Nate Wood

Sr. Principal - Operations- Advanced Programs

Oviedo, Florida, United States

About

Over 20 years of experience at Kennedy Space Center working for the Sierra Space Corporation and NASA Launch Services Program. Expertise in the design implementation of command & telemetry systems for spacecraft and launch vehicles, including control center design, downrange/space based telemetry tracking asset integration, and launch site vehicle processing. Skills and Experience • Design and deployment of launch vehicle and spacecraft control centers • De-commutation of baseband IRIG-106 and CCSDS telemetry streams • Experience in implementing vehicle ground processing environments during launch, landing and refurbishment phases • Flight operations experience in the arrangement of downrange tracking utilizing STK and evaluating vehicle health performance • Integration of control centers into ground and space based networks • Software coding experience developed utilizing C#, C++, JAVA, PHP, and HTML

Experience

  • Sierra Space (4 yrs 4 mos)
    • Senior Principal
      Nov 2023 - Present · 2 yrs 8 mos

      https://lnkd.in/eBVAiksS

    • Director Of Operations - Advanced Programs
      Mar 2022 - Present · 4 yrs 4 mos

      Responsible for the design, development, and execution of small scale space-based technology demonstration platforms.

  • Sierra Nevada Corporation (Kennedy Space Center, FL)
    • Manager of Florida Operations
      Jan 2019 - Mar 2022 · 3 yrs 3 mos

      Responsible for the establishment and execution of spacecraft processing for all phases of ground operations at KSC/CCAFS, including pre-flight loading, launch, landing, and refurbishment. Also supported the development of future spacecraft designs (including lunar and interplanetary missions), authoring technical details for various proposals and acting as the local SNC representative for public relations events.

    • Principal Engineer – Mission Systems Design Lead
      Oct 2016 - Jan 2019 · 2 yrs 4 mos

      Lead architect for the ground control system communicating with the Dream Chaser vehicle, including ground software development, spacecraft control center design, downrange command and telemetry asset integration, and redundancy management.

  • NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Kennedy Space Center, FL)
    • Flight Operations and Telemetry Lead
      Aug 2007 - Oct 2016 · 9 yrs 3 mos

      Software design lead for launch vehicle telemetry monitoring systems within the ground operations group. Also acted as the Flight Operations engineer arranging downrange assets for verification of launch vehicle events.

    • Flight Controls Engineer
      Nov 2002 - Aug 2007 · 4 yrs 10 mos

      Flight Controls (Guidance, Navigation, and Control) engineer responsible for NASA insight/oversight into the processing and launch operations of the Delta, Atlas, Pegasus, and Taurus launch vehicles.

    • Software Engineer
      Aug 1997 - Nov 2002 · 5 yrs 4 mos

      Software engineer responsible for design and development of a real-time command and control system for the Space Shuttle program called CLCS (Checkout and Launch Control System).