Annie Hasten
Senior Financial Analyst - Lockheed Martin
University of Colorado at Boulder
This short Q&A was featured in a Nov. 19, 2018 article introducing a selection of people who work on the OSIRIS-REx mission to explore asteroid Bennu.
Expertise: Business
Hometown: Littleton, Colorado
I’m in charge of all the financials for OSIRIS-Rex on the Lockheed Martin side. This includes managing and tracking the budget. I communicate financial performance to internal and external customers. I work closely with the program management to address any items, cost wise, that come up. I also track risk and opportunities, or any other financial issues with the program and help mitigate them. Most of the cost issues we deal with are staffing and subcontracting costs. At this phase, there’s not much material costs, since OSIRIS-REx is built and deployed.
My dad worked for Lockheed for 33 years as a software engineer, so it’s always been in my background. My younger sister interned for United Launch Alliance (ULA) in 2010, so I looked into them after graduating college and thought it might be the right fit. I worked at ULA as a financial analyst and then came to Lockheed in 2017. With a financial background, you are pretty versatile; you can do that anywhere. But to me, it isn’t what you do, but why you do it. I love the science mission of OSIRIS-REx. I think it’s a pleasure to work with people who are so intensely passionate about their jobs. These engineers are doing their dream jobs, so you feed off of that positive energy.
I’ve always had a head for numbers. I liked business school; I went to University of Colorado at Boulder. The business side of companies made sense and interested me.
I have the top-level milestones in my head. When I’m communicating the program’s financial performance, or our company financials, to my bosses, it helps me to have a better understanding of what’s going on and what’s coming down the pike.
The exciting time is starting now with the approach to Bennu. There’s always the possibility for risks or anomalies that could have financial implications. But, more than anything, I’m excited to see our exceptional team at work and in their element during the approach to Bennu.
OSIRIS-REx is NASA's first asteroid sample return mission. It is exploring a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu (formerly 1999 RQ36), and bring a sample of that small world back to Earth for study.
Planetary science is a global profession.