One of NASA’s stars burns brightly

NORWALK — When Norwalk native Kathleen O’Brady was a starry-eyed child, she loved reading about outer space.

She’d check out books on the galaxy from the library and clip space-related articles from the newspaper — it was the first years of the Hubble Space Telescope, a time when countries overcame political differences to work together on the International Space Station.

O’Brady got her first telescope around the age of 8 and watched the Hale-Bopp comet blaze across the sky, so bright she could see its tail; on the bus ride home from a Fox Run Elementary School field trip to the Challenger Learning Center in Bridgeport, where O’Brady and her classmates simulated a mission, she thought to herself that working in the space industry would be the coolest thing ever.

In short, she was the type of kid that compelled adults to ask, “Do you want to be an astronaut?”

“And my answer is still yes,” she said with a laugh.

Fast forward three decades, and O’Brady, a Brien McMahon High School graduate, is a NASA certification system engineer, working in Florida on one of the newest frontiers — commercial spaceflight.

In fact, her work with Boeing’s Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, commercial spacecraft designed to fly NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, has drawn national recognition with an Early Career Stellar Award nomination. The prestigious prize is decided by a team of scientists, engineers, managers and academics, who mull over whose work has the greatest promise for furthering future activities in space.

While O’Brady did not win the award, she earned the nomination for her work tackling a thorny question: What does it take for a commercial spacecraft to meet NASA’s standards?

NASA had 275 requirements for a spacecraft that would carry its astronauts to the International Space Station, and O’Brady’s job was to shuttle back and forth between engineers, human health professionals and other experts at all the organizations involved to hammer out exactly what those requirements entailed. For example, one basic requirement was that the spacecraft would have to carry four crew members to the space station.

“So you have four crew,” O’Brady said. “Do you have enough room to carry those people? Do you have enough supplies for those four people? Each of these requirements requires a certain strategy . ... You’re defining the minimum of what you need to keep the crew safe and alive for the whole duration.”

“That’s what makes her work so unique,” said Marie Lewis, NASA’s public affairs officer. “Literally, you’re defining something that’s never been defined before.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of crazy,” O’Brady said.

Since she created a certification plan for Boeing and SpaceX, the focus has turned to implementation. Every item on the checklist she has drawn up needs to be designed, tested and proven. The process is painstaking. “Not everyone has started working Saturdays yet, but there will be times when we get to that point,” O’Brady said.