MERCEDES MCCARTHY
Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2018
North Carolina State University, Mechanical Engineering, ‘21
Host Institution: The Spaceship Company
Mentor: Diana Trujillo
Mercedes “Sadie” McCarthy is a senior studying Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Geology at North Carolina State University. Although Sadie has always been interested in a STEM career, she found herself falling for the aerospace industry when she realized that nothing else could satisfy her insatiable curiosity quite like space could. She looks forward to using her career to contribute to the exciting discoveries in store for the near future of space exploration.
As a student at NC State, Sadie has devoted her time to learning how to be an effective engineer and leader. She works as a College of Engineering Ambassador where she helps coordinate various College of Engineering events on campus as well as the Ambassador's Mentor&Mentee Program. Outside of her job as an Engineering Ambassador, Sadie currently serves as the Secretary of the NCSU SEDS Chapter, is involved in the NAE's Grand Challenge Scholars Program, and is also an active member of NC State’s High-Powered Rocketry Club where the team competes in the NASA Student Launch competition. In the past, Sadie had the opportunity to mentor 36 first-year engineering students in the Engineering Village on campus, to serve as a Teaching Assistant for an Introduction to Engineering & Problem Solving class, and to participate in a summer study abroad program at The University of Iceland Reykjavik to learn about applications of sustainable energy.
As a Brooke Owens Fellow, Sadie worked at The Spaceship Company in Mojave, CA. She worked on the Large Scale Test Team where she spent her time designing parts and getting her hands dirty in the test lab with as much technical experience as she could get. She helped design various subsystems of large scale test fixtures that will go on to test parts of Virgin Galactic’s future Spaceships, Etta and Artie.
More recently, Sadie spent a month living in Trujillo, Peru where she was volunteering with an NGO to build a wind turbine for a rural community without electricity. She is now alternating her semesters between taking classes and working as a NASA Pathways Intern at Johnson Space Center. At JSC, Sadie worked with the Propulsion Systems group within the Flight Operations Directorate to support SpaceX Crew Dragon, Boeing CST-100 Starliner, and NASA Artemis programs. Her next rotation at JSC will take her to the Orion Human Factors Engineering team where she will design tests for the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.