Dr. Ajay M. Koshti

Dr. Ajay Koshti holds B.Tech., M.S., and D. Sc. degrees; and Professional Engineer (PE) certification in Mechanical Engineering. He holds ASNT level III certification in five Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) methods.
He worked as an NDE engineer on NASA Space Shuttle Program from 1988 to 2011. He also worked as Orbiter Ground Support Equipment (GSE), including Orbiter Handling Equipment (OHE), engineer for six years at Kennedy Space Center. He led the implementation of ultrasonic preload measurements on some Space Shuttle joints and designed Orbiter towing lines on the roads.

From 2004 to 2024, he worked as a lead NDE engineer, and later as a Senior Discipline Expert in NDE at NASA Johnson Space Center. Post NASA Shuttle Columbia accident, he led development and implementation of infrared nondestructive testing of Space Shuttle wing leading edge. He chaired NASA Orbiter NDE Working Group and contributed to nondestructive methods used on Space Shuttle Orbiter hardware such as vertical tail lug joints, main propulsion system (MPS) flowliners, MPS valve poppets, composite pressure vessels, midbody boron-aluminum struts, payload bay doors, laminated and honeycomb composite structures.

Since the end of Space Shuttle Program in 2011, he has been working on the NASA International Space Station (ISS) program, NASA Orion MPCV Program, and NASA Commercial Cargo & Crew Programs with SpaceX as a responsible NDE engineer. He co-chairs the NASA Orion MPCV NDE Working Group meeting and NASA Commercial Program NDE Group with SpaceX meeting.

He authored over 50 research papers. He pioneered analytical models for ultrasonic measurement of interference pressure, bending and shear load in bolted joints. He pioneered normalized “Koshti” contrast data processing in infrared thermography. He has ten patents in NDE. He pioneered limited validation approach for reliable flaw detection in NDE and analytical models for assessing X-ray crack detectability.