• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2022

• Cornell University, Mechanical Engineering, ‘23

• Host Institution: The Aerospace Corporation

• Executive Mentor: Suzi McBride

• Brookie Mentor: Nicole Swatton

Emily Matteson is a junior at Cornell University’s College of Engineering studying Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. She is extremely excited and honored to be a 2022 Brooke Owens Fellow and will intern this summer at The Aerospace Corporation.

Currently at Cornell, Emily is the Integration & Test Lead on the Cislunar Explorers Research Team in Dr. Mason Peck’s Space Systems Design Studio. Cislunar Explorers is a technical demonstration mission in which a pair of 3U CubeSats to be injected into lunar orbit will demonstrate two novel technologies: water electrolysis propulsion and low-cost interplanetary optical navigation systems.

Emily is also the Structures Lead on the Cornell Rocketry Team, one of Cornell Engineering’s 31 student-led project teams. Cornell Rocketry Team designs, assembles, and launches reusable high-powered rockets in the international Spaceport America Cup Competition which takes place in the New Mexico desert each year in June. Emily has been a member of the 40-member project team since her freshman year.

And finally, Emily is also a Teaching Assistant for the 2022 cohort of the one-year intensive Cornell Engineering Leadership Certification Program. Emily graduated from this program in 2020 which focuses on critical competencies in leadership and teamwork specifically for engineers and also on advanced professional, interpersonal, and self-management skills.

Previously at Cornell, Emily participated in generating a mission concept design for HADES, a conceptual 12U CubeSat that would measure cosmic hydrogen levels from the dark far side of the moon, as part of Cornell’s SmallSat Mission Design School. She collaborated to develop a concept of operations, wrote engineering requirements, and modeled the trajectory of HADES from a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) to the Van Allen Belts with an electric finite engine model.

Emily is from Tenafly, New Jersey. When she is not building satellites or rockets, Emily can be found stargazing in an open field, bouldering and top-roping in an indoor gym, or skiing on the icy slopes of the East Coast.