. She retired from active duty in 2007 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Latimer served as a research pilot at NASA’s Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Cen- ter, Edwards, Calif., from March through No- vember 2007. Latimer flew the T-38, T-34, C-17, 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, and the Stratospher- ic Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) 747SP. Latimer was Dryden’s first female re- search test pilot.
She then moved to Boeing as a test pilot, where she was involved in several programs, in- cluding developmental flight testing of the Boe- ing KC-767-2C, P-8, B-787, B-737 & KC-46, culminating as the chief test pilot for the C-17.
Latimer now works as a test pilot for Virgin Galactic, where she flies the White Knight 2 and is the lead 747 test pilot for the Launcher One program “Cosmic Girl,” which will launch a rocket into space, supporting the small satellite market. Latimer has more than 6,500 flight hours and 1,000 test flight hours in over 30 aircraft dur- ing her work with NASA, the Air Force, Boeing and Virgin Galactic.
“I have wanted to go to space ever since I can remember doing anything,” Latimer said in a statement from Virgin Galactic. “Flying is the tip of the iceberg: Some [of] the most meaning- ful work for me will be joining Virgin Galactic’s team with their incredible experience and organi- zation to complete the vehicles’ design and test and setting up operations before the first flight.”
Sandra Miarecki, retired Air Force lieutenant colonel
Test pilot and physics professor at the Air Force Academy
Sandra Miarecki’s military career began thanks to her lifelong dream of being an as- tronaut. While in college, where she majored in astrophysics. She heard that the best way to jumpstart a NASA resume was to join the military, so she signed up with the Air Force ROTC.
Commissioned in 1986, Miarecki was se- lected to become a pilot. Although 10 years had passed since women were permitted to enter the Air Force, she found herself in an environment that still held “very old-fashioned attitudes towards women,” as she puts it.
“I was the only woman in a class of 50 in pilot training,” Miarecki recalls. “That really toughened me; I learned that I had to just ‘give it back’ in order to earn respect.”
While health issues prevented Miarecki from fulfilling her dream of becoming an as- tronaut, she realized she enjoyed being a pilot and decided to stay in the Air Force. During her career, Miarecki learned to fly a variety of Air Force jets, advancing to become a flight instructor and a test pilot. Over the years, she flew T-37, C-141, B-52, C-5, T-38, F-15, F-16, A-10, F-18, F-4, Mig-15, T-33, and C-23 jets; helicopters; and the Goodyear Blimp.
“In my 20 years of service, attitudes to- ward women definitely changed, but even so, for much of my career I was the only woman in the room,” she says. “It wasn’t much of a problem until I became a test pilot, which was even more of a male-dominated, chauvinistic environment.”
Miarecki says she encouraged herself to get through that phase with memories of all the women who’d come before her, those who had fought for the right to become pilots. “What I was going through couldn’t be as hard as it was for them,” she adds.
After 20 years of training and teaching with the Air Force, Miarecki decided it was time to retire and looked around for what to do next. “I realized that the reason I wanted to become an astronaut was to do ‘science in space,’ and I decided that doing science on Earth would be just as rewarding,” she says.
Miarecki decided to combine her military experience with teaching, something she’d also always enjoyed, and teach physics at the Air Force Academy. But first she needed to complete her Ph.D., which she started working on at UC Berkeley.
It was a flight to the Bay Area that helped launch another stage in her career. Miarecki sat next to Berkeley Lab scientist Bob Stokstad, and they got to talking about his involvement in IceCube, an international collaboration to search for a nearly massless subatomic particle called the neutrino. The project uses thousands of optical detectors buried more than half a
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