"Hubble Women Making History"
Hi my name is Beverly Johnson and I am the Hubble Space Telescope payload team manager.
We support any flight software updates and any issues with the set of science instruments that
are on board the Hubble Space Telescope. Each science instrument has its own microprocessor
and each one has code that runs in them. If there are any issues in the performance of the science
instruments on board then another big part of our job is to get going an anomaly investigation which
can be quite interesting. Hubble has probably been the biggest learning platform for anomalies, we
review and analyze the events of the anomaly and all the data, come up with resolutions to correct
whatever happened and we're up and running again. The importance of maintaining the flight software
and the science instrument systems onboard Hubble is that that's basically, you know, how Hubble
works to collect you know the science images and data that the astronomers need. So our our
job is to make sure everything is functioning. I have actually been working on Hubble for 35 years
this year, I myself can't even believe that, and I never in my wildest dreams would have thought that
was possible to be there one place so long, but we have a lot of team members on Hubble that have
been here for years simply because Hubble keeps going and producing wonderful science it's just
given us the opportunity to continue to support it. As a woman on Hubble I feel very supported,
it makes a big difference that I'm working with other very strong leadership type of women as
well, I think as you get more and more experience on a job you get a little more respect and you you
find that people hear you better. It is a little bit of a challenge at first when you know you're
new to a job and you just have to keep with it. The advice I'd give to someone young trying to
get into a science career of any sort is just go with what you're good at if it's relatable,
because I think you need that basic talent or just skill and then you can build off of it from there.
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