Oct. 30, 2015

Mark Neuman, mechanical systems engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, watches every Baltimore Ravens home game from the end zone. With his purple guitar in tow, Neuman and three other musicians make up the electronic rhythm section of Baltimore’s Marching Ravens.
Being a part of one of the two official NFL musical organizations is what Neuman calls his side job. Together, his two jobs make a unique duo.
Neuman has worked at Goddard in servicing capabilities for almost three decades. He worked on human servicing for the Hubble Space Telescope for the first two-thirds of his career and transitioned into testing robotic servicing technologies.

For the Hubble servicing missions, Neuman developed carriers to hold instruments during servicing missions. “We would design the hardware and eventually teach astronauts how to use it,” Neuman said.
The astronaut interface training took place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory simulates zero gravity conditions experienced in space by adjusting the weights of astronaut’s training suits so they neither float nor sink in the 6.2 million gallon pool. Neuman got his scuba certification in order to dive at the facility. He observed and photographed astronauts such as Story Musgrave, Steve Smith and John Grunsfeld as they prepared for servicing work on Hubble.

After the final Hubble servicing mission in 2009, Neuman’s focus shifted to robotic servicing. Currently, he is the lead systems engineer for the Robotic Refueling Mission, or RRM. RRM is an external payload on the International Space Station that uses the Canadian-built dexterous robot, Dextre to demonstrate robotic refueling and servicing technologies.
“As a systems engineer, I get to see the flow of a project lifecycle through each of the different phases,” Neuman said. “Sometimes, a designer makes drawings only to pass them off. I am a part of each step from concept through the hardware build, launch and use in space.”

RRM operations in early October 2015 practiced tasks such as removing electrical connecters. RRM demonstrates a robot can rotate a circular connector, pull it off and replace it. This is useful, for example, in the case that a fuse plug stops working on a satellite’s electronics panel. “Our goal is to develop a servicing spacecraft that builds on RRM lessons learned to repair and maintain satellites in both near and distant orbits,” Neuman said.
In the past, satellites were not designed to be refueled. RRM engineers orchestrate the robots programming to refuel sealed fuel caps, fine-tuning the timing of approach and sequence of commands.

“To me, music complements mechanical engineering,” Neuman said. “Similar to solving problems within the framework of engineering principles and available design space, playing music lets me create something new within the framework of tempo, dynamics and key signature.”
Neuman started playing guitar in high school and although his formal music education only lasted three years, he developed his skills by playing in bands.
This year is Neuman’s third season playing electric guitar for the Ravens’ marching band. A Ravens fan himself, Neuman said he enjoys contributing to the fan experience on game days.

Only two NFL teams have full marching bands (the Washington Redskins being the other), and the Ravens are the only one with an electronic rhythm section. The foursome made up of two guitarists, a bassist and a drummer plays anything it chooses for 90 seconds at the third quarter break. During pregame and half-time, the musicians join the rest of the Marching Ravens on the field and play a variety of music from Elvis Presley to Fall Out Boy and, of course, “The Baltimore Fight Song.”
While they are a small section of the Marching Ravens, the four musicians are difficult to miss. They wear Baltimore jerseys and sit in the end zone front row. The remainder of the musical group wears traditional marching band uniforms in the team colors and fills the stands behind the field goal post.

Neuman acknowledges that playing in front of 70,000 people at M&T Bank Stadium sometimes feels overwhelming. “To stay in the zone I focus on what I am doing and not how many people are watching and listening,” said Neuman.
Being a Marching Raven takes commitment, but Neuman said playing music is his stress reliever. He also plays guitar in a local band called Out of Order with college friends. They cover ’80s rock music and play at local restaurants and venues such as the Columbia Lakefront in Columbia, Maryland.
Neuman admitted that between RRM, two bands as well as his wife and four kids, he keeps a busy schedule.
“The opportunity to play in front of a stadium full of people was a dream come true, so I had to find time to fit it in,” Neuman said.

Image: Goddard mechanical engineer Mark Neuman (left), Tobias Hurwitz (center), Rich Snyder (right) and Andy Davis (back) make up the electronic rhythm section of the Marching Ravens.