Tom Strikwerda ’71 has always been interested in space. Even before he graduated from Calvin with a degree in physics, he was a regular lecturer at the Grand Rapids Planetarium.
“I was very excited that Calvin was getting its own telescope during my senior year,” he said. “It was fun to work on the original instrument, but by the time it was ready I had already graduated.”
Strikwerda went on to the University of Virginia for a master’s, and then a PhD, in astronomy. While there, he met an engineering professor at Virginia Tech who had a multiyear grant to study the autonomous navigation of spacecraft by using quick identification of stars.
After three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Tech, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) became interested in Strikwerda’s emerging expertise and signed him on. He’s been at APL for the last 33 years.
“I work as a supervisor for APL’s National Security Space Mission Area,” he said. “There are about 600 employees in our Space Sector, handling both civil space and NSS [National Security Space] research and development projects. I’m responsible for all of the NSS program managers—helping them and their teams solve problems, mentoring, encouraging and removing as many roadblocks to their research projects as I can.”
Strikwerda’s managers have as many as 25 projects running at one time. They may be helping to improve the U.S. space systems or exploring future technologies.
A current project that excites him is the operation of APL’s new, extra-small spacecraft with all the basic functions of a traditional satellite, launched last fall. “These are a real game-changer in the satellite arena. Low-cost, rapid-development spacecraft, each about the size of a shoebox, provide a pathway to space for researchers to try new, miniature technologies without all the burden of a major acquisition program. And they can be launched as hitchhikers on launches of larger spacecraft.”
Another successful recent project involved an Air Force request for lower-cost weather detection from space, needed by pilots. APL experimented with a group of small sensors that were attached to the belly of a Gulfstream airplane and flown across the country in search of a variety of clouds and weather patterns. The sensors worked flawlessly and, for a much lower cost than the traditional large sensors, can be attached to any number of smaller, multipurpose satellites.
Strikwerda sees hackers as a significant issue for national security. Given the damage hackers have done to credit card systems in stores and banks, what might they do to our government satellites and systems?
“I had to laugh at an old James Bond film recently that was depicting space weapon systems,” he said. “But it’s actually serious business for us to understand the threats and to be nimble and adaptable enough to help government entities deal with these issues.”
After a number of years as a hands-on technical group manager, Strikwerda is now a senior administrator, but he still gets to interact with and assist research teams.
“I enjoy technical work,” he said, “but I also love to see what the next generation can do. I clear away the bumps in the road they encounter and get to review the progress they make each day.”
Strikwerda also helps APL wrestle with one of the fundamental issues in his field: budget allocation.
“This work is all about the balance of dollars for projects,” he said. “Our government sponsors have a wide range of urgent needs. In addition to finding technical solutions, we help them find cost-effective ways of sustaining existing systems or achieving the goals of new programs. It’s not always clear what the new challenges of the day—something such as cyberthreat—will demand in time and budget.”
APL’s motto is “Critical Contributions to Critical Challenges.” Strikwerda believes that the 5,000 members of APL’s 11 mission areas do an excellent job of looking at the big picture, sharing expertise and making the country safer—the basic purpose of APL since its founding in 1942 during World War II.
