Systems Engineer Noosha Haghani Prepped PACE for Space
Throughout the life cycles of missions, Goddard engineer Noosha Haghani has championed problem-solving and decision-making to get to flight-ready projects.
Name: Noosha Haghani
Title: Plankton Aerosol Clouds and Ecosystem (PACE) Deputy Mission Systems Engineer
Formal Job Classification: Electrical engineer
Organization: Engineering and Technology Directorate, Mission Systems Engineering Branch (Code 599)
What do you do and what is most interesting about your role here at Goddard?
As the PACE deputy mission systems engineer, we solve problems every day, all day long. An advantage I have is that I have been on this project from the beginning.
Why did you become an engineer? What is your educational background?
I was always very good at math and science. Both of my parents are engineers. I loved building with Legos and solving puzzles. Becoming an engineer was a natural progression for me.
I have a BS in electrical engineering and a master’s in reliability engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park. I had completed all my course work for my Ph.D. as well but never finished due to family obligations.
How did you come to Goddard?
As a freshman in college, I interned at Goddard. After graduation, I worked in industry for a few years. In 2002, I returned to Goddard because I realized that what we do at Goddard is so much more unique and exciting to me.
My mother also works at Goddard as a software engineer, so I am a second-generation Goddard employee. Early on in my career, my mother and I met for lunch occasionally. Now I am just too busy to even schedule lunch.
Describe the advantages you have in understanding a system which you have worked on from the original design through build and testing?
I came to the PACE project as the architect of an avionics system called MUSTANG, a set of hardware electronics that performs the function of the avionics of the mission including command and data handling, power, attitude control, and more. As the MUSTANG lead, I proposed an architecture for the PACE spacecraft which the PACE manager accepted, so MUSTANG is the core architecture for the PACE spacecraft. I led the team in building the initial hardware and then moved into my current systems engineering role.
Knowing the history of a project is an advantage in that it teaches me how the system works. Understanding the rationale of the decision making we made over the years helps me to better appreciate why we built the system way we did.
How would you describe your problem-solving techniques?
A problem always manifests as some incorrect reading or some failure in a test, which I refer to as evidence of the problem. Problem solving is basically looking at the evidence and figuring out what is causing the problem. You go through certain paths to determine if your theory matches the evidence. It requires a certain level of understanding of the system we have built…