Just what inspired NASA engineer Markeeva Morgan to pursue engineering? Real space missions, mixed with a little bit of Hollywood.
“The movie ‘Apollo 13’ motivated me to go into engineering,” said Morgan. “And when I watch futuristic science fiction movies with spacecraft landing on other planets, I realize that I’m working on the real thing. The Space Launch System is that rocket. How cool is that?”
When completed, NASA’s Space Launch System will be the largest, most powerful rocket ever built for deep space missions, including to an asteroid and eventually to Mars.
Morgan, a native of Strayhorn, Mississippi, is the SLS Program Stages avionics hardware subsystems manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Avionics — comprised of hardware, software and operating systems — will guide the rocket and keep it on the right trajectory.
Avionics and the flight computer will be housed in the SLS core stage. When completed, the core stage will be more than 200 feet tall and store cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that will feed the vehicle’s RS-25 engines. The Marshall Center manages the SLS Program for the agency.
Morgan graduated from the University of Mississippi in Oxford with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 2001, and a master’s in engineering management from The Catholic University of America in Washington in 2006.
Morgan, who was inducted into the Ole Miss Student Hall of Fame in 2001 and honored as the Outstanding Young Alumnus in 2007, will return to his alma mater Oct. 31 for a series of SLS events. He will talk with engineering students about his NASA career from 12:15-1:45 p.m. at Brevard Hall, Room 209. He also will guest lecture in a “Leadership and Professionalism in Engineering” class from 2-3 p.m. at Lamar Hall, Room 236.
“I love seeing the looks in the eyes of younger people when I walk in the room with the NASA emblem on my shirt,” Morgan said. “I enjoy paying forward the many investments that have been made in me, and am humbled that the NASA emblem makes those investments more valuable.”
The first flight test of the SLS will feature a configuration for a 70-metric-ton (77-ton) lift capacity and carry an uncrewed Orion spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit to test the performance of the integrated system. As the SLS evolves, it will provide an unprecedented lift capability of 130 metric tons (143 tons) to enable missions even farther into our solar system.
For more information on SLS, visit:
Shannon Ridinger
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-0034
shannon.j.ridinger@nasa.gov