Mt. Blue graduate shines bright on team TESS

FARMINGTON – A graduate from Mt. Blue High School and Foster Career and Technical Education Center watched on Wednesday, April 18, as a satellite he helped design and build was launched into outer space.

“When I’m at work it’s pretty easy to get caught up in the day to day,” 2006 MBHS graduate Greg Allen said. “But when a friend texted me asking what the launch window time was and I found myself responding, saying that we only had 30 seconds because we needed to hit the moon’s gravity at just the right moment so that it could slingshot into the right orbit…it was pretty wild. I never thought I’d get to work on something like this.”

After taking the Foster Tech Center pre-engineering class, Allen went on to pursue a career in the field. He got a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Northeastern University, at which time he participated in the Cooperative Education program with Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory. After graduating from NU, Allen was offered a full time job at the lab, specializing in thermal engineering.

For this project, Allen was asked to lead the thermal engineering team- a group dedicated to designing the cameras attached to the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS. The cameras would be a key component to the modest satellite, described as being roughly the size of a refrigerator, and would have to withstand temperatures of negative 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

The cameras will document the stars that it sees, measuring the amount of light coming off of them. A change in light indicates a passing planet, of which more than 20,000 are expected to be found. As of now, there are about 3,800 known exoplanets.

“The reason TESS is especially neat is because it might, eventually, find life. If, in hundreds of years, we ever go to a planet outside of our solar system, it will likely be because TESS discovered it,” Allen said.

Although TESS launched successfully on Wednesday, the team still has another six days to wait before it gets to its final destination. Only then will Allen and the rest of the engineers get confirmation that TESS, and all the pieces to it, are working correctly.

“I’m pretty excited and really nervous. The reason putting something into space is still really challenging is because it’s not just one thing that has to go right, it’s hundreds of thousands of operations that have to go perfectly,” he said.

To watch a video of the launch of TESS click here. For more information on the satellite click here.