MEET STEVEN INDYK, AEROSPACE ROBOTICIST

A COMMON DAY FOR ME at Honeybee Robotics is usually working on a variety of different projects. It's not one project all the time. It’s usually one or two larger projects and then a slew of smaller ones, sometimes developing large space missions and sometimes developing smaller mechanisms and components that can go to space and endure different rigorous environments. I work with a lot of our internal folks leading engineering development projects as a systems engineer, and I also work external with our customers to help design and develop what sort of instruments and systems they would like in space.

I was always inspired by the traditional space program, and really it’s the opportunities that companies and the government have allowed to happen. Everything we do is built on previous engineers, previous scientists, previous space exploration capabilities, and everything we have today is incremental or really big leaps forward. There’s a lot of good NASA missions that have been created in the past 10, 20 years. And today, even more excitingly, there’s a lot more commercial interest and commercial companies that are doing really great things in space.

One of the most surprising things I learned as an engineer is the value of your writing and communication skills. Going through undergrad and grad as an engineer, it’s very easy to latch on to the science and the math concepts, but communicating with your peers, communicating with other organizations, written communication, these are all critical skills that you know, the earlier you learn and feel very comfortable with, the further they’ll carry you in your career.

Advice I would give to somebody coming up in the aerospace industry, or wanting to work in the aerospace industry would definitely be try all the different things that you can. I think it’s very easy for any student to understand and figure out what they don’t like, but it’s very hard to figure out what you do like. And the only way to discover that is by trying all the different things, all the different topics, read all the different literature, try all the different experiments, put yourself out there, risk what sort of activities and really discover what you’re really interested in and passionate about.