Samuel Goff

Since childhood, Alexander Siegel ’19 had dreams of working in aeronautics. A double major in computer science and engineering, a surprise internship acceptance at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland set things in motion. As an intern, he experienced one of his proudest moments: He wrote software that allowed amateur radio contacts with astronauts aboard the International Space Station, serving as a backup communication system and educational tool. This work led to a job opportunity closer to the rockets, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Today he is the manager of NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Artemis Launch Control System in Florida. As the youngest person to hold his position, Siegel oversees 50 engineers across four teams. His groups are responsible for the launch software that ensures a safe liftoff of the Artemis Missions that will carry astronauts to the moon and Mars.

Early in his time at NASA, he was challenged by a more experienced engineer, who called his software “impossible” because he had tried unsuccessfully to build the same product for NASA a decade earlier.

“He worked through it like a Ph.D. solving a theoretical thesis, and I picked a narrower scope that worked for Kennedy Space Center’s engineering and made the issue solvable,” says Siegel. “After sitting down and talking through it together, he would go on to endorse my solution.”

Siegel says this software ultimately was responsible for relaying thousands of commands at high speed between the rocket Space Launch System and the Launch Control Center.

“At Swarthmore, there’s a lot of emphasis on thinking for yourself and encouraging people to be creative thinkers,” he says, “not just accepting dogmatic principles, but drawing your own conclusions.” Swarthmore helped him early on to overcome the “impostor syndrome” that comes with working in such a prestigious organization, and to stand up for himself and his ideas. “Our work environment is high-pressure and fast-paced,” says Erin Frye, Spaceport Command & Control Systems Chief Architect at NASA. “Alex is exceptional at supporting his team and leading by example through the high-stress situations.”

Along with the knowledge he obtained in his science-based classes, Siegel learned to reject groupthink. “I noticed that many of the other engineers at NASA hadn’t been exposed to the same kind of education, so they were primarily interested in doing what was always done rather than innovating,” he says. “Questioning basic principles was something we were always taught in my classes at Swarthmore.”

Siegel says Swarthmore students are treated as professionals throughout schooling, and pitching ideas to investors prepared him to one day assemble a team and pitch a rocket simulator that was a pathway to him taking on a management role. “My classmate Natasha Nogueira ’18 and I pitched a high-altitude balloon project for funding, and we ended up doing that as part of our senior design project,” he says. “It made me feel like I could do anything. My experience or age was not going to be a barrier to me being able to do things.”

Siegel one day hopes to recruit Swarthmore alumni to work with him at NASA. “I’d always dreamed of being an astronaut,” he says, “but Swarthmore really awakened that drive in me. I’d love to see more graduates in our programs.