Who I Am
I am one of several people on the MGS Spacecraft Operations Team whose jobs fall under the heading "SYS/ACE". My job is really two jobs, one involving whole-spacecraft and mission operational analysis ("Systems Engineering", or SYS) and one involving Real-Time Operations (RTO "Ace"), which is all about working with JPL's Deep Space Network (DSN) to properly send commands to the spacecraft and make sure we receive good data from the spacecraft.
Our "Systems" work is all about making sure the mission is executed successfully. In the movie "Apollo 13" there is a point at which alarms are beeping and everyone is frantically asking the question, "what happened to the spacecraft?" Well, in October 1997, something very similar happened to us at MGS Ops when Subsystem Team Lead Eileen Dukes noticed that one of the solar panels had bent back (during an atmospheric drag-pass) more than it should have if it were in good condition. The team spent weeks trying to figure out what was the real condition of the -Y solar panel (SAM, for Solar Array Minus-y). The "Master Alarm" was on.
In "Apollo 13" we also saw Chief Mission Controller Gene Krantz say, "I don't care what the spacecraft was designed to do, I want to know what it CAN do." That perfectly summarizes the current state of the Mars Global Surveyor operations team. Our original mission is no longer available to us, so now we are almost improvising. The JPL Mission Planners have laid out the orbital dangers ahead of us and the team has chosen a course through those obstacles; for example if we had stayed in our October, 1997, orbit, we would have subjected the spacecraft to eclipses that would drain our power and freeze our spacecraft. In our case, doing nothing would have had far worse consequences than trying something. The Structures people estimated that we could keep doing light aerobraking, so we had to try.
I've been with the MGS Spacecraft Team for less than one year, so my Systems activities have been few. (I spent the first several months on a wild ride just learning about the spacecraft, the original mission and the operational plan.) I've assisted with a number of analyses, including Propulsion system contingencies ("what if" scenarios and "what could we do about it" responses) before Mars Orbit Insertion (the big propulsion event), Power system battery management, and a number of smaller tasks. My current Systems project is to analyze pointing angles of the High Gain Antenna (HGA) and the Solar Arrays (SAs) to determine which pointing angles cause the HGA radio beam to be obstructed by the SAs (or the spacecraft body), and to take a first crack at determining which pointing angles can result in collision between the HGA and the SAs. Remember, those analyses were done previously for the original mission, but the original mission is gone. The entire team is involved in re-doing analyses for different orbital conditions.
My other job, as an "MGS ACE", is like the more familiar "mission controller" job at Houston. I wear a headset to communicate with people at JPL and at the antenna stations of the Deep Space Network in California, Spain, and Australia. The ACE computer has three screens (a "three-headed monster") to monitor DSN station conditions and spacecraft telemetry and to operate software that tracks command approval and software that sends commands through the DSN to the spacecraft. At first it was a blur of numbers and plots, but I've learned a lot since then. Still, the spacecraft and the ground systems are very complex. No single person can understand everything about them, so there's always something more to learn. The ACE also needs to keep track of scheduled events and make sure the folks running the DSN are not surprised, to keep an eye out for expected and unexpected alarms, and to know when to start calling people.
How I Got Where I Am
I have been a sandwich maker, a deliverer of flowers, a preschool teacher, a taxi driver, a data processing manager and a shareware software author, and to some extent I still am all of these. But space exploration has always been there. Some of my earliest memories are of drawing spacecraft, but for most of my life it was "just a childhood dream". So how did I get to aerospace engineering? It's something of a long story, so bear with me.
I come from a family of peasant immigrants who fled totalitarian regimes in China, Germany and Cuba earlier in this century. (My father is half-Chinese and half-Cuban and my mother was German) Before me, no one in my extended family had ever gone to college, and some had not had the equivalent of a high school education. My family was more interested in simple safety and security than complicated, expensive education. When it came to school I was, shall we say, less than motivated. My work ethic was more along the lines of "get a good job and stick with it".
The problem with that reasoning was I knew I was growing up in a very different world than that of my elders. My world was to be the information age, the age of high technology, the next millenium. Somehow, probably due to Star Trek and other mind-expanding influences, I knew that I had to get a higher education in order to maximize my opportunities, both to have security and to have a positive effect on the world.
Since I was a child I've dreamt of space exploration. I grew up during a time when world consciousness was expanding due to the pictures of our Earth and Moon brought back from space by the Apollo and Skylab astronauts. My parents were not space buffs, so I never saw any Apollo or Skylab coverage on television while those missions were happening, yet I could not escape the profound social change their simple space photographs had caused.
But I lacked confidence and savvy. I left college long before finishing. It took me another five years (1988) to realize and believe that I could succeed, to muster the courage to ask for help with college costs and return home, and to develop the patience and persistence to attend college. (I attended The City College in Harlem, New York City, which offered an "Earth and Planetary Sciences" degree at that time; it was close to home and it was affordable) After eight years in college earning a bachelor's degree and two master's degrees (at University of Colorado, Boulder) I finally returned to the workplace, this time with the demonstrated ability to learn about and analyze spacecraft and space missions.
And that's how I transformed from sandwich maker to aerospace engineer.
Advice
Here's an important tip about your education: education is not about remembering, it's all about learning how to learn. No amount of "data" stuffed into your memory can prepare you for the world of the future, because information is always outdated. But the tool, learning, can always be used.
Furthermore, you cannot remember everything, only things you experience often. But if you discipline yourself to learn, to understand how humans learn and how you, in particular, learn, then you can succeed at any level of education. After that it's just a matter of logistics, like filling out admissions forms and financial aid forms and getting from place to place.
Why I Like My Job
All jobs are stressful. Life is stressful. But aerospace operations bring some additional stresses to life, primarily due to schedule requirements (the spacecraft doesn't care about or stop for nights, weekends or holidays) but also because of emotional investment. The designers, builders and operators of spacecraft pour our hearts into the work. We want that bird to fly and to succeed, so we grow anxious when the bird's wing is damaged or data is lost. It's not just about job security. Space exploration is a gift to all humanity, and we know it. We want that gift to be "just right".
But aside from stresses, when you get right down to it flying a spacecraft that's on its way to or in orbit around another planet is just really cool! It's the ultimate in "remote control flying". It has a nobility and a permanence to it. It is of historical importance. The only thing that could compare, I suppose, is actually being there.