User:SASE.sandoval/sandbox

Sergio Alfonso Sandoval Escobedo is a Mexican-American aerospace engineer from San Diego, California.

Career
Sergio grew up in Tijuana, Mexico to two Mexican parents with families coming from Guanajuato and Guadalajara. He attended Colegio Montessori Jean Itard, A.C. from elementary school and middle school. In high school, he went to Preparatoria Federal Lazaro Cardenas and studied communication as a technical degree. He demonstrated the best academic performance throughout his life, but struggled to choose a career throughout high school. During his last year of high school, he discovered his passion for aerospace engineering and decided to move to the United States to pursue a college education. Lack of resources forced him to remain in Tijuana while attending San Diego City College. During the first year, he crossed the border every day for 2 hours before making it to the United States, and rode a trolley to downtown San Diego for 1 hour to get to school. His determination to become an aerospace engineer made him passionate about leadership and education. He transferred to Georgia Tech under the prestigious Provost Scholarship, an award given only to senior high school students. At Georgia Tech he was inducted into the Aerospace Engineering Honor Society and graduated with high honors in 2017. During his undergraduate degree, he served as mentor for transfer students and as president of the Hispanic Recruitment Team, as well as collaborated in research projects in different areas, including Prox-1, the first satellite that Georgia Tech sent to space. His role was to fabricate the magnetic torque rods that provided the attitude control mechanism of the satellite.

In 2016, he was hired as a civil servant for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the Trajectory Operations Branch (TOPO), where he was able to shadow engineers doing work for the International Space Station inside mission control. He also served as the Tours and Lectures Chair organizing lectures by astronauts, engineers, and NASA officials. During the Fall 2016, he was awarded the Intern of the Month. In 2017, he served in the Dynamics and Vibrations Branch testing the tools required for launch vibration systems. Finally, in 2018 he moved to the Mission Planning and Trajectory Design Branch where he stayed to develop the guidance algorithms that will guide spacecraft in future missions to the Moon and Mars. His interests lie in guidance, navigation, and control (GNC), particularly in entry, descent, and landing (EDL).

In 2018, he received the prestigious NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship (NSTRF), National Science Foundation (NSF) Fellowship, NSTF, and SDSU Presidential Fellowships to start his doctoral studies in aerospace engineering as a NASA researcher and engineer.

Along with his advisor, he developed the most advanced abort guidance strategy for a lunar landing since the Apollo Program.