Q&A with Noah Gordon, Senior GNC Engineer

Meet Noah Gordon, Senior GNC Engineer!

Noah brings over seven years of experience as a Senior Guidance, Navigation, and Control Engineer (GNC) from both Boeing and Turion, including five years at Boeing as an Astrodynamics Engineer. He holds a Master of Science from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Science from Purdue University in Aerospace, Aeronautical, and Astronautical Engineering.

As a Senior GNC Engineer, Noah brings real-world experience operating 14 different spacecraft in LEO, MEO, and GEO and helps ensure that Apex’s platforms are robustly engineered to navigate the harsh realities of space. Noah works across engineering disciplines and is responsible for ensuring mission success throughout the platform’s lifecycle. Gearing up for launch and throughout the mission, Noah owns the design, implementation, and testing of algorithms and hardware that support safe and reliable spacecraft flight and mission operations.

Learn more about Noah below:  

Q: What excites you the most about working at a company like Apex?

I love the speed, the vision, and the people. Some space startups don’t necessarily have a clear direction. We do. We know what we’re building, and we know we have to move fast.
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Q: Why are you excited about space?  

On a philosophical level, our insignificance at the scale of the universe has always been mind-blowing to me. At a personal level, space is challenging, and I can’t imagine a more exciting industry to work in. I’ve flown 14 satellites in my career, and there’s nothing more exciting than navigating a satellite through space and overcoming the inevitable challenges that arise while in orbit.
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‍Q: What’s something you learned in your most recent role that you’re bringing to Apex?

I was briefly at Turion before coming to Apex—that was also a scrappy startup environment. Coming from Boeing before that, I definitely had to adapt a bit to using what’s available and building what you need from scratch. There’s a balance to strike between quickly finding “good enough” and laying strong foundations for a company to grow.
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Q: How do you see the role of Senior GNC Engineer at Apex, and how is it supporting the mass-manufacturing of Apex’s satellite platforms?  

Apex is building standardized satellite platforms. Within that, between flight software and GNC, we’re building a standard software platform for our satellites. Comet may have bigger reaction wheels than Aries, but they both have reaction wheels, and we can handle those components abstractly as long as we design that way from the start. The goal is for GNC to be fully common between satellites, with only configuration changes between serial numbers. We’re building in-house from scratch, and we’re doing it with mass manufacturing at the front of our minds.
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Q: What has surprised or impressed you the most so far during your time at Apex?  

The people. I’ve met many of the best engineers I’ve ever worked with at Apex. Everyone here is extremely competent and focused on the mission, while also being genuinely fun to work with (and enjoy a happy hour with). I strongly believe in this team’s ability to execute.
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Q: Tell us a bit about what you do in your free time.

In my free time, you might catch me playing guitar and singing, playing saxophone, reading a good book, snowboarding, rock climbing (badly), running (slowly), or losing to strangers online in chess.