Keeping an eye on the International Space Station
Todd Shelton | 6/30/2004 John Waldron is used to being on a winning team. As a standout on his college swim team at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, his coach, Eddie Sinnott, would tell him, “You must work hard and focus on your goals to be a winner.” Waldron still cherishes that advice, and uses it each day in his critical position at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., helping to keep experiments operating on the International Space Station.
To work properly, all the experiments on the orbiting laboratory, 240 miles above Earth, need power, cooling systems and a way to transmit information back to the scientists monitoring the experiment on Earth. As a payload rack officer at NASA’s Payload Operations Center - the science command post for the Space Station at the Marshall Center - it’s Waldron’s responsibility to monitor these resources to ensure experiments run smoothly. Scientists on the ground depend on him to handle the valuable data they can collect only by performing experiments in space.
Waldron first became interested in engineering growing up in El Paso, Texas. His parents, Bob and Sharon, owners of a defense contracting business, would take their young son to the nearby White Sands missile range in southern New Mexico.
“I remember being at a test site and watching my mother fire a test missile. It was then that I knew I wanted to learn everything about it,” said Waldron.
Today, the 24-year-old Waldron is one of the youngest members of the Space Station team in the Payload Operations Center. He has seen first-hand just what an accomplishment it has been to build the Space Station, now about the size of a three-bedroom house. The completion of the Space Station is a step toward the Moon and beyond. The orbiting research facility is one of the keys to long-term exploration in order to better understand and counter the factors of space flight that affect astronaut health.
“Working with people from different cultures is one of the most interesting parts of my work,” Waldron said. “And at times it’s challenging to get people from different countries working together to accomplish a goal, but this project is unique - everyone contributes to its success.”
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