• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2018

• University of Colorado at Boulder, Aerospace Engineering, '19

• Host Institution: Sierra Nevada Corporation

• Mentor: Meenakshi Wadhwa

Carson Brumley is a Systems Engineer leading the human factors team at Sierra Space that is designing and building the Dream Chaser spaceplane. Her strengths include solving complex human systems integration problems, human factors requirement management, human in the loop testing, scenario based design, and customer integration.

Carson grew up in Telluride Colorado, avidly hiking, snowboarding, paddle boarding, making art and horseback riding. Her passion for adventure, desire to create and curiosity of the stars drove her become an aerospace engineer.

Carson received her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Colorado. During her undergrad, Carson conducted her own research in the Bioastronautics Laboratory at CU, studying people’s ability to adapt to artificial gravity. As a student at CU, Carson designed, built and launched cube satellites; conducted research on a human centrifuge device; and was a course assistant for a former astronaut. For her senior design project, she worked on a team of 12 to design, model, build and fly a high aspect ratio, box-wing, RC aircraft. She was the science lead, a system engineer and the RC pilot.

Carson is also an avid entrepreneur who started and operated her own business: a bicycle-powered food cart. In the past, Carson has worked at a yoga studio, as a horseback trail ride guide and has taught kids art classes. In her free time at CU she played intramural sports and voluntarily led after-school STEM activities at low-income elementary schools each week. Carson has taught English and Math classes in 2 foreign countries and has mentored over 15 young women in STEM.

As a 2018 Brooke Owens Fellow, Carson worked at Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) as part of their systems engineering team on Dream Chaser. Carson’s main project was conducting human factors analysis, in which she quantified every interaction between the ISS crew and Dream Chaser to ensure every size astronaut could operate the equipment. After Carson’s Brookie summer, she worked part-time at SNC throughout her senior year and accepted a full-time position at SNC upon her graduation.

At Sierra Space, Carson has worked on the Dream Chaser Spaceplane and the Human Landing System. Dream Chaser is a reusable, autonomous, cargo-carrying, lifting-body spacecraft that launches to the ISS on top of a rocket and lands on a runway. The Human Landing System is human spaceflight lunar lander and habitat design concept for the NASA HLS component of the Artemis program to put the first woman and next man on the moon. Carson is a Systems Engineer working requirements management and verification for Human Factors, EVA, Cargo and TPS. She is also a Human Factors Analyst who conducts mockup assessments, analyzes crew-interface designs and acts as the liaison between the design, safety and operations teams.

If you want to know more about Carson’s work, want to work at Sierra Space, need a mentor, or need a STEM speaker/volunteer, please reach out to Carson Brumley on LinkedIn.