Gwynne Shotwell has been an innovator in aerospace and made significant technical contributions to the design of reusable rockets at SpaceX, propelling the company to new heights in space commercialization. She earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and master’s degree in applied mathematics, with honors, from Northwestern University in 1986 and 1988, respectively. Shotwell was the seventh employee at SpaceX when she joined in 2002 as vice president of business development and built the Falcon vehicle family manifest to more than 70 launches, representing more than $10 billion in business. She achieved her first major success at SpaceX in December 2008 when she helped get its first big customer, NASA, which awarded SpaceX the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. In her current position since 2008, Shotwell is responsible for day-to-day operations and for managing customer and strategic relations. Under her technical guidance, SpaceX has completed many successful missions and plans to send astronauts to ISS and then to Mars in the 2020s.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
