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I Am Artemis: Diamond St. John
Listen to this audio excerpt from Diamond St. John, engineer working on the Artemis III heat shield for the Orion Program at Lockheed Martin:
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Your browser does not support the audio element.For four-generations, Diamond St. John’s family has been supporting human spaceflight at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Now, she’s continuing the family legacy that reaches back to Apollo —helping return humanity to the Moon with the agency’s Artemis campaign.
St. John is an engineer with Lockheed Martin supporting Orion, NASA’s spacecraft built to carry crew to the Moon and return them safely to Earth on Artemis missions. She specializes in the production of Orion’s heat shield at Lockheed’s Spacecraft, Test, Assembly and Resource Center, in Titusville, Florida. As one of the most important elements of the spacecraft, the heat shield is responsible for protecting the astronauts from the nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures as they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at the end of the mission.
From start to finish, St. John is responsible for establishing a production workflow for the Orion heat shield — the largest of its kind in the world — and ensures each step is executed in the correct order along the way.
Her team recognizes the criticality of their work and knows that their mission is to make sure astronauts come home safe. When it comes to quality of production, St. John embraces that mindset.
“We always want to make sure that we're doing things right. We have to slow down and make sure that our product is quality — because the slightest thing can be a make or break. We definitely want to make sure that our crew is safe.”Diamond St. John
Engineer on the Orion Program with Lockheed Martin
St. John and her team are working on the Orion heat shield for the Artemis III mission that will land astronauts on the lunar surface. The team is in the process of bonding 186 tiles made of a material called Avcoat to the heat shield’s underlying structure. “Once we start bonding operations, we first sand the blocks, to make sure that we minimize any gaps between them. Then we get into bonding, and we fill the gaps, and we test. After that’s complete, we then paint and tape the heat shield.”
“Seeing a final product finished, it warms your heart. So, I’m looking forward to that finished heat shield and knowing that we put our heart and soul into it.”Diamond St. John
Engineer on the Orion Program with Lockheed Martin
Though she is currently working on the heat shield for Artemis III, her journey with Orion began with the Artemis I spacecraft. St. John started on the clean room floor as a technician intern with subcontractor ASRC Federal. She then moved into a full-time role with the company for four years in quality inspection while earning her bachelor’s degree in engineering. After that, St. John joined Lockheed Martin as a manufacturing engineer.
“Everything has been Artemis from the beginning,” she said, in reflection of her career. “Knowing that my great grandparents worked on the Apollo missions — it’s cool to follow down that same path. I think they would be pretty proud.”
Join observers from around the world on Saturday, Oct. 4, for NASA’s International Observe the…
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I Am Artemis: Diamond St. John
Listen to this audio excerpt from Diamond St. John, engineer working on the Artemis III heat shield for the Orion Program at Lockheed Martin:
0:00 / 0:00
Your browser does not support the audio element.For four-generations, Diamond St. John’s family has been supporting human spaceflight at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Now, she’s continuing the family legacy that reaches back to Apollo —helping return humanity to the Moon with the agency’s Artemis campaign.
St. John is an engineer with Lockheed Martin supporting Orion, NASA’s spacecraft built to carry crew to the Moon and return them safely to Earth on Artemis missions. She specializes in the production of Orion’s heat shield at Lockheed’s Spacecraft, Test, Assembly and Resource Center, in Titusville, Florida. As one of the most important elements of the spacecraft, the heat shield is responsible for protecting the astronauts from the nearly 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures as they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at the end of the mission.
From start to finish, St. John is responsible for establishing a production workflow for the Orion heat shield — the largest of its kind in the world — and ensures each step is executed in the correct order along the way.
Her team recognizes the criticality of their work and knows that their mission is to make sure astronauts come home safe. When it comes to quality of production, St. John embraces that mindset.
“We always want to make sure that we're doing things right. We have to slow down and make sure that our product is quality — because the slightest thing can be a make or break. We definitely want to make sure that our crew is safe.”Diamond St. John
Engineer on the Orion Program with Lockheed Martin
St. John and her team are working on the Orion heat shield for the Artemis III mission that will land astronauts on the lunar surface. The team is in the process of bonding 186 tiles made of a material called Avcoat to the heat shield’s underlying structure. “Once we start bonding operations, we first sand the blocks, to make sure that we minimize any gaps between them. Then we get into bonding, and we fill the gaps, and we test. After that’s complete, we then paint and tape the heat shield.”
“Seeing a final product finished, it warms your heart. So, I’m looking forward to that finished heat shield and knowing that we put our heart and soul into it.”Diamond St. John
Engineer on the Orion Program with Lockheed Martin
Though she is currently working on the heat shield for Artemis III, her journey with Orion began with the Artemis I spacecraft. St. John started on the clean room floor as a technician intern with subcontractor ASRC Federal. She then moved into a full-time role with the company for four years in quality inspection while earning her bachelor’s degree in engineering. After that, St. John joined Lockheed Martin as a manufacturing engineer.
