Today we’d like to introduce you to Mary-Kate/MK Smith.
Hi Mary-Kate/MK, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was born and raised in Mississippi, earning both my BS and MS in Aerospace Engineering at Mississippi State. With undergrad focused on astronautics, and grad work in mission design, where my thesis was a concept study for exploring the seas of Titan with deployable instrument buoys, DAVID (Deployable And Versatile Instrumented Device) Bouys. I’ve wanted to be part of the space story for as long as I can remember.
My career has taken me across a good chunk of the industry: working mission control as a flight controller for the International Space Station at NASA Johnson Space Center, working with unmanned aircraft certification at Insitu, missile systems and MBSE (Model-Based Systems Engineering) work at Lockheed Martin with Fleet Ballistic Missiles, and digital engineering leadership for satellite constellation programs at Emergent and York Space Systems. The common thread has been systems thinking, figuring out how all the pieces connect, and building the tools and processes that let teams see the whole picture.
Today I support NASA Kennedy’s Moon Base Transportation Office as a Digital Engineering Architect, leading the Office in building the digital engineering infrastructure behind getting crew and cargo to the lunar surface. It is a wild time to be at NASA. We are going to the Moon, and I regularly find myself in awe of what people can accomplish when they point themselves at something hard.
My passion for human spaceflight traces back to a Carl Sagan line I read a long time ago: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” I want to know it, and I want to be on the team that helps humanity reach farther into the universe.
When I’m not doing space work, you’ll find me bartending part time at Thornton Park Pub, walking downtown Orlando with my sheepadoodle Ambrosius, or building new cosplays and puppets. I usually describe myself as a chaos goblin who blowtorches the candle from both ends and always reaching for the stars and living life to the fullest.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Not entirely, no. Life hands you a couple of lemons along the way, and I’ve learned it’s what you do with them that matters.
My first job out of grad school was as a flight controller in NASA Mission Control, supporting the International Space Station. On the very day I certified, I was struck by a car while walking across a crosswalk. I was rushed to Ben Taub, the trauma hospital in Houston, where doctors found a hematoma putting pressure on my brain, and I went into emergency surgery.
I survived, but the Aerospace Medical Board placed a twelve-month restriction on console duties. I was devastated. I was fresh out of school, had just finished on-the-job training for the exact role I’d been working toward, and suddenly had no idea where I’d land.
That’s when I connected with Jennifer Price, a brilliant woman at Johnson Space Center who took a chance on me. Together we developed a tool the Flight Operations Directorate used to certify SpaceX and Boeing vehicle operations for human spaceflight. Working in Commercial Crew didn’t just give me the chance to build something for flight controllers and engineers; I also got to teach it to Flight Directors and astronauts. It’s an experience I never would have had if things had gone according to plan.
I was lucky to survive that accident. But I was also lucky that tenacity and drive kept me reaching out, saying yes, and growing my career even when the road I’d mapped out disappeared under me.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m a aerospace engineer who specializes in Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and digital engineering, which, in plain terms, means I help large programs stop managing themselves out of a thousand disconnected spreadsheets and documents, and instead build a living, connected model of the system they’re trying to create. A system-of-systems.
At NASA Kennedy’s Moon Base Transportation Office, I lead the digital engineering effort for the program tasked with moving crew and cargo to the lunar surface. The architecture I’m building connects requirements, system models, analysis tools, and dashboards into a single source of truth, so that a change in one place is visible everywhere it matters. A lot of my day is spent translating: between engineers and program leadership, between disciplines that use different tools, and between the “this is how we’ve always done it” and the “here’s what’s possible now.”
What I think I’m known for is bringing people along. Digital engineering only works if the people doing the actual engineering see it as something that helps them, not another compliance box. I’ve spent most of my career (at Lockheed Martin, at Emergent and York Space Systems, and now at NASA) building that buy-in one working session at a time, showing a thermal analyst or a mission designer that the model can help them do their job by cutting time and error.
What I’m most proud of is the range of the path. I’ve been an ISS flight controller, helped certify unmanned aircraft with the FAA, supported Trident II missile systems for the Navy, led architecture for a defense satellite constellation, and now I get to work on going to the Moon. Each one taught me a different way of seeing a system, and I get to bring all of them to the table now.
What sets me apart is probably that I don’t stay in one lane. I’m the engineer who will also administer your Jira, write your process docs, teach the training class, and then go build a foam armor set over the weekend. I like making things, whether that be models, tools, processes, costumes, puppets…or and I think that hands-on instinct makes me a better architect. I want to understand how the pieces actually fit, not just how they’re supposed to.
Any big plans?
We are going to the Moon, and I get to help make that happen. I’m thrilled to be part of this mission. I believe in what the Moon Base program brings; not just the technology it will push forward, but the way a program like this inspires the next generation of engineers, scientists, and astronauts. A kid somewhere is going to watch a crew set up shop on the lunar surface the way I once read Carl Sagan, and decide that’s what they want to do with their life. I want to have helped build the thing that did that.
In the near term, my focus is on maturing the digital engineering foundation for the program: getting the models, tools, and data flows connected so that as the mission grows more complex, the people running it can still see the whole picture. The Moon is a proving ground. The way we architect this program is the way we’ll architect the ones after it, and I want us to get it right.
Longer term, I’ll say it plainly: I want to be the next leader in NASA’s digital architecture space. I want to lead that development, to help define how the agency connects its models, its data, and its people across programs, so that going to the Moon, and eventually beyond, is built on a foundation that holds. I’ve spent my career learning how systems fit together. I want to spend the next chapter shaping how NASA’s do.
And I want to keep paying it forward the way people like Jennifer Price did for me, by mentoring the interns and early-career engineers who are just finding their footing because the next leader after me is probably one of them.
Outside of work, no big changes on the horizon; just more cosplays, more puppets, more walks with Ambrosius, and a lot more time staring up at the sky knowing we’re on our way back.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rocketeerlady
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marykatelynsmith
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/therocketeerlady
