Extreme Engineer of the Month

Profile: Heather Paul, Constellation Space Suit Life Support Lead for Ventilation Subsystem

Education:

• B.S. Mechanical Engineering, B.A. Spanish, Auburn University
• M.S. Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas-Austin

Favorite Classes:  Calculus, physiology, thermodynamics, physics, Spanish, and dance.

Best Skills:  Communications. Heather is not afraid to ask questions. “It’s always better to ask questions than not understand,” she says. In addition the strong communications skills she’s developed in her liberal arts courses have strengthened her ability to work on teams and document her work.

Hobbies:  Spanish, dance, and travel. Heather is a group exercise fitness instructor and teaches hip hop and cardio salsa at local gyms. She also uses her knowledge of physiology as a strength and conditioning personal trainer. In addition, Heather volunteers for Engineers Without Borders and has traveled to Africa to install a rainwater catchment system at a hospital in Rwanda (see photos below).

Role Models:  Her mother, her 8th grade science teacher, and older sister, all of whom taught her that she can succeed if she goes after her goals.

Advice:  Just because you go into engineering or science you don’t have to give up other things you love—whether it’s dance, guitar, photography, or sports. Engineers are not people who just walk around and do math equations in a dark room. No matter what you do there will be challenges. You can let them stop you in your tracks or use them to build your determination. You need goals and dreams. Dreams are just beyond your grasp, and the ultimate challenge. Goals may also be a challenge, but you can figure out a way to get there.

Math, Science, and Performing Arts
Heather was always drawing the solar system in school. She wanted to be an astronaut so she worked hard to hone her math and science skills. In addition to encouragement from her 8th grade science teacher, her mom was very supportive and really pushed her to get good grades. But Heather also loved liberal arts and dancing, so for high school she attended a performing arts school and majored in dance. Even here she continued to get an excellent education in science and math, which affirmed her career goal to work at NASA.

The Right Stuff
To help choose a college and a major, Heather researched astronauts’ backgrounds to discover what “the right stuff” really is. She found that most had engineering degrees, so she started investigating engineering schools in the southeast. She applied to several schools, but Auburn University was her first choice because of its ties to the NASA Johnson Space Center and several alumni astronauts.

Thermodynamics and Tiger Pause
After being accepted at Auburn, Heather selected mechanical engineering to get a broad foundation. She had always liked physics, but when she got into classes such as thermodynamics she knew she had selected the right field. She was excited that it pulled all her classes from high school together. However, as she got to the end of her freshman year she felt something was missing. Her liberal arts side also needed to be expressed. To fill the void, she added courses and declared a double major in Spanish. She also joined the Auburn dance team, Tiger Pause, for a year. That restored the balance she needed to keep her creative energy alive while all the technical work was building.

Detour
After her sophomore year she was selected for the co-op program at the NASA Johnson Space Center.  She was on her way.  However, as graduation approached NASA underwent a hiring freeze. So she studied abroad in Spain for six months and extended her co-op program.

From Auburn to Austin to Houston
As the hiring freeze continued, Heather enrolled in a masters program in mechanical engineering at the University of Texas–Austin and continued her co-op affiliation with NASA as a graduate student. She negotiated a deal to do her masters thesis on fibrous insulation for the advanced space suit, which pulled together what she learned in undergraduate school and her co-op work on space suit design concepts.

Upon graduation she was hired by NASA and made the long awaited move to Houston. Her first assignment was in designing tools for astronauts to use during space walks. Next she worked on a systems engineering team. For her third assignment, she finally made it back to next generation space suits. Here she works on the life support systems for the planetary suits of the Constellation program. 

Orion, the Moon, and Mars
Heather is currently working on the suits astronauts will wear on the Moon, Mars, and Orion, the crew exploration vehicle that will replace the shuttle. The three suits have to be designed to meet very different conditions. Each suit is essentially a one person vehicle.

The suit for the Orion is being designed for low earth orbit. As astronauts orbit they are exposed to 45 minutes of sun and 45 minutes of night with temperature fluctuating from -200 deg. F to +250 deg. F. This environment has microgravity with no pressure and no atmosphere.  On the moon, astronauts have the same extremes of temperature, no pressure, no atmosphere, but a 1/6 gravity environment. In addition, astronauts will be walking on the moon. The lunar soil is more abrasive, and the astronauts need to be able to bend down. They also need good boots, just like hiking on earth.

Mars has 1/3 gravity and an atmosphere with 95 percent CO2. Along with the atmosphere, there are storms, and astronauts can get caught in a dust storm. The fine grit of the dust is so invasive that it can get through the seals of any suit. All three suits must provide life support, radio and communications systems, power, and be comfortable enough for astronauts to move.

In working on the suits, Heather draws heavily upon the physiology classes her graduate school advisor insisted she take. Heather spent an entire semester taking biophysiology courses, which focused on cardiovascular dynamics and the multitude of thermal and mechanical interactions within the body. These classes wound up being very important because the space suits are designed around the human body.

Heather’s specific responsibility is to pressurize the suit and provide enough oxygen for breathing  4 to 8 hours. If the oxygen is being recirculated, the suit needs to scrub out the CO2 being exhaled as well as excessive humidity. “It’s important to understand how the human body uses that gas exchange to figure out what kind of an oxygen system I need to build,” she says.

Goals and Dreams
Heather differentiates between dreams and goals, saying that for her a dream should be something that is doable, but a stretch. Her dream is to become an astronaut, and she plans to apply during the next application process. Realizing that the astronaut program is extremely competitive, her goal is to be the best engineer she can to help NASA with space exploration. In her current assignment, she gets many of the same opportunities as astronauts. To  understand how the suits work, she gets to fly in the reduced gravity aircraft and dive in the neutral buoyancy lab pool to evaluate the suit in action. Because she’s the engineer designing these things it is equally important that she get these experiences and expertise.

Visit this NASA link to learn more about Heather Paul:

Meet the Men and Women of NASA

Click here for the Extreme Engineer profile of Shawn Warren.