Meet Chantz Thomas, Constellation Operations Engineer/Sales Engineer.
Q: What do you do for BlackSky?
A: My work spans operations, sales, and engineering. As BlackSky’s constellation progresses, my focus shifts between these roles. In operations, I work as part of the team that commissions, commands, and maintains BlackSky spacecraft and ground systems. In sales, I recruit and inform customers and investors, perform analysis, direct parts of our product test program, and coordinate with partner companies. In engineering, I work with the systems engineering team to test and analyze our spacecraft in preparation for launch and I work on elements of our image processing and data product delivery systems.
Q: What interests you about space?
A: The human endeavor in space entails rewards both immediate and existential. Spaceflight offers technical and human challenges, traverses the commercial, scientific, and humanitarian realms, and requires a uniquely constant engagement with philosophical and political justification. In these journeys, the space community has always produced an enthusiastic group of friends with daring dreams and a heartening array of talents. On an individual level, spaceflight – in its audacity and its extremity – enables an encounter with existential questions of scope, purpose, and meaning.
Q: If you were to mentor someone who wanted to do what you do, what advice would you give them?
A: I recommend that they follow their curiosity, build on the interesting parts of what they encounter in their studies or work, and pour their energies into the path that follows – be it straight or winding.
Q: Would you be interested in going to Mars or another planet someday?
A: I would be excited to explore as an astronaut of a civil space agency.