Relativity Space
Internship
Relativity Space is a late-stage aerospcae startup company building Terran R, a reusable rocket. In 2026, I did a 12 week internship on the Vehicle Integration and Test team at the Long Beach, CA location.
Photo credits: relativityspace.com
About the Team - Vehicle Integration and Test
Vehicle Integration and Test is a subset of manufacturing engineering at the last step before the rocket stage is sent to Stennis, MI for large-scale testing.
Vehicle Integration: Taking parts from the design stage through shipping configuration. This includes writing assembly manuals for technicians, making decisions on parts that don’t meet spec, process improvement on assembly, and providing feedback to design engineers on how to make components easier to manufacture and assemble.
Test: Testing includes avionics checkouts, leak checks, proofing, writing test procedures, process improvement, and providing feedback to design engineers on how to make components easier to test.
My Role
My internship was with the Stage 2 team within Vehicle Integration and Test. However, because Stage 2 was recently shipped out of Long Beach (8 hours before I came in on Day 1!) I worked on a wider variety of projects. This included Stage 2 urgent travelled work, assisting in ongoing Stage 1 integration, assisting in the bringup of multiple avionics test panels, and designing a new electronics box to improve avionics checkouts.