Navajo machinist Andy Johnson inspires students with aerospace career
Andy Johnson’s path from Four Corners machining work to Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser shows how rare the aerospace ladder still is for Diné students.
Andy Johnson’s work on Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser put a Navajo machinist from the Four Corners region inside NASA’s commercial cargo effort, and the Navajo Nation highlighted him on June 17 as an example for Diné students. Johnson is Ta’neeszahnii, or Tangle People Clan, and born for the Hooghan Łání, or Many Hogans Clan. He was in his third year with Sierra Space and had spent about a year and a half in a lead role on Dream Chaser, where he fabricated many of the spacecraft’s components.
His career path ran through more than two decades of machining and manufacturing. Johnson’s technical skills include manual machining, CNC operations, EDM wire cutting, precision fabrication and advanced manufacturing work tied to aerospace, defense and space exploration technology. He earned an associate degree from San Juan College and later returned to school at Front Range Community College in 2022 and 2023, where he studied intermediate and advanced CNC machining and Mastercam programming. Front Range Community College’s machining curriculum covers CNC turning and milling, CAD/CAM, lathe programming, metrology and Mastercam-based programming.
Before moving into space work, Johnson took on projects across the Navajo Nation and the Four Corners region, including work for Navajo Engineering and Construction Authority, Navajo Agricultural Products Industry, BHP San Juan and regional refinery projects.
NASA awarded Sierra Nevada Corporation a Commercial Resupply Services-2 contract in 2016 to resupply the International Space Station with Dream Chaser and the Shooting Star cargo module. The contract included a minimum of seven flights. NASA and Sierra Space modified the agreement in 2025, removing NASA’s guarantee to buy cargo flights to the station. Sierra Space says the first Dream Chaser flight will be a free-flyer mission rather than an ISS docking mission. Dream Chaser Tenacity arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on May 20, 2024, and completed pre-flight tests there on November 13, 2025.
President Buu Nygren singled out Johnson as someone Navajo people can be proud of and said his example shows young people they can pursue any path while staying rooted in who they are and where they come from.
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