[2] Sternbach became a friend of science fiction writer Greg Bear, after his illustration of "A Martian Ricorso" featured in the cover of the February 1976 issue of Analog.
[2] As a member of the art department, working alongside Mike Minor, Sternbach designed control panel layouts and signage for the starship sets.
For his work on the episode The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean he won the 1980-1981 Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Creative Technical Craft.
At around the same time, Sternbach collaborated with Charley Kohlhase and Jim Blinn at JPL on the Voyager 1 Jupiter flyby movie, creating textures for the Galilean satellites.
In 1983, he worked as an illustrator on The Last Starfighter, story-boarding visual effects sequences and developing texture maps for computer rendered space scenes.
[2] As fans of the original series of Star Trek and fans of the space program, Sternbach and Michael Okuda found roles as Technical Advisors on the series, advising the writers on technical matters and developing a number of concepts to add realism to the Star Trek universe, such as the Structural Integrity Field and the Inertial Dampener.