Sarah Gillis

SpaceX Lead Operations Engineer and SpaceX commercial astronaut

Sarah Gillis
Born
Sarah Levine

(1994-01-01) January 1, 1994 (age 30)[1][2]
Palo Alto, California, U.S.
EducationUniversity of Colorado Boulder (BS)
OccupationSenior Space Operations Engineer at SpaceX
Space career
SpaceX Commercial Astronaut
Time in space
5 days (planned)
MissionsPolaris Dawn
Mission insignia
Logo_of_Polaris_Dawn

Sarah Gillis is an American engineer employed by SpaceX as the senior space operations engineer. She is scheduled to fly on Polaris Dawn, a private human spaceflight mission, operated by SpaceX on behalf of Jared Isaacman. During the mission, she is expected to attempt the first commercial spacewalk with Isaacman.

Early life and education

Gillis graduated from Shining Mountain Waldorf School in Boulder, Colorado, in June 2012. She obtained a degree in aerospace engineering from University of Colorado Boulder on the advice of her mentor, former NASA astronaut Joseph R. Tanner.[3]

Career

In 2015, while at the University of Colorado Boulder, Gillis began an internship at SpaceX, working on human-in-the-loop testing of the Dragon spacecraft before moving full-time to the astronaut training program.[citation needed]

She is a lead space operations engineer at SpaceX, responsible for overseeing the astronaut training program for the company's Crew Dragon vehicles. She prepared NASA astronauts for the first Demo-2 and Crew-1 missions and more recently directly trained Inspiration4 astronauts, the first all-civilian crew to go into orbit. Gillis is an experienced Mission Control Operator, who has supported real-time operations for Dragon's cargo resupply missions to and from the International Space Station as a Navigation Officer and as Crew Operations and Resources Engineer (CORE) for crew Dragon missions, the SpaceX equivalent of the NASA CAPCOM role.[4]

Gillis is scheduled to fly on Polaris Dawn, a private spaceflight funded by Jared Isaacman.[5][6] She will perform an extravehicular activity with Jared Isaacman.

Media coverage

Gillis appears in episodes 3, 4 and 5 in the 2021 Netflix series Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space.

References

  1. ^ Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space, episode 3. Netflix. September 13, 2021. Quotation begins at 03:25. Retrieved May 10, 2022. My name is Sarah Gillis, and I'm 27...
  2. ^ "Private Astronauts Biography: Sarah Gillis". spacefacts.de. Retrieved August 12, 2024.
  3. ^ "Shooting for the Stars: SMWS Alum and SpaceX Engineer Sarah Gillis". Shining Mountain Waldorf School. September 28, 2021. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
  4. ^ Jiménez, Jesus (September 15, 2021). "Sarah Gillis will be a key voice in the astronauts' ears as they head to orbit". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 16, 2022.
  5. ^ ""SpaceX Tourists Will Make Attempt at Spacewalk During Flight"", The New York Times, ISSN 0362-4331, retrieved February 16, 2022
  6. ^ "Jared Isaacman, who led the first all-private astronaut mission to orbit, has commissioned 3 more flights from SpaceX". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved February 16, 2022.

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