By John Mahoney

“Collegiate teaches you to be well-rounded in your skills, character, and experiences.” These were the words of my older brother Peter Mahoney (‘15) when I asked him about the most important thing Collegiate taught him. My family moved to Richmond during the summer of 2013. My brother Ryan (‘26) and I started Kindergarten that fall, while my sister Ann (‘19) started in 7th Grade, and my older brother Peter started as a Junior.

Photo credit: Ann Mahoney.

Before moving to Richmond, Peter attended Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for his freshman and sophomore years. Thomas Jefferson is a very competitive magnet school in Alexandria, Virginia, that is consistently ranked as one of the top high schools in the country. 

While at Collegiate, Peter had no trouble fitting in and was a member of various clubs and sports teams. While involved in extracurriculars, Peter was also very engaged in the classroom. He graduated in the spring of 2015, heading to Dartmouth College that fall.

Peter’s favorite memory from Collegiate was creating a Facebook page where people could submit anonymous compliments about their peers. Having seen his friends at another high school do this, Peter thought it would be a brilliant idea to start a Collegiate version. After reviewing the comments, he would post them. Even though this Facebook group was only open for a few weeks during his Senior year, he thought it was an exciting way to connect his classmates and spread positivity throughout the community.

While at Dartmouth, Peter excelled in the classroom, just like he had in high school, but he also found enjoyed activities such as hiking, mountain biking, skiing, and just being outside in general. When Peter is really interested in something, he can talk about it for a long time. A great example of this is when my family took a white water rafting trip down the Grand Canyon. Peter, wanting to flex his knowledge about geology and rock formations, started randomly pointing out facts about the types of rock on the canyon walls above us.

With his two interests of being outside and engineering, he set his sights on becoming an environmental engineering major. But as his time at Dartmouth was coming to a close, Peter realized that he had found himself slowly becoming more interested in space exploration, and he started doing more independent research. Even though Peter is now an aerospace engineer, he still majored in environmental engineering and minored in geology, putting various aspects of his previous major to use.

Camping in the great outdoors. Photo credit: Gracie Durham.

During his senior year, Peter and a team of seven other Dartmouth students went down to NASA’s Langley Research Center and won the NASA Big Idea Challenge competition for designing a Mars greenhouse prototype that could be used to grow plants and sustain life. The NASA Big Idea Challenge is a competition that NASA hosts every year, where college students develop prototype technologies that could be used for space exploration. The group had to present their findings to a panel of NASA employees. This was part of a Dartmouth capstone class, and it was also the first time Dartmouth had ever sent students to compete in the Big Idea Challenge.

With his future set on a career as an aerospace engineer, Peter landed an internship at Northrop Grumman, a global aerospace and military technology company, where he worked on a program that sends cargo to space on board rockets. When questioned about why he switched to aerospace engineering, he replied, “I really liked the human and space intersection.”

Peter said that with this type of work, he has “been able to travel to a few cool places.” One of his favorite places he has travelled is Turin, Italy, for Northrop Grumman. Peter worked with a partner company there called Thales. Peter joked, “While, unfortunately, I did not really improve on any of my Italian language skills, I ate a lot of really good food.”

Peter with his wife Gracie. Photo credit: Peter Mahoney.

Currently, Peter lives in San Francisco, where he works for Astranis, a space technology company. At Astranis, his job is to write software and code for satellites to work autonomously. Although Peter mentioned that AI is now doing most of the coding, he still does all the hands-on work, such as visiting launch sites and testing satellites. Also, since the coding and software is written by AI, Peter said it is still “very important that humans review each line of code that makes it into the mission operations center or gets uploaded to a satellite.”

Peter mentioned that his favorite part of his work is “solving complex problems with super awesome people.” He said that the team he works with has to tackle a new problem almost every week, so he is always focused on “doing stuff” and never bored. He also said that “the workplace culture is great, and that being surrounded by super-smart people and solving complex challenges makes me learn and grow every week.”

Featured image courtesy of Peter Mahoney.