Alumni Award Profile: Katie Barthelme '88

Barthelme, who has been honored by NASA for her contributions to the Space Shuttle program and the Deep Space Climate Observatory mission, is the 2018 recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award, which recognizes St. Andrew's alumni who have demonstrated unique or significant accomplishments through professional achievement or social impact.

“The job came along, it was intriguing, and I wanted to see where I would go with it,” Barthelme said. “My career has spanned so many different areas – earth science, solar science, space science, and new technology development. I’ve been really lucky that I’ve been able to see and learn so much.”

 

Previous recipients of St. Andrew’s Distinguished Alumni Award include playwright Steven Levenson ’02 and celebrity chef Melissa (Donovan) D’Arabian ’86. Barthelme will receive the award during the 40th Anniversary Reunion Celebration Dinner on Oct. 13.

 

Barthelme joined Omitron in 1993 as a technical secretary, but her colleagues saw her potential to work on missions, and within two years she was an Operations Director for the Hitchhiker Project at the Goddard Space Flight Center. In this role she provided simulation and mission operations support for 17 Hitchhiker payloads, which carried experiments into outer space via space shuttles, over the course of 10 years.

 

“My most rewarding work was with the space shuttle. Manned space flight is so exciting,” Barthelme said. “There’s something very special about working with the crew and sharing with them. They would go up into space and come back and you would be able to hear what it’s like.”

 

She has spent the past 15 years providing senior systems engineering and operations support for a variety of projects, including the 2006 Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory mission, the 2008 Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope mission, the 2013 Landsat Data Continuity Mission, the 2015 Deep Space Climate Observatory, and the yet-to-launch Restore-L Robotic Satellite Servicing Mission.

In 2016 Barthelme received an award from NASA, the Robert H. Goddard Individual Award for Exceptional Achievement for Engineering, for her support of the Deep Space Climate Observatory.

Today, Barthelme is a Manager of Operations Engineering for the Omitron headquarters office in Beltsville. She is currently working on the development of the STPSat-6 Satellite Operation Center (SSOC), a full-scale satellite control center based in New Mexico.  

 

She said the award from St. Andrew’s has given her a chance to reflect on the opportunities she has had through Omitron to expand humanity’s understanding of the Earth and the solar system.

 

“I took an unconventional path to get here, but I feel like I’ve been able to make a lot of contributions to the success of the missions and it’s something very special to be involved in,” Barthelme said.