Join us for the February 2018 Hackaday LA Meetup on Tuesday, February 27 at 6:30pm! Meet with your fellow hackers, chat with our two excellent speakers, and catch up on all the latest going on at Supplyframe and Hackaday.

**Please make sure to RSVP on Meetup so we can plan accordingly!**

Featured Speakers

David Doody -- "The 20-Year Cassini Mission"
JPL's Lead Engineer for real-time Mission Control operations of the Cassini-Huygens Mission will touch on how we got to Saturn, show highlights from over a decade in the Saturnian system, and share the mission's spectacular Grand Finale. Near the end of its 20-year flight, Cassini began what became a whole new mission. After repeatedly flying close outside the main rings, a daring jump provided twenty-two orbits that skimmed between the gas giant's atmosphere and its innermost rings. Finally, the spacecraft plunged to its meteoric destruction (on purpose!) into Saturn's atmosphere on September 15, 2017.

After serving in the U.S. Air Force, Dave Doody worked as an instructor for Japan Air Lines teaching Captains and First Officers of JAL. Dave worked as a systems engineer there for three years before joining the NASA-JPL Deep Space Network in Pasadena to create instructional systems and training materials for operators of the worldwide spacecraft-communications systems. On completion of the Deep Space Network contract, Dave got his master's degree and then went to work on the NASA Voyager mission flight operations team while Voyager 2 cruised from Saturn to Uranus and Neptune. Flight operations on Magellan, the Venus mapper, then led to flight ops work on the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan, where he has been since 1994.

Michelle Easter -- "Mechatronics: Unconventional Pathways and Aerospace Applications"
Mechatronics is the intersection of mechanical, electrical and software engineering, including actuated mechanisms with embedded feedback control systems. The applications for such an inherently interdisciplinary field are broad, touching every aspect of a flight project, down to designing ground-based mechatronic systems to test the design of flight ones. This talk will introduce some mechatronic systems that Michelle has contributed to during her three years at JPL, including Sentinel-6and Europa Clipper flight actuators, Europa Lander test facilities, and the upcoming Mars Sample Return project. She will also describe the unconventional career path she took, and how it led her to organically discover her passion for engineering, and ultimately to obtain the education and experience necessary to become a Mechatronics Engineer.

After working first as a makeup artist, then as a fashion model for years in the US, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, Michelle started college from scratch at the age of 26. After transferring to Stevens Institute of Technology, she earned her degree in Mechanical Engineering, graduating at the top of her class, and now works as a Mechatronics Engineer in the Payload and Small Spacecraft Mechanical Engineering Section at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She is currently the cognizant engineer for the Sentinel-6 AMR-C Supplemental Calibration System Dual Drive Actuators, and focuses on research and development of actuated mechanisms for instruments and small spacecraft. Since her career transition so profoundly and positively impacted her life, she was inspired to start the nonprofit engineering educational organization, Mind Makers, of which she is currently CEO.

Hackaday Belgrade 2018

Hackaday Belgrade returns May 26!  This one-day conference is not to be missed.  We're looking for talks and workshops about hardware, design, 3D printing, etc.  Submit your proposal now! 

Call For Lightning Talks

We will have reserved time for lightning talks. You'll get about two minutes to make an announcement, demo a project, or call for project collaborators. There will be a sign-up list at the meetup.