"Hubble Women Making History"
My name is Colleen Townsley, I'm part of the
Hubble Space Telescope project, I work as the Hubble integration and test team manager.
Behind me is what we call the VEST structure which is the Vehicle Electrical Systems Test
structure, and inside of each of the bays which correspond to the bays that are actually on
the Hubble telescope on orbit.
We have flight-like units, we have engineering test units, we have simulators, brass boards,
different things that comprise everything that we need to test on the ground before
we would send something up to the spacecraft.
So all, anything that's going to be going to the spacecraft like new flight software
releases, different procedure changes, usually needs to be tested in this facility first
before sending it on orbit.
I started in October 1988, so almost 35 years.
Beginning with work with Hubble, I've been part of the actual integration of the Hubble
on the ground, launch of Hubble, and then the subsequent servicing missions with testing
of the replacement hardware, and of course subsequent maintenance of the hardware involved.
When I was in high school, women weren't in these type of professions.
You were going to be a secretary or you were going to be a nurse.
You just didn't have that kind of push to go into the sciences and things like there
is now thank goodness.
When I mentioned I'd started in 1988, everybody treated me with the same respect, I still
had to work hard to move to different positions, and work long hours if there's an anomaly
on weekends or holidays.
You know it's a lot of hard work but it's extremely rewarding.
You know, and I'm always, always still proving myself.
If I can inspire another young woman to go into the fields, any science field in fact,
that would be wonderful.
I mean Hubble still producing great science and we have overcome a lot of obstacles.
I mean it's a fascinating piece of satellite, still going strong, and I expect we'll still
be going strong for many years.
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