The President ordered the Navy to shoot down a defunct U.S. spy satellite that could leak deadly toxic gas if its fuel tank reaches the Earth’s atmosphere. The intercepting of the satellite was successful. It was successful thanks to a number of individuals, especially those engineers in the labs building and testing the systems used by the Navy.

Read More

My first job after graduating with my undergraduate degree was with Lockheed Martin located in Middle River, MD. I started as a test engineer then moved into development. The Lockheed Martin group where I worked was responsible for building the systems used on ships to launch missiles, known as the Vertical Launching System. The Lockheed Martin mentioned in the article linked above is responsible for the development of the "Aegis" combat systems used to detect and track targets, in this case, a satellite. Both systems appear to be integrated and working well together.

It is neat to think that those test cases we wrote for launching missiles are still working well. So many conditions needed to be checked for each launch that would make this article too lengthy. This just goes to show the importance of testing, on all levels. 

Alex Mueller