Rocket Lab · Integration & Test Engineering

Pioneer spacecraft camera module

Designing the camera that would fly on Rocket Lab's Pioneer spacecraft — and seeing it return its first images from orbit.

Long Beach, CAJun – Aug 2023In orbit

Photo of Earth captured from orbit by the Pioneer camera

First light — Earth imaged from low Earth orbit by the camera module (via @Peter_J_Beck).

Overview

As an integration & test engineering intern at Rocket Lab, I designed the thermal, mechanical, and electrical systems for the camera module of the Pioneer spacecraft series in Siemens NX, then carried it through validation and onto the vehicle.

What I did

Designed the camera module's thermal, mechanical, and electrical systems in Siemens NX.
Fabricated a test harness for hardware and software validation on the hardware-in-the-loop rack ahead of vehicle integration.
Took the sub-system from inception to design review in under six weeks, and integrated it onto the spacecraft in under eight.

Pioneer spacecraft during clean room integration, with the camera module circled

A Pioneer-series spacecraft during integration — the camera module I designed is circled.

Outcome

The camera became operational in low Earth orbit and has returned imagery of Earth from the Pioneer vehicle — including the shot above, shared publicly by Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck.

First light from orbit ↗ Watch the launch ↗