My name is Dave Kusnierkiewicz, and I'm the Mission Systems Engineer for the TIMED mission. I supervise all the technical aspects of the mission, including construction, testing and launch of the spacecraft, and ground control operations.

I've always been interested in electronics. While growing up, I watched my father, an electrical engineer, fix things around the house. Once, he even used a transformer from my model trains to fix a TV set! In elementary school we got to watch the Gemini spaceflights in class, which was exciting. I liked science classes in school, especially when we got to build our own radios!

I went to college for four-and-a-half years, not counting five years in between when I worked in telecommunications. I studied a lot of math, physics, integrated circuits, computer programming, control systems theory, and electromagnetic wave theory. I still learn by going to seminars and taking short courses. I'm in charge at some meetings, while at others I listen to learn from other people's experiences. I think it's more valuable meeting people face-to-face, when you can carry on a relaxed conversation, rather than communicating by e-mail, which can be too focused on just one topic. And of course I'm always learning "on the job."

I originally pursued a career in telecommunications, but after working in that field for a few years, I went back to school full time to learn to become a design engineer. I came to APL 17 years ago as a design engineer, and have moved into other fields since then.

When I was a designer I was able to do more of what I wanted. In this position I'm busy making decisions about how to complete the mission efficiently, without wasting time or money. While I am not as able to do what I want all the time, my job allows other designers and engineers to do what they want, so has its own rewards.

One of the best parts of my job is completing a successful project. The one best memory of my career was when I was working on the NEAR mission. I had to fly to California to work with the people building a gyroscope that helped control the spacecraft. Since NEAR had to be launched at a specific time, we had to get the "gyro" working quickly, and the "fix" I engineered did the trick!

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