{"id":198102,"date":"2025-04-10T02:01:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T16:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/?p=839257"},"modified":"2025-04-10T02:01:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T16:01:00","slug":"mike-drury-a-40-year-legacy-of-precision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=198102","title":{"rendered":"Mike Drury: A 40-Year Legacy of Precision"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deputy Integration and Testing Manager – Goddard Space Flight Center<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mike Drury began at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, as a temporary technician \u2014 a contractor hired for six weeks to set up High Capacity Centrifuge tests. Six weeks then turned into three months and, eventually, over 40 years.<\/p>\n

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\"Portrait<\/a><\/figure>
\n
Mike Drury, the deputy integration and testing manager for NASA\u2019s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, stands inside a clean room in front of Roman\u2019s primary support structure and propulsion system. The \u201cbunny suit\u201d that he\u2019s wearing protects the telescope from contaminants like dust, hair, and skin.<\/div>\n
NASA\/Chris Gunn<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Now, Mike is the deputy integration and testing manager for NASA\u2019s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope<\/a>. In this role, Mike oversees both Roman\u2019s assembly and the many verification processes that ensure it is ready for launch.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a privilege to work here. There’s really no regrets,\u201d Mike says. \u201cThis is a big place, and it is what you make it. You can really spread your wings and go into a lot of different areas and do different things.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Mike first began at Goddard, only government-employed technicians could work on space flight hardware. However, times were changing. The \u201cold-timers,\u201d as Mike affectionately calls them, soon began training a small group of contractors, including Mike, for flight hardware work. Mike credits these \u201cold-timers\u201d for the mindset he still carries decades later.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey taught me how to approach things and execute, and that helped me through my entire career,\u201d Mike says. \u201cIt\u2019s that approach \u2014 making sure things are done right, without cutting any corners \u2014 that I always liked about working here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not everyone can say that they worked on space missions while in college, but Mike can. Mike took advantage of a program through his contract that paid for classes. For 10 years, Mike studied at Anne Arundel Community College while continuing full-time work at Goddard, eventually earning an associate\u2019s degree in mathematics. <\/p>\n

While in community college, Mike also stocked up on several physics and calculus credits which helped prepare him to study thermal engineering at Johns Hopkins University. After seven more years of night classes, Mike completed a bachelor\u2019s degree in mechanical engineering. <\/p>\n

\u201cNight school was really difficult between full-time work and traveling because I was working on several missions,\u201d Mike says. \u201cYou needed that perseverance to just keep going and working away at it. So I just hung in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"photo<\/a><\/figure>
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In this 1989 picture, Mike works on NASA\u2019s BBXRT (Broad Band X-ray Telescope) at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. BBXRT flew on the space shuttle Columbia in 1990.<\/div>\n
NASA<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In his 17 years of night school, Mike worked on seven missions, expanding his skill set from test set-up, to clean room tech work, to training astronauts. While working on the Hubble Space Telescope, Mike helped to train astronauts for their in-orbit tech work to install various instruments. <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery mission I\u2019ve worked on I\u2019ve learned something,\u201d Mike says. \u201cEvery test you learn more and more about other disciplines.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduating from Johns Hopkins, Mike worked for a short time as an engineer before becoming an integration supervisor. In 2006, Mike took on the position of James Webb Space Telescope ISIM (Integrated Science Instrument Module) integration and test manager. After Webb\u2019s ISIM was integrated with the Optical Telescope Element, Mike became the OTIS (Optical Telescope Element and Integrated Science Instrument Module) integration and testing manager.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a tough eight to 10 years of work,\u201d Mike says. \u201cLoading the OTIS into the shipping container to be sent to NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center in Houston for further testing was a great accomplishment.\u201d <\/p>\n

To ensure that Webb\u2019s ISIM would thrive in space, Mike was involved in more than three months of round-the-clock thermal vacuum testing. During this time, a blizzard stranded Mike and others on-site at Goddard for three days. Mike spent his nights overseeing thermal vacuum tests and his days driving test directors and operators to their nearby hotel rooms with his four-wheel-drive truck \u2014 a winter storm savior in short supply.<\/p>\n

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\"photo<\/a><\/figure>
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In this 1992 picture, Mike works alongside another technician on DXS (Diffuse X-Ray Spectrometer) in the shuttle bay at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. DXS was a University of Wisconsin-Madison experiment flown during the January 1993 flight of NASA\u2019s Space Shuttle Endeavor.<\/div>\n
NASA<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

For Mike, the hard work behind space missions is well worth it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs humans, we want to discover new things and see things. That\u2019s what keeps me coming back \u2014 the thought of discovery and space flight,\u201d Mike says. \u201cI get excited talking to some of the Hubble or Webb scientists about the discoveries they\u2019ve made. They answer questions but they also find themselves asking new ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of these new questions opened by Hubble and Webb will be addressed by Mike\u2019s current project \u2014 Roman.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis team I would say is the best I\u2019ve ever worked with. I say that because it’s the Goddard family. Everyone here on Roman has the same agenda, and that\u2019s a successful, on-time launch,\u201d Mike says. \u201cMy ultimate goal is to be staying on the beach in Florida after watching Roman blast off. That would be all the icing on the cake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike is also focusing on laying the groundwork for the next era at Goddard. He works hard to instill a sense of import, intention, and precision in his successors, just as the \u201cold-timers\u201d instilled in him 40 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI talk to a lot of my colleagues that I\u2019ve worked with for years, and we\u2019re all excited to hand it off to the next generation,\u201d Mike says. \u201cIt\u2019s so exciting to see. I\u2019m the old guy now.\u201d<\/p>\n

By Laine Havens<\/strong>
NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deputy Integration and Testing Manager \u2013 Goddard Space Flight Center Mike Drury began at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, as a temporary technician \u2014 a contractor hired for six weeks to set up High Capacity Centrifuge tests. Six weeks then turned into three months and, eventually, over 40 years. Now, Mike is [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15619,15618,15620],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nancy-grace-roman-space-telescope","category-people-of-goddard","category-people-of-nasa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=198102"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198639,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198102\/revisions\/198639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=198102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=198102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=198102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}