No, but I have worked on instruments that went to space for a brief time on rockets, and then came back down to the Earth. (These experiments were part of NASA's sounding rocket program, which uses brief flights to test out technologies and make targeted scientific observations.) Working on space instruments taught me a great deal about how to plan a project, test it so you know it works, and adapt when things don't work!

I have... several in fact.
The first one I worked on was when I was a graduate student. That instrument measured the solar wind and was on the Ulysses mission which flew over the poles of the Sun. The next one I worked, just at the end of graduate school, on was a similar instrument that was on the Wind spacecraft.
Then I shifted focus a little bit and worked on instruments that measure energetic particles. I've worked on an instrument on the Galileo spacecraft (which was orbiting Jupiter). Both Galileo and Ulysses are no longer exiting, but the instruments I helped test and still work on are on ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer), the two STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) spacecraft, and the new PSP (Parker Solar Probe). PSP is particularly exciting since it is going closer to the Sun than anything ever made by humans.

I'm also currently working on a new instrument that will be flying on IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) as well as a set of cubesats that will be measuring radio signals from the Sun, called SunRISE (Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment).

-Christina

I have never actually built an instrument, but I have been part of teams that examined the science questions and set the parameter ranges (in energy, in sensitivity, and in time cadence) that would be necessary. We then worked with the instrument builders in our team to ensure the best instrument would be flown. So I have worked with the instrument builders before launch on these missions: Dynamics Explorer, Polar, IMAGE, Cluster, and now MMS. I analyzed data from all of these (MMS is still up and taking amazing data), plus other missions before that I joined after the instruments had been built.

Hello! Yes, I have worked on instruments that have been sent into space. Several years ago, I helped test electron detectors that were going to be used on a sounding rocket to study the aurora borealis. The machine shop in our department made all the parts of the electron detectors. Other staff members mostly put them together, but I had to insert the microchannel plates before doing the tests. The tests were done inside a vacuum chamber that I learned how to operate. I also helped out with the payload integration when the instruments were put onto the rocket. I've also done bench tests of the Wideband Plasma Wave Investigation for the Cluster mission to characterize the way the instrument amplifiers responded to very large input signals. I was analyzing data from Cluster, and we were not certain if some of the signals I saw were real, so we did these tests to find out. When I did these tests, the mission had already been launched, so I used a flight quality spare (always have a backup, just in case!). I've also done computer simulations for the Electron Drift Instrument (EDI) for NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission to create the voltage tables used to run the instrument. I was able to go to Florida to watch the MMS launch with the other team members. It was very exciting! Several months after MMS was launched, the EDI developed some issues that caused it to shut down immediately when it was powered on. I did even more simulations and was able to find a way to work around the problem so we could keep on getting new data.