REDMOND, Wash. — One of NASA’s most celebrated awards was handed out today, but it didn’t go to an astronaut. Instead, it was an astronaut who was doing the handing out.
The Silver Snoopy Award winner was the one holding a fussy 18-month-old toddler.
Erica Raine, an engineer at Aerojet Rocketdyne’s Redmond facility, received the Snoopy pin for work above and beyond the call to duty, resulting in the fabrication, testing delivery of eight auxiliary rocket engines for the service module on NASA’s Orion deep-space exploration vehicle. Raine was the lead engineer for the project.
The engines will be put to use on the Orion program’s uncrewed EM-1 test flight, which is due to launch in 2019 and travel beyond the moon and back.
