Danielle Richey
PROJECT MANAGER, SYSTEMS ENGINEER, AND ARCHITECT AT LOCKHEED MARTIN
If Danielle Richey could have dinner with any engineer or scientist, she’d pick astronaut Judy Resnick. “She wasn’t as much of an outspoken feminist and kind of cutthroat in the way that Sally Ride was. It’d be interesting to talk to her about how she approached the era that she lived in,” Richey said.
BACK IN HIGH SCHOOL, DANIELLE RICHEY wasn’t convinced engineering was for her. That all changed when she took a campus tour of the University of Colorado Boulder with her dad and saw students in cleanroom suits working on an actual CubeSat. “To me, that was inspiring because they were very relatable people. I imagined it could be me in a year or two in a bunny suit touching a satellite,” she said.
That hands-on passion has since carried Richey through a career at Lockheed Martin, working on deep space missions that once seemed unimaginable. She was part of the team behind NASA’s Orion spacecraft, which recently completed a successful mission around the moon. “I am so excited to have seen something that I worked on get launched, go out to space, and come back,” she said.
Richey’s newest role may be her most challenging yet: As chief systems engineer and deputy program manager on the NASA Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan, she’s helping lead the design and delivery of a drone-like spacecraft that won’t simply land but rather make short flights around the surface.
“This is not a true ‘lander’ because we don’t actually know what the surface of Titan looks like,” Richey explained. “We think there are oceans, which are not the best thing to land on for the first time.”
OPEN ABOUT THE CHALLENGES
Lockheed Martin is responsible for the aeroshell, backshell, and thermal protection systems utilized during the Dragonfly’s cruise stage and entry, descent, and landing (EDL) phases. “We blow the aeroshell off and then start to deploy this lander out, and it has to start spinning up its rotors,” Richey continued. “Once released, it has to fly off immediately and find a place to land.”
The eight-bladed rotorcraft being designed and built under the direction of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), is scheduled to launch in July 2028. Although Richey bears the responsibility for the program’s technical success or failure, it’s an overall demonstration of interdisciplinary teamwork. “It just showcases every aspect of engineering that all comes together in a single mission, along with the science behind it,” she added.
Richey is open about the challenges she has faced, from skepticism in a male-dominated field to navigating technical blind spots. “In the job I’m in now, I need to immediately make decisions on failure review boards,” she continued. Finding ways to learn and adapt, consult with others, and then act quickly have been key.
“You will never be an expert in everything,” she said, emphasizing the value of support systems and encouraging engineers to invest in their networks. “Find people to help you learn about the area that you need.”
In Richey’s words, opportunities are always there—but you have to act on them. That’s what led her to apply for her current role on the Dragonfly mission right after her previous program was unexpectedly canceled. “If I had just passed over that email, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” she shared. “When one door closes, there is always a new opportunity—you just have to realize it’s there to take it.”
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