“Everything has been Artemis from the beginning,” she said, in reflection of her career. “Knowing that my great grandparents worked on the Apollo missions — it’s cool to follow down that same path. I think they would be pretty proud.”
Join observers from around the world on Saturday, Oct. 4, for NASA’s International Observe the…
Article 2 days ago 3 min read NASA Opens 2026 Human Lander Challenge for Life Support Systems, More Article 3 days ago Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASAMissions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
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Hubble Captures Puzzling Galaxy
- Hubble Home
- Overview
- Impact & Benefits
- Science
- Observatory
- Team
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2 min read
Hubble Captures Puzzling Galaxy This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy NGC 2775.ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a galaxy that’s hard to categorize. The galaxy in question is NGC 2775, which lies 67 million light-years away in the constellation Cancer (the Crab). NGC 2775 sports a smooth, featureless center that is devoid of gas, resembling an elliptical galaxy. It also has a dusty ring with patchy star clusters, like a spiral galaxy. Which is it: spiral or elliptical — or neither?
Because we can only view NGC 2775 from one angle, it’s difficult to say for sure. Some researchers classify NGC 2775 as a spiral galaxy because of its feathery ring of stars and dust, while others classify it as a lenticular galaxy. Lenticular galaxies have features common to both spiral and elliptical galaxies.
Astronomers aren’t certain of exactly how lenticular galaxies come to be, and they might form in a variety of ways. Lenticular galaxies might be spiral galaxies that merged with other galaxies, or that have mostly run out of star-forming gas and lost their prominent spiral arms. They also might have started out more like elliptical galaxies, then collected gas into a disk around them.
Some evidence suggests that NGC 2775 merged with other galaxies in the past. Invisible in this Hubble image, NGC 2775 has a tail of hydrogen gas that stretches almost 100,000 light-years around the galaxy. This faint tail could be the remnant of one or more galaxies that wandered too close to NGC 2775 before being stretched apart and absorbed. If NGC 2775 merged with other galaxies in the past, it could explain the galaxy’s strange appearance today.
Most astronomers classify NGC 2775 as a flocculent spiral galaxy. Flocculent spirals have poorly defined, discontinuous arms that are often described as “feathery” or as “tufts” of stars that loosely form spiral arms.
Hubble previously released an image of NGC 2775 in 2020. This new version adds observations of a specific wavelength of red light emitted by clouds of hydrogen gas surrounding massive young stars, visible as bright, pinkish clumps in the image. This additional wavelength of light helps astronomers better define where new stars are forming in the galaxy.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubbleMedia Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Hubble News
Hubble Science Highlights
Hubble Online Activities
Hubble Captures Puzzling Galaxy
- Hubble Home
- Overview
- Impact & Benefits
- Science
- Observatory
- Team
- Multimedia
- News
- More
2 min read
Hubble Captures Puzzling Galaxy This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy NGC 2775.ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST TeamThis NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a galaxy that’s hard to categorize. The galaxy in question is NGC 2775, which lies 67 million light-years away in the constellation Cancer (the Crab). NGC 2775 sports a smooth, featureless center that is devoid of gas, resembling an elliptical galaxy. It also has a dusty ring with patchy star clusters, like a spiral galaxy. Which is it: spiral or elliptical — or neither?
Because we can only view NGC 2775 from one angle, it’s difficult to say for sure. Some researchers classify NGC 2775 as a spiral galaxy because of its feathery ring of stars and dust, while others classify it as a lenticular galaxy. Lenticular galaxies have features common to both spiral and elliptical galaxies.
Astronomers aren’t certain of exactly how lenticular galaxies come to be, and they might form in a variety of ways. Lenticular galaxies might be spiral galaxies that merged with other galaxies, or that have mostly run out of star-forming gas and lost their prominent spiral arms. They also might have started out more like elliptical galaxies, then collected gas into a disk around them.
Some evidence suggests that NGC 2775 merged with other galaxies in the past. Invisible in this Hubble image, NGC 2775 has a tail of hydrogen gas that stretches almost 100,000 light-years around the galaxy. This faint tail could be the remnant of one or more galaxies that wandered too close to NGC 2775 before being stretched apart and absorbed. If NGC 2775 merged with other galaxies in the past, it could explain the galaxy’s strange appearance today.
Most astronomers classify NGC 2775 as a flocculent spiral galaxy. Flocculent spirals have poorly defined, discontinuous arms that are often described as “feathery” or as “tufts” of stars that loosely form spiral arms.
Hubble previously released an image of NGC 2775 in 2020. This new version adds observations of a specific wavelength of red light emitted by clouds of hydrogen gas surrounding massive young stars, visible as bright, pinkish clumps in the image. This additional wavelength of light helps astronomers better define where new stars are forming in the galaxy.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubbleMedia Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Hubble News
Hubble Science Highlights
Hubble Online Activities
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Neuroscience and Art Collide in a Posthumous ‘Composition’ by Alvin Lucier in Revivification
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