SAE U.K. SECTION CO-HOSTS LECTURE SERIES ‘STARRING’ NASA ENGINEER/ EXPERT

Dr. Ravi Margasahayam of NASA is the engineer responsible for ensuring payload safety for the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station.

The SAE United Kingdom Section recently collaborated with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in the U.K. to arrange an extended lecture series by Dr. Ravi Margasahayam of NASA. He is the engineer responsible for ensuring payload safety for the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS). He has a background in acoustics and vibration, and has been with NASA for 25 years.

Margasahayam provides talks on NASA activities internationally, something that Professor Bernard Challen (an SAE volunteer who lives in the U.K. and is active in various SAE meetings) discovered last June in Madison Wisc., when he heard him speak. What started as an intention to set up maybe three lectures in the U.K. developed into a series of nine meetings. By coincidence, the lecture tour coincided on the calendar with launch of a mission to the ISS that included the U.K.'s first ISS-bound astronaut, Tim Peake. The mission was scheduled to have launched Dec. 15 from Baikonur, Russia.