NASA MICHOUD ASSEMBLY FACILITY INSPIRES TRAINEES DURING RECENT VISIT

News Release

Advanced manufacturing and aerospace engineering careers made real during NASA facility and Nunez Community College tours

NEW ORLEANS, La. – More than 30 high school trainees in New Orleans Career Center’s (NOCC) engineering/manufacturing pathway recently visited NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility. Michoud officials from NASA, Boeing and Lockheed Martin highlighted every step of the Artemis I Orion spacecraft’s construction, from component creation to final assembly of the core module and crew capsule. Work-based learning events like these offer NOCC trainees important exposure to future career options and help them build their own networks of working professionals. The group then visited Nunez Community College’s Aerospace Manufacturing Technology program designed to prepare Louisiana’s future aerospace manufacturing workforce.

“Learning about and seeing the entire assembly line for creating parts of a spaceship to send astronauts to space was mind-blowing,” said NOCC engineering/manufacturing trainee Kierstyn Guilbeau, who is also a senior at McDonogh 35 Senior High School. “We saw the entire process from drawing it out, to creating and welding parts, to bolting the individual sections together and attaching all parts of the spaceship so they could eventually send the astronauts off. Before the field trip, I was extremely clueless about aerospace engineering, what was going on in the NASA facility, and the impact their projects will have. Makes you realize people just like me can do extremely hard work like checking, double-checking and triple-checking work because there can be no mistake in the building process. It has opened my eyes to a new opportunity.”

NOCC’s career and technical education programs prepare New Orleanians for high-wage, high-demand occupations in the region’s growth industries, including engineering and advanced manufacturing. The engineering/manufacturing pathway introduces young people to computer-aided design, prototyping, 3D modeling and more. All trainees work toward industry-based, professional-level technical certifications and credentials required for many high-demand occupations. NOCC Engineering/Manufacturing instructors Allyson McKinney and Courtney Guidry led the group. They were joined by Andreas Pashos, Aerospace Program Manager at Nunez, who made the visit possible.

Read the Biz New Orleans coverage of the visit here.