YSU graduate shares his experience of space missions

Yerevan State University hosted a meeting with space industry specialist, systems engineer and contract technical manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Lermont Khachikyan. Organized by the YSU Alumni and Career Center, the meeting gave students an opportunity to learn about his professional journey, major missions he has worked on at NASA and the prospects of space engineering.

Lermont Khachikyan enrolled in the YSU Faculty of Applied Mathematics in 1986. During the years of the collapse of the Soviet Union, his family moved to the United States, where he improved his English and continued his education at California State University, earning a bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science.

"I have always wanted to have a connection with space because I have been fascinated by it since childhood. I accepted the offer to work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to fulfill my small dream and started working there in 1995," the speaker said, noting that before securing the position, he had applied to various organizations and taken part in a number of interviews.

Major missions: Cassini, Dawn, InSight, Europa Clipper and NISAR

Lermont Khachikyan has 30 years of professional experience in flight avionics software, systems engineering and hardware product management. Speaking to students, he emphasized that he had gradually developed and expanded the scope of his research.

He worked on the development of telemetry and software systems for the Cassini spacecraft traveling to Saturn and studied data transmitted to Earth.

Khachikyan also spoke about the Dawn spacecraft, noting that sending commands to spacecraft takes considerable time and that responses to commands are sometimes received only around 30 hours later.

Speaking about the InSight mission, he said that during the period when they monitored the operation of a seismometer on Mars, they recorded marsquakes with a magnitude of no more than 6.

Khachikyan has also worked on the power supply and distribution system for the Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter's moon Europa.

He is involved in a project to collect Martian soil samples, as well as in the development of helicopters for the Moon.

Responding to students' questions about security clearances, the speaker explained that the work carried out at JPL is purely scientific.

"Our laboratory works for NASA, and all the information is purely scientific. We first provide the collected information to our scientists. After 90 days, the information is shared with all interested scientists around the world," he said.

Students also asked about the presence of oxygen on Mars. In response, Lermont Khachikyan noted that although oxygen is present on the planet, its level is not sufficiently high